We look at a fantasy premier league season start like, what appears to be, no other and mull over the prospects for a return to what we would normally expect
fantasy premier league – some thoughts on the season to date
I think you all know my article where I follow the teams of 10 top FPL managers. These are FPL managers who in the last 3 years haven’t finished outside the top 10k. The reason I picked them was because of that consistency and obvious ability to adapt to different seasons. Well their plight is symptomatic of the malaise that many managers are experiencing. The average rank of the 10 after 4 gameweeks is around 1 million. Only 4 have a better rank than 1 million, only 1 is ranked better than 500k and none are in the top 100k. And it’s not just bad selections for GW1, as 7/10 have used their wildcard. I’m also in the same position 900k after 4 rounds after a 2,700 finish last season
To be fair the difference between a 1 million rank and a 10k rank is 59 points so it’s hardly terminal but how did the above managers get there. We look at the unusual circumstances that have contributed to their low ranking.
The template team that has been successful in the past is generally been a mixture of big name players from the top 4 teams mixed in with some fixture based remaining players in a 3-4-3 formation.
The top 4 challenging teams apart from Man City haven’t hit their straps at all. Man Utd and Arsenal have only scored 3 goals while Liverpool have only scored 2. Chelsea have scored 6 but the main focus of teams in Hazard who has only got 1 assist in 4 games. Furthermore Chelsea have conceded 9 goals with only Sunderland conceding more so the best defensive team which showed up in a lot of peoples teams has been a dismal failure. However the top 4 teams defences have been strong apart from Chelsea with Man City with 4 clean sheets, Man Utd and Liverpool 3, Arsenal 2. That doesn’t go well with a template 3-4-3 when often 1 top 4 challenging defender is only used.
To make the point here are the top 9 scoring players
Kolarov 37 points
Mahrez 36
Kompany 36
Sagna 33
Ayew 31
YYT 31
Wilson 28
Redmond 26
Silva 26
5 are from Man City and none are from another top 4 challenging team. In contrast the most expensive players in Aguero (11 points) , Hazard (10), Costa (16) and Sanchez (12) have scored poorly.
Man City was largely ignored as they had quite tricky fixtures to start and last year their defence didn’t perform to expectation. The one player on the FPL managers radars of Aguero has only scored once to compound matters.
To make matters worse of the 4 non Man City players above Redmond and Wilson are from newly promoted teams. Ayew was new to the league and Mahrez had 1 returning game in his last 10 last season. Difficult picks to get. Southampton failing after having good fixtures to start with didn’t help the situation either. The fact that only something like 8 games out of 40 have been home wins also didn’t help fixture based players.
So will it turn around?
Aguero and Costa certainly have the underlying shooting stats to turn their position around. Costa is at a siimilar level to last year which is good but Hazard has no stats at the moment. However Hazard is a player who has consistently scored well over the last 3 seasons so it’s hard to see it’s the end for him.
However forgetting all that it’s hard to believe that after 4 games these players have become poor players. Have Chelsea become a bad team and can Mourinho not turn it around? Will Arsenal, Man Utd and Liverpool all continue to struggle to score? Unfortunately I don’t have the answers it’s a matter of adjusting as the season goes. And with only 4 games in it will be interesting to see how the top 10 managers adjust
What ever happens we’ll keep a close eye on how they adapt to the season
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