fantasy premier league team tips GW20 – analysing the teams of 10 top FPL managers

Here’s our fantasy premier league team tips GW20 article where we analyse the teams of 10 top FPL managers. These 10 managers have not finished outside the overall rank of the top 10k in the last 3 seasons. Considering how variable the last 3 years have been this is remarkable consistency and shows an ability to adapt strategy in different seasons. It also gives you a view other than my own on strategy and player selection.

fantasy premier league team tips GW20 – analysing the teams of 10 top FPL managers

If the article is too long there’s a combined FPL managers team for the top 10 FPL managers analysed towards the end of the article.

Firstly, there are 9 new managers in the 10 this season and I’m delighted to say that one of them is our own FFGeek contributor Keith Spencer. You can find Keith on twitter here by the way Keith’s last 3 years history are 17/18 (3,940), 16/17 ( 325) and 15/16 (9,280).

We’ve also added Paul Williams to the FFGeek team who is also part of the 10 top managers. His history is 17/18 (412), 16/17 ( 1,382) and 15/16 (7,164).

The criteria I’ve always been looking for is managers who’ve finished in the top 10k for the last 3 years when FPL has become considerably harder due to the amount of people playing and the information available.

It took me hours and hours to track down 10 managers who’ve been so consistent and my opinion after doing so is that there are probably only 20 or so in the world that qualify.

The 10 managers stats

Just to let you know I’ve taken out the person who was distorting the average very negatively and replaced them with someone else meeting the last 3 seasons less than 10k OR. I haven’t amended the calculations below but they will be improved due to the substitution.

These managers are unbelievable and every bit as impressive as last season.

1. The overall average finishing overall rank of the top 10 managers in the last 3 seasons is 3,667

2. The top 10 FPL managers have not been out of the top 10k in the last 3 seasons (ie 30 times playing)

3. 7 of the 10 have finished in the top 1,000 in the last 3 seasons

Gameweek 19 review

A reasonable week for the 10 FPL managers. 5 of the 10 had a green arrow

The average score of the managers in GW19 was 77 taking into account point deductions for extra transfers. That’s compared to the game average of 59. That’s 18 points and 30% above the game average score. High score of the 10 was 104. The low score was 53. A incredibly high spread of 51 for a relatively high scoring gameweek.

The average overall rank of the top 10 FPL managers is 40k an improvement of rank from last week 42k. The best overall rank is now in the top 50 and the lowest 141k.

The average total points are 1,190

The average team value is £103.8m

I’ll go through my score in an early FFGeek team article.

The combined total of individual players

I’ve included where there is a minimum of a player in 3 out of the 10 FPL managers teams

Goalkeeper/Defence

Wan Bissaka is in 9 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Doherty is in 8 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Digne and Fabianski are in 6 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Alonso and Balbuena is in 5 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Robertson is in 4 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Patricio is in 3 of the FPL managers teams

Goalkeeper/Defence by team

Wolves GK/Defs are represented 13 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

West Ham GK/Defs are represented 11 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

C Palace GK/Defs are represented 9 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

Chelsea and Liverpool GK/Defs are represented 7 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

Everton GK/Defs are represented 6 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

Fulham, Man Utd  and Brighton are represented 2 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

Midfielders

Richarlison is in 9 of the FPL managers teams

Salah is in 7 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Felipe Anderson and Sane are in 5 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Snodgrass and Hazard are in 4 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Sterling and Son are in 3/10 FPL managers teams

Forwards

Kane is in 8 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Aubameyang is in 5 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Jimenez is in 4 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Ings, Kamara and Rashford are in 3 of the 10 managers teams

Gameweek 19 captain choice

6 of the 10 FPL managers went with Kane

4 of the 10 FPL managers went with Salah

The FFGeek poll was 39% Kane and 38% Salah

The Site 1 poll in my GW18 captain choice article was 31% Kane, 29% Salah,

The top 10k captain choice (from the excellent free site FPL discovery) was 45% Kane and 35% Salah.   The FFGeek poll this time was not that consistent.

Formations

5 of the 10 FPL managers went for 3-4-3

3 of the 10 FPL managers went for 3-5-2

1 of the 10 fpl managers went for 4-3-3

1 of the 10 FPL managers went for 4-5-1

Wildcards, chips, transfers and hits

All 10 managers now have used their wildcard

None have used their triple captain, free hit or bench boost chip.

I imagine the triple captain chip and the bench boost chips will be used when their is a double gameweek. This is where teams play twice due to FA Cup postponed games being put into other gameweeks. This is usually around GW34 and GW37

The free hit chip will probably be used in the week where the fixtures are depleted by the FA Cup quarter finals. This could leave only 4 or 5 games in the gameweek depending on how premier league teams advance.

Transfers in and out

I only summarise the transfers when a player is transferred in more than once.I haven’t included the wildcard transfers.

9 of the 10 managers made a transfer.

Transfers in

Ings and Rashford were transferred in by 2 managers

No one else was transferred in more than once

Transfers out

Wilson and Fraser were transferred out by 3 of the 10 FPL managers

Sterling was transferred outby 2 FPL managers

No one else was transferred out more than once

Hits

1 manager took a 4 point deduction for an extra transfer

The top 10k overall rank vs the 10 FPL managers

The schedule shows the players in the top 10k overall rank teams percentage wise vs the 10 top FPL managers I follow.

The top 10k average score was 73 compared to the 10 top managers average of 77.

I use 30% as a rule of thumb as a significant variation between the two player sets. Here’s a breakdown:

Owned by more than 30% of the top 10k over the 10 FPL managers

No one

Owned by more than 30% of the 10 top FPL managers over the top 10k OR

Balbuena owned by 5 of the 10 top FPL managers but 8% of the top 10k

Digne owned by 6 of the 10 top FPL managers but 21% of the top 10k

All the information is provided by the truly fantastic free site FPL discovery.

We’re now back to a situation where the top 10k and the 10 top FPL managers teams are reasonably similar

The combined FPL managers teams

Here’s a team which tries to make a combination from the most represented players. Please note that it is meant to be a menu of players rather than a realistic team and it’s value is nothing like achievable

So who’s worth considering as essential?

I define this by either 70% of the top 10k own a player or defensive team or 7 of the 10 top FPL managers own him

Doherty (Wolves defence represented 13 times in the 10 FPL managers teams)

Fabianski or Balbuena (West Ham defence/GK represented in 9 of the 10 FPL managers teams)

Liverpool defence (owned by 7 of the 10 FPL managers)

Salah (owned by 7 of the 10 FPL managers)

Richarlison (owned by 9 of the 10 FPL managers)

Kane (owned by 8 of the 10 FPL managers teams)

Plus a maybe

Wan Bissaka (owned 9 of the 10 top FPL managers but is often a bench player so maybe avoidable)

Chelsea defence represented 7 times in the 10 FPL managers.  However Alonso has become a sold asset so becomes a maybe

So that’s 6 essentials and 2 maybes. This leaves room for 7 differentials/bench two pointers.

The 3rd placed of the 10 top manager’s team

Here’s the 3rd top total points scoring manager who currently has an OR of 21k. His team value is £103.6m.

A fantastic score of 95 this week.

He owns 5 of the essential 6 (Patricio for Doherty) and both 2nd tier “essentials” of Wan Bissaka and Alonso.

He has a template replacement player of Chambers for a West Ham def/GK

He has 1 bench player in Murphy

That makes 9. He therefore has 6 non template players to make up ground with

Hart (on his bench)

Digne – 17 points

Felipe Anderson – 15 points

Jimenez – 2 points

Aubameyang – 8 points

Fraser (on his bench)

So his template replacement player of Chambers was on his bench but West Ham didn’t get a clean sheet anyway.

Of his 4 starting non template players out of 3 returned, 2 with big scores, hence a 22k green arrow.

That’s it. Hope you found it useful

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