Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead returns for 2025/26 with his series of The Great and the Good articles, analysing the transfers and strategies of some well-known Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers.
The Great and The Good this season are the FPL Godfather Mark Sutherns, the BlackBox pair of Az and Andy North, Scouts FPL General, Joe and Tom, the FPL Wire trio of Pras, Lateriser and Zophar, FPL celebrities FPL Harry, Martin Baker, Pingreen, FPL Frasier and Luke Williams, Ben Crellin, Fabio Borges and Tom Dollimore from the Hall of Fame, plus of course, last year’s mini league-winner Huss E.
“The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves”
We spend a lot of time in the FPL world trying to predict the future, whether man or machine-led, but one certainly is that: every season in Gameweek 2, the overriding sage advice will be to roll a transfer.
So, unless our hearts were set racing by Tijjani Reijnders (£5.7m), we wandered into this FPL Gameweek knowing that the biggest decision that faced us was whether to play our Burnley bench fodder in the hope of a clean sheet. Hardly heart-stopping stuff.
However, as always, the weekend brought new chaos with Cole Palmer’s (£10.5m) disappearance and Bukayo Saka’s (£10.0m) hamstring giving us some decisions to make, plus the goal famine over at Villa Park will not satisfy our FPL rumbling stomachs for long.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
Mark Sutherns proved that cream is not the only thing that rises as he scored the highest total this week with 55 points, thanks mainly to Joao Pedro (£7.6m). This means there is a four-way tie for first place with Az, Andy North and FPL Harry.
Mark’s benching decisions were perhaps controversial, with Maxime Esteve (£4.0m) and Josh King (£4.5m) picked ahead of Cristian Romero (£5.0m), although not as unfortunate as Luke Williams, who left 22 points on the sidelines as his triple Spurs defence showed that the Thomas Frank revolution is having an immediate impact.
It seems premature to say but it appears bench strength is already important. Palmer’s absence, along with Georgino Rutter (£6.0m) missing the team bus, meant that there were 23 substitutes in total.
It was a disappointing week for many and the average rank of The Great and The Good remains over five million. Only 36 weeks to go!
Captaincy saw those who had invested in Saka make their move, with five of them putting the armband on him versus the Mohamed Salah (£14.5m) cartel. The five who went for Palmer clearly missed the group text alert and were fortunate that the Egyptian delivered another late, late show with an assist in injury time.
TRANSFERS
Drumroll please! FPL General was the only one to blink this week as he was impressed enough by Reijnders to bring him straight in. He shipped out Morgan Rogers (£7.0m).
No immediate returns this week but at least a couple of quid profit to add to that all-important team value.
THE TEMPLATE or MAN vs MACHINE
Whilst reading some of the comments from last week’s edition, I did notice, amongst the outpouring of love for the articles (thanks Mum) and a couple of suggestions that I was engaged in some form of online game of soggy biscuit with The Great and The Good (thanks again mum), that there was a suspicion that the teams picked by the selected managers were influenced by one of many AI tools available. So, let’s review the evidence.
Here are the current optimised template squads for the next six weeks as proposed by a well-known algorithm. Let’s see how closely it matches The Great and The Good template…
The Algorithm Squad
The Great and The Good Squad
The side-by-side shows that 10 of the 15 are the same. That’s 66%; sorry to show off my C in GCSE Maths there.
The differences are Marcos Senesi (£4.5m), Emiliano Martinez (£5.0m), who sit in none of The Great and The Good teams, along with Youri Tielemans (£6.0m), Patrick Dorgu (£4.5m) and Jean-Philippe Mateta (£7.5m), who sit in a few more but don’t quite make the squad.
Not a major surprise then that there is a high degree of similarity but is there any wonder, as in reality, we have a very limited number of picks and many of those who we follow in The Great and The Good are more likely to be drawn to the safe selections, with rank histories to protect.
So, does this mean the end of FPL as some would have us believe?
It is certainly causing some frustration, particularly from those more experienced managers who believe that “casuals” are being spoonfed their teams via the evil machine without the hours and hours of dedication some give to this game, not to mention the domestic bonus points needed to convince your non-football-loving partner to watch Leeds vs Everton on a Monday night.
I believe we have a choice. We can either moan and groan, taking a glass-half-empty approach, or we can accept it and embrace the challenge it brings.
Let’s face it: no AI-generated team is going to win FPL. The 5,000-odd managers who have cloned FPL Harry’s team are unlikely to share the prize of a stress ball. All it means is that the level of creativity needed to succeed increases.
You can use the AI tools for guidance and, in some cases, save you the time of wading through the data, then use your own opinion based on a little-used data point or just your gut when you watch a player glide across the pitch.
So, you can either act like a Luddite, which didn’t end so well for them, or stop verbally smashing the machine and lift yourself to the challenge. It makes those moments of differential glory all the sweeter as Jurrien Timber (£5.5m) owners will attest.
CONCLUSION
The real games start now with enough blanks, injuries and mysterious absences (yes, I am still talking about you, Georgino Rutter) to give us all the reason to make our first moves of the campaign.
Not to mention we have some potential hauls ahead with Manchester United (editor – really?), Liverpool and then Manchester City in Gameweek 6 having some decent match-ups. Investment in their players, or possible chip plans, may be key.
Anyway, that’s all from me for now, and remember: don’t have FPL nightmares.
For those affected by any of the topics raised above, you can find me here on Twitter or here on BlueSky.
