In ‘The Great and The Good’, Fantasy Football Scout community writer Greyhead analyses the Gameweek 11 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, BlackBox pair 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, Hall of Famers Ben Crellin, Fabio Borges and Tom Dollimore, and last year’s mini-league winner Huss E.
“Trust no one”
There was plenty of Traitorous behaviour leading up to Gameweek 11, with Vitor Pereira banished. Some are also beginning to think those mighty algorithms so regularly used are not faithful after all. However, the real traitors proved to be all those penalty takers who missed their mark.
Gameweek 11 proved another one of mixed fortunes. With the news that there will be no blanks or doubles in the first half of the season, we saw a couple more of The Great and The Good roll out their chips with a pair of Free Hits and Bench Boosts to try and improve their fortunes.
Oh, and Fabio Borges finally bought Gabriel Magalhaes (£6.6m) and promptly broke him…
OVERALL PERFORMANCE
FPL Fraiser was our leading scorer this week, aided by a 17-point bench boost. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (£4.9m) proved to be his sideline’s superstar, while he also picked the right time to bring in Igor Thiago (£6.3m). It looks like he also made the right choice in going for Bryan Mbeumo (£8.5m) over Bruno Fernandes (£8.9m) on his Wildcard.
Lateriser also made gains with his 14-point Bench Boost and a green arrow of over 600,000. Dewsbury-Hall was again the hero; that’s six greens in a row now.
The FPL Wire co-host’s weekly score of 55 was equalled by our enigmatic leader, Huss E, who won the feeder mini-league last year. He was one of the few to keep faith in Joao Pedro (£7.5m) and has the cut-price gem of Chris Richards (£4.5m) in his defence.
Elsewhere, there were Free Hits for Andy North and FPL General to see them gain ground. An Arsenal clean sheet would’ve made those arrows a little greener.
TRANSFERS
It was the week to say good riddance or “bra ridning” to Viktor Gyokeres (£8.9m), due to his injury and limited points.
Fabio Borges, Tom Dollimore and FPL Fraiser looked to find the best replacement in Thiago, whose 13 points took him to second in the FPL forwards’ table. He has decent fixtures ahead, if you ignore Gameweek 14, so expect his ownership to rise sharply over the break.
TEMPLATE
We see the template finally switch to a 3-5-2 with the cheap enabler Marc Guiu (£4.2m) coming in for Gyokeres.
Enzo Fernandez (£6.7m) is now the most popular midfielder, despite his limited returns, and Gabriel is at last 100% owned.
CHIP CHECK
There has been a flurry of chip activity recently. In many ways, this feels like an FPL marathon with some managers sprinting ahead and splurging their chips, and others taking a more cautious approach.
So, it’s as good a time as any to have a look at who the chip kings are so far.
Fabio Borges has uncharacteristically used all his chips and therefore, sits second in this table behind Luke. Mr Williams has had the most success with his three chips, scoring the most above the average for his Free Hit, getting a healthy 22 points from his Bench Boost, and making good gains from his Wildcard.
Harry has the highest Bench Boost on 23, with Tom Dollimore benefiting the most from his Wildcard. As for the Triple Captain, it will be a difficult task to beat the 16 points from Erling Haaland (£14.9m) back in Gameweek 6.
CONCLUSION
FPL is a funny old game. We spend way too much of our time planning, speculating and debating, knowing full well that we can never really hope to quantify the erratic scoring patterns of Joao Pedro, the reason why our players score points in Europe but not at the weekend, and the cryptic manager team news.
Yet despite knowing all these difficulties, we still get frustrated when we don’t get green arrows every week and our ranks are in the six figures. We also seem to forget that the season ends after Gameweek 38, not Gameweek 11, so there is a while to go yet before we can truly justify the joy of FPL self-flagellation.
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 on BlueSky.
