Here’s our article with 4 FFGeek Contributors and their FPL team tips GW31. Each show their GW31 teams. There’s Alex Ball, Rob Reid, Stephen Troop and Rob Cosgrove.
FPL Team Tips GW32 – 4 FFGeek Contributors Teams Part 3
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Introduction
This is part 3 of the FPL managers who contribute to the FFGeek site with good histories who show their teams each week. This will give people a feel for what other managers are doing. It’s a fairly informal thing with no obligation on anyone and these teams may change at anytime before the deadline without further notice. It won’t cover transfers in real time either. It’s just to give an idea of the trends for the week no more. The teams are shown as their “final-ish” teams so they could change. Where they have twitter accounts I have shown this and they may update them there or on our Slack Channel which is part of our subscription Patreon site but this is not guaranteed
See Also FFGeek Contributors teams Part 1 and FFGeek Contributors Teams part 2
Alex Ball
Alex’s last 6 seasons overall rank were 312k, 523k, 17k, 10k, 28k and 3k
GW31 points: 77 on wildcard (FPL average 41) Total points: 2,071, Overall Rank: 4k, green arrow 6k. Team Value: £104.3m
Alex has used all his chips
Follow Alex on twitter here
Up to 4k overall ran which is the highest of the season so far. A shoutout to Joseph Crilley and his transfer planner which has helped me enormously. Backing my own judgement has also been a big factor.
Transfer summary: Rolling the free transfer this week
Here’s the team assuming no transfer is made
Rob Reid
Rob’s last 5 seasons overall rank were 148k, 94k, 22k, 4k and 7k
GW31 Points: 43 (FPL average 41) Total points: 2,034, Overall Rank: 16k, red arrow: 5k Team Value: £107.0m
Rob has used all of his Chips
Follow Rob on twitter here
GW31 review
A bit of a stinker of gameweek for me unfortunately, my first really bad one in terms of % overall rank drop since for quite a while. I did think I’d struggle this week when I looked at my team pre-deadline and with the number of Wildcards being deployed at my Overall Rank level, so it proved. The tone was set in the first game on Friday night when Areola lost his clean sheet in stoppage time and continued through the weekend with blanks for my entire defence and 5 of my 7 attacking players also blanking and rank threats such as Son returning. The final indignity happened on Monday as Dominic Calvert-Lewin (DCL) was posted mysteriously missing and although I got Bamford’s 4 points of the bench, I had Veltman with my only defensive return sat just behind him thus missing out on a further 6 points.
It was definitely a week where the Wildcarders won (along with those who got Dallas’ bumper haul versus City.) The 2 saving graces for me was yet another double-figure haul from Jessie ‘Messi’ Lingard and a Captain return from Mo Salah who seems to be finding his form again in time for the run-in. Much to ponder then as we head into the small double gameweek that is GW32.
GW32 Team
2 free transfers and £1.6m in the bank.
So my team needs a bit of surgery this week. I’ve got 2 yellow flagged players (Cresswell and DCL) and there’s a very obvious Son shaped hole in my midfield as we enter DGW32. I’m also aware now that my team has strayed away from the 10 top managers template a bit so these are all things that I’m going to try and remedy this week with a kind of mini-Wildcard to set myself up for the run-in
First up, I need to work Son in. He’s too highly owned to go without in a double gameweek and although his goal on Sunday was his first since GW23, he posted decent stats against a robust United defence and with Bale’s mini-renaissance looking to have fizzled out as quickly as it started, he seems to have been restored to the more offensive role he occupied earlier in the season. The 2 games Spurs have this week also look good for some points. They visit Everton on Friday who have a surprisingly poor home record – 7 of their 10 defeats this season have been at Goodison and they have kept only 2 clean sheets at home all season. Spurs then host Southampton on Wednesday with the Saints defence hardly covering themselves in glory of late (they were incredibly poor versus West Brom on Monday) added to the fact that Spurs ripped them to shreds in the 5-2 reverse fixture earlier in the season.
Next, I need to deal with my flailing attack and the form of Kelechi Iheanacho is simply too good to ignore now. 7 goals in 5 games with the stats to back this up is a good sign in itself, and couple this with his rising ownership and the fact that The Foxes face a great fixture run in the next 4 (WBA, CRY, sou, NEW) then he’s too good a prospect to overlook.
So Iheanacho will come in for the flagged DCL and the natural move for Son is to bring him in for Gundogan with the City midfielder having his minutes managed of late. This leaves me needing to find £0.6m to find to fund these changes and the natural player to find this through is my other flagged player – Aaron Cresswell. There’s not been a firm update on the length of his absence at the time of me writing this, but with it being a hamstring I’d be expecting a couple of weeks minimum and to be honest, he’s not been a good acquisition for me anyway, with his position having switched more into the left-side of West Ham’s defensive 3. The obvious template replacement for Cresswell is Rudiger, but I’m tempted to stray from the template a little here as I need more gametime security for blank GW33. I plan on at least carrying Son and Kane through this week and I don’t think you can guarantee anything with the Tuchel Tombola, so I’ll probably do a fixtures pick here and go with Wesley Fofana of Leicester who looks to be nailed at the moment.
That’ll be 3 transfers and a -4 for my mini-Wildcard then. It’s a shame to have to give up 4 points at this crucial stage, but I think it’s worth it to tidy up my team for the next few weeks. It’ll also be only my 5th hit of the season and my first since GW20 which is very conservative for me! I could have made the Son move my selling DCL for asub-5.4m striker such as Vydra or Fabio Silva but I think I’ll get more in the long run from the points hit so I’m confident it’ll be worthwhile….we’ll see!
As for my line-up this week, my bench will be Bamford, Veltman and Konsa and I’ve got a keeper decision to make – do I go Martinez and hope for lots of save points versus City or go with the marginally better clean sheet odds of Areola away to Arsenal? I’ll probably go against the bookies here and go with the safer ownership pick of Martinez – he could easily rack up a few saves here I reckon and eek out a 3 or 4 pointer! For my Captain, it’s got to be Harry Kane – I’m sure he’ll be a very clear leader in Geek’s Captain poll this week. Son is an intriguing differential pick though – there’s been some interesting stats posted this week of the performance of Son and Kane together in fantasy terms and Son does seem to outscore Kane a lot, but in terms of recent form I think it has to be Sir Harold for me.
Best of luck for GW32 then everyone – I hope you enjoy the games. Don’t forget it’s a Friday deadline again. I’ve got Friday off work this week, so I’ll be waiting until after the press conferences before I confirm my moves and I’ll post my final team on Twitter sometime late in the afternoon. Cheers!
transfer summary: Son, Iheanacho and Fofana in for Gundogan, Calvert-Lewin and Cresswell
Here’s the team prior to transfers being made:
Stephen Troop
Stephen’s last 4 seasons overall rank were 86k, 43k, 52k and 64k
GW31 points: 63 on Wildcard (FPL average 41) Total points: 2,020 Overall Rank: 26k, green arrow 8k. Team Value: £104.8m
Stephen has used his Wildcard, Free Hit Chip and Bench Boost
Follow Stephen on twitter here
GW31 Review
I played my wildcard in GW31. I got 63 points which moved me from 34.4k to 26.4k. Have to be happy with that, although the main 2 decisions I made backfired. Keeping Calvert-Lewin (DCL), and keeping Stones/Gundogan. It was painful watching Lingard rack up the points again whilst I was stuck with 1 point from Gundogan.
Salah captain, Son, Iheanacho and Alexander Arnold the returners with Holding’s 8 points off the bench for DCL were the only returners but they returned well.
GW32 Preview
I can’t get Lingard in for Gundo without a -4 so I’m sticking with the plan of holding a transfer and potentially moving Son on next week for Lingard. I’ll monitor the DCL situation but I’m hoping he is fit to start against Spurs.
I’m using my TC on Kane this week. Everton is a slightly tougher fixture but watching Southampton defend on Monday night sealed it for me, and their defensive stats have been poor for a while.
Bench order is tricky, as the fixtures are good for all of them
Good luck all
transfer summary: carrying over the free transfer
Here’s the team assuming no transfers are made
Rob Cosgrove
Rob’s last 4 seasons overall rank were 64k, 45k, 40k and 23k
GW31 points: 60 (FPL average 41) Total points: 1,776, Overall Rank: 1,289k, green arrow 149k, Team Value: £103.8m
Rob has used his Free Hit chip
My first stroke of luck all season with Johnston’s penalty save and 15 pointer! Lingaard with another double figure haul the guy is on fire. Overall a great week for me and I am now at the highest rank I’ve been all season, the dizzy heights of 1.2m!
Need to jump off my last 2 Man City players, but Dias is going to have to wait. With Spurs double this week I will be bringing in Son for Gundogan. I will be taking a -4 too to bring Ihenacho in as he is on form and has a great fixture next, even if West Brom are trying their best to survive could be a high scoring game. The question is who for.. Watkins or Bamford. Watkins has Man City and Bamford has Liverpool so both good exit points, however Villa play West Brom next week and Bamford has Man Utd. I want the coverage for West Brom so I’m leaning towards replacing Bamford as I still have Raphinha so cover the Leeds attack. My original plan was to remove Watkins and bring him back on wildcard when the double gameweeks are announced but don’t want to miss that West Brom fixture.
TRIPLE CAPTAIN ACTIVATED ON HARRY KANE. This was my plan all along as soon as they gave us this double gameweek because he (sadly) loves scoring against Everton and that Southampton fixture could be a cricket score. This could be the week I break the top 1 million!
Transfer Summary: Iheanacho, Son IN. Bamford, Gundogan OUT. Triple captain Kane.
Here’s my team before transfers, as I will wait until Friday after the European games are done like always.
The FFGeek Contributors League
The highlighted FFGeek contributors combined team finished with an overall rank of 52k last season is going ok in 3rd place with total points of 2,041 and an overall rank of 13k. You can follow that team, including live transfers, on our subscription Patreon site.
There’s loads of other features on the Patreon site that you can read about at the top of this page
Other Posts
Analysing the teams of 10 top Managers
The Fixture Difficulty schedule
Early thoughts on the FFGeek Team
FFGeek Contributors teams part 1
FFGeek Contributors Teams part 2
Player Rankings Defenders and GKs
The FFGeek Captain and Transfer Polls
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