fantasy premier league team tips GW23 – analysing the teams of 10 top FPL managers

Here’s our fantasy premier league team tips GW23 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 GW23 – 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 22 review

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

The average score of the managers in GW22 was 64 taking into account point deductions for extra transfers. That’s compared to the game average of 49. That’s 15 points and 30% above the game average score. High score of the 10 was 76. The low score was 54. A relatively high spread of 22 for an quite low scoring gameweek.

The average overall rank of the top 10 FPL managers is 39k an improvement of rank from last week of 41k. The best overall rank is now around the top 50 and the lowest 127k.

The average total points are 1,363

The average team value is £104.2m

You can see my score and rank in the early FFGeek team article which I’ll do next.

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 10 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Doherty is in 8 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Digne is in 7 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Fabiasnki and Alexander Arnold are in 6 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Alonso, Robertson and Patricio are in 3 of the FPL managers teams

Goalkeeper/Defence by team

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

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

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

West Ham GK/Defs are represented 8 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

Everton GK/Defs are represented 7 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

Chelsea GK/Defs are represented 5 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

Fulham and Southampton are represented 2 times in the 10 FPL managers teams

Midfielders

Salah is in 9 of the FPL managers teams

Richarlison, Hazard and Pogba are in 7 of the FPL managers teams

Snodgrass, Anderson and Son are in 3 of the FPL managers teams

Forwards

Kane is in 7 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Aubameyang is in 5 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Rashford and Kamara are in 4 of the 10 FPL managers teams

Ings and Jimenez are in 3 of the 10 managers teams

Gameweek 22 captain choice

5 of the 10 FPL managers went with Salah

4 of the 10 FPL managers went with Hazard

1 of the 10 managers went with Kane

The FFGeek poll was 48% Salah, 27% Hazard and 9% Aguero

The Site 1 poll in my GW22 captain choice article was 39% Salah, 23% Hazard and 12% Aubameyang,

The top 10k captain choice (from the excellent free site FPL discovery) was 54% Salah and 28% Hazard and Aubameyang 6%. The FFGeek poll this time wasn’t too far off the top 2 at least.

Formations

Not done this week

Wildcards, chips, transfers and hits

None of the managers have used their 2nd wildcard

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

I suspect the FPL managers will use the 2nd wildcard either just before or during a double gameweek. See my article on where these are likely to be.  This is where teams play twice due to FA Cup postponed games being put into other gameweeks.

I imagine the triple captain chip and the bench boost chips will be used when there is a double gameweek.

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.

9 of the 10 managers made a transfer.

Transfers in

Alexander Arnold was transferred in by 4 managers

Salah and Bednarek were transferred in twice

No one else was transferred in more than once

Transfers out

Balbuena was transferred out by 2 of the 10 FPL managers

No one else was transferred out more than once

Hits

3 managers took a 4 point deduction for a extra transfers

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 63 compared to the 10 top managers average of 64.

I use 30% as a rule of thumb as a significant variation between the two player sets.

However there is no one who fits within that difference criteria and the top 10 FPL managers and the top 10k are very similar with only defences offering even a moderate difference.

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

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 7 of the 10 FPL managers)

Doherty (Wolves defence represented 12 times in the 10 FPL managers teams)

Fabianski (West Ham defence/GK represented 8 times of the 10 FPL managers teams)

Liverpool defence (GK/Def represented 11 times of the 10 FPL managers)

Hazard (owned by 7 of the 10 FPL managers)

Salah (owned by 9 of the 10 managers)

Richarlison (owned by 7 of the 10 FPL managers)

Pogba (owned by 7 of the 10 FPL managers)

Kane (owned by 7 of the 10 FPL managers teams) update:  now reported by the Independent to be out for as much as a month with an ankle injury

Plus a maybe

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

So that’s 9 essentials and 1 maybe. This leaves room for 5 differentials/bench two pointers.

The lowest ranking manager

This manager is currently 127k OR and 1302 points.  His team value is £105.6.  A good score this week of 67.

Here’s his team:

So of the template he has Doherty, Liverpool defence, Wan Bissaka, West Ham defence, Salah, Pogba, Richarlison and Kane.  So he has 8 of the 10 template.

His template replacement for Digne is double Liverpool defence.  Unfortunately Lovren was injured GW22.

His template replacement for Hazard I would say is Aubameyang.

The bench players are Romeu, Button and Bednarek.

That makes 13 leaving only 2 pure differentials in Martial and Rashford. Although the template replacement players are also differentials.

That’s it hope you found it useful

f you want to see how these players performed in GW22 see our underlying stats article for that gameweek.  Also there’s the players with the best fixtures upcoming in our fixture ease article.  You can also see the most popular transfers so far this week in the

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