Autumn. And the final ‘injurenational break’ before the new year is upon us. As the leaves start to fall, so the players’ flags in our FPL teams gradually turn from green to yellow, orange, and occasionally red.

In the FFS community, discussion has centred around the number of players flagged in our teams and in particular what to do with Benjamin Mendy, who underwent an operation on his left knee last Wednesday.

Some managers are looking to downgrade Mendy to a cheap defender in order to upgrade a midfielder. Enablers such as Digne, Doherty, Schindler, or Balbuena have been mentioned – General_Zod has created a useful members table to evaluate replacements. Other managers, including TheFantasyFreÆK, argue in favour of a simple swap to Mendy’s Manchester City teammate Aymeric Laporte.

For those who are struggling to decide which way to go, the Fantasy Football Scout team have been busy putting together a number of articles and videos to help. David highlights the potential of budget defensive options from Wolves and Everton in the latest Watchlist update, and earlier in the week he joined Joe to take an in-depth look at the stats from the first 12 Gameweeks of the season.

In the 54-minute video, they analyse several members’ tables to build a picture of how teams and players have performed so far. They unearth a few options that could bear gifts over the upcoming festive period.

For members only, David has prepared three fascinating articles. Taking a leaf out of Adam Hopcroft’s (aka Choppers13) ‘Meet the Manager’ video, he compares the performances this season of Raheem Sterling, Sergio Aguero and Harry Kane to their best ever seasons. Have a read and discover who is providing value for money and who isn’t.

It’s been a busy week for David, who’s also used the members’ data to investigate where teams concede the most chances from. The purpose is to help identify which opponents, and more specifically which players, are set to benefit over the coming weeks. This is a two-part members article with the second instalment set to follow in a few days. Well worth checking out.

The other news that could impact on our Fantasy seasons is the appointment of former Leicester and Chelsea boss Claudio Ranieri as Fulham manager. Mange Tout Rodney began a discussion on what this could mean for Fulham assets.

Ben McNair, Paul Gee, and Always Cheating podcast duo Josh Landon and Brandon Kelley formed the panel for this week’s FPL Question Time. Among the questions they tackled was one that has been asked repeatedly in recent weeks – is it time to sell Mohamed Salah?

If you are reading all of this and wondering how it might affect your FPL team, David has compiled an excellent resource for you: which FPL players are on international duty and when? Hopefully, there are no more nasty surprises in store for us next week.

Finally, Luke stopped by to update us on the transfer data in the Sky game.

To view all our discussions please visit our Hot Topics page, and if you’ve got some analysis, scout reports or features brewing, be sure to visit our community section to submit your article.

If you’re a member and are yet to get to grips with the custom statistics tables, you can view this movie for an explanation of how they work. Also, remember to tag them so that people can find the tables with ease.

COMMUNITY TOURNAMENTS

The draw for the first round of the FFS Cup 2018/19 has taken place. For the Members Cup, Fantasy managers can still enter their teams up to 10.30am on Monday, November 26, when we’ll stop entries and make the first round draw shortly after. Details on how to enter can be found here.

Both tournaments have £300 in prizes on offer.

In TorresMagic’s Last Man Standing the safety score was 49, which means over 2,100 managers qualified for Gameweek 13.

Guy Guy is now the sole leader of our main FFS League as Mike Davis slips back to second place. Clean sheets from Liverpool’s Andrew Robertson and Chelsea duo Marcos Alonso and David Luiz helped Guy to a score of 70 points in Gameweek 12. He moves up seventh overall. Guy is yet to take a hit or play a chip, and in contrast to the six managers above him, he is yet to use his wildcard. He also has two free transfers going into Gameweek 13.

Luke Aiello is joined by Constantinos Orphanides at the top of our FFS Members League but still holds a 10-point lead in RedLightning’s Top 10k Any Season mini-league. This is Constantinos’s fifth season playing FPL and a good start should ensure he beats his highest finish to date of 24,292. Like Guy, he has two free transfers going into Gameweek 13.

Chris Atkinson (aka RMT’s Professor) maintains his grip on the FFS Mods & Cons mini-league, having taken the lead in Gameweek 10. Chris created our RMT tool and the Hall of Fame. He has four top 6,000 finishes including one top 100 finish – 61st in 2010/11.

It was also Chris who scored the only goal in the final of last season’s FFS Charity Cup, and he will be joining David and myself for today’s tournament. Organised by former Career Hall of Fame number one Peter Kouwenberg (aka My Pretty Pony), a total of 44 players are due to take part.

So far over £100 has been raised for our chosen charity – the Campaign Against Living Miserably. CALM is dedicated to preventing male suicide, the single biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in the UK. To donate directly please do so via our JustGiving page.

If you would like to come along and support, or perhaps join us for a drink in the pub afterwards, this year’s tournament takes place at the Thomas Parmiter Sports Centre in north Watford. We kick-off at 2pm and have the pitch booked until 5pm.

The last few recruits are in for the FFS Manager Melee community tournament including a Mods and Cons team. An article will be published next week introducing the seeding round and the winner of the photo competition. The winning team will be put into pot one for the group stage draw.

My personal favourite is the team photo for ‘American Dycho’:

If you are running a community tournament and would like the latest scores included in future Community Round-Ups, please email us a summary of the current leaders and a link to your league, spreadsheet or head-to-head competition at geoff@fantasyfootballscout.co.uk

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