fantasy premier league team tips GW21 – analysing the teams of 10 top FPL managers

Here’s our fantasy premier league team tips GW21 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 GW21 – 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 20 review

A reasonable week for the 10 FPL managers. 6 of the 10 had a green arrow

The average score of the managers in GW20 was 55 taking into account point deductions for extra transfers. That’s compared to the game average of 50. That’s 5 points and 10% above the game average score. High score of the 10 was 68. The low score was 48. A relatively low spread for an average scoring gameweek.

The average overall rank of the top 10 FPL managers is 39k an improvement of rank from last week of 40k. The best overall rank is now around the top 50 and the lowest 155k.

The average total points are 1,245

The average team value is £104.0m

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 and Digne are in 8 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Fabianski is in 6 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Balbuena is in 5 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Robertson is in 4 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Alonso and Patricio are in 3 of the FPL managers teams

Goalkeeper/Defence by team

Wolves GK/Defs are represented 12 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

Everton and Liverpool GK/Defs are represented 8 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

Chelsea GK/Defs are represented 5 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

Hazard is in 7 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Salah is in 6 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Felipe Anderson is in 5 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Sane is in 4 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Snodgrass, Pogba 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 and Kamara are in 4 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Ings and Rashford are in 3 of the 10 managers teams

Gameweek 20 captain choice

6 of the 10 FPL managers went with Kane

4 of the 10 FPL managers went with Salah

The FFGeek poll was 52% Kane and 16% Salah

The Site 1 poll in my GW20 captain choice article was 35% Kane, 13% Salah,

The top 10k captain choice (from the excellent free site FPL discovery) was 44% Kane and 25% Salah. The FFGeek poll this time was not that consistent.

Formations

Not done this week

Wildcards, chips, transfers and hits

All 10 managers now have used their first 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.

8 of the 10 managers made a transfer.

Transfers in

Hazard was transferred in by 3 managers

Digne, Pereyra and Pogba were transferred in by 2 managers

No one else was transferred in more than once

Transfers out

Alonso was transferred out by 2 of the 10 FPL managers

No one else was transferred out more than once

Hits

2 managers 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 54 compared to the 10 top managers average of 55.

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 5% 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

Digne (owned by 8 of the 10 FPL managers)

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

Fabianski or Balbuena (West Ham defence/GK represented 11 times of the 10 FPL managers teams)

Liverpool defence (GK/Def represented 8 times of the 10 FPL managers)

Hazard  (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)

Interesting that Salah slipped out this week and is now in 6/10 teams.  This could easily change after the Man City game.  The Chelsea defence has slipped out with 2 transfers out of Alonso this week.

So that’s 7 essentials and 1 maybe. This leaves room for 7 differentials/bench two pointers.

The 7th placed of the 10 top manager’s team

Here’s the 7th top total points scoring manager who currently has an OR of 33k. His team value is £104.3m.

A score of 57 this week.

He owns 5 of the essential seven and the 1 second tier “essential” of Wan Bissaka.

He has 2 template replacement players

Chambers for a Liverpool defender (6 vs 1 for say Robertson)

Pogba for Hazard (18 points vs 3)

He has 2 bench players in Kamara and Button

That makes 10 . He therefore has 5 non template players to make up ground with

Schindler – 2 points

Son – 5 points

Sterling – 6 points

Snodgrass – 0 points

Aubameyang – 2 points

so 2 returning players out of 5.  So despite pretty ordinary differentials his template replacement players did him proud scoring 24 to 4 which was enough for a small green arrow of 2k.

That’s it. Hope you found it useful

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