FPL Cup Night Stalker, Round Two (GW18) Preview

Happy Weekend! It’s FPL Cup Time, Round Two!

And that means more internet research, cough-cough, stalking. RESEARCH! For those of you who tuned in last week (click here for Round One / GW17), I have gone waaay down the rabbit hole of the intertubes with this one and dug up some interesting tidbits on the various FPL managers who our motley crew faced off against last week.

Round One / GW17 Recap

How did we do? Pretty well, considering that H2H matches can be a random nightmare. Five of the six of us went through to round two of the FPL Cup.

– Walsh put up a 65-55 win over some Gooner Maniac Thomas Vermaelen fanboy on the strength of his 16 from Dilva and 9 from Razzers. He bagged another 11 from the Pope and he moves onward.

– Alon had a defensive masterpiece with four cleans and max bones to DDG as well as DilvaPoints and points from new friend Son en route to a 69-54 win over some Myanmar Massage Momma

– Producer Nate, sadly, went down in a low-scoring battle, 38-41, to some Malaysian marketing and social media mogul. RIP Nate. It was a rotation/injury nightmare for him with zero minutes from Naughton, Sane, Morata, Ramsey, Kolasinac and Moreno.

– Guest Jason was up against some Twitter account Gamer person who STILL hasn’t made a transaction, and Jason eased to a 58-45 victory with Dilva and DDG as his top scorers.

– Derek was up against the frightening Bulgarian Monster Energy guy, but Derek unleashed his WC on the dude and strolled to a 70-46 victory.

– I was up against some dogfood-jerky eating doofus Bieber fan, and it’s good that he was inept, because I only managed 45 points on my sixth straight red arrow, but it was enough to put me past his 33 points.

So what’s on tap for this week?

Round Two / GW18 Preview (Stalk)

Walsh – 947 points, 90,568th place



Teynteam – Paul Tyrrell – 808 points, 2,325,836th place

Paul is in his second year, and is sorta-Ghost, but not totally. His last move was in GW15, and he changed his captain for GW16, but did nothing for GW17 and hasn’t made a move yet for GW18. I’m pretty sure it’s this guy, who is the official club spokesperson and Director of Communications for the Derby County Football Club. He previously held a similar title at Everton. He’s in one minileague called the Leicester Tigers Staff FPL, and the Leicester Tigers are a Rugby club, but Paul has been a PR consultant for the Rugby Football League, and one of the guys in the Leicester league tracks back to some time in Derby as well.

It looks like Paul may be sat on Firmino as a cap if he doesn’t change anything, and has a less than fearsome front line that also includes Vardy and Abraham. He does have a solid backline with Azpilicueta, Otamendi and Alonso, but the midfields pretty much neutralize each other and are near identical. Walsh will have the edge with an extra Chelsea defender this week and with the Pope in goal.

Alon – 928 points, 184,894th place



CAT-D F.C. – Mike Weil – 902 points, 420,315th place



Mike is an FPL veteran, in his eighth season, but hasn’t yet cracked the top 300K mark. He hasn’t made a roster move yet for this week. He splunked his triple captain chip back in GW8 on Sir Harold of Blank, when Spurs were hosting Bournemouth. 3x2=6. Bleh for him. Here he is on Facebook, married and with a little kid. His page says he went to secondary school at the Tytherington School, in Macclesfield, and he is in one minileague, the Banter Battle, and there are FB friends in the same league. I’m not quite sure what he does for a living, but most of his friends on FB seem to be in the Macclesfield/Manchester area. Might have a clue though in his team name. Cat-D, or Category D, is a term regarding an insurance write-off of an automobile after repairs. When a car is totaled and written off in an accident, the insurance company then owns the car, makes repairs, and it is a Category D vehicle. One of his friends is a manager/supervisor at an auto body shop in Salford, near Manchester and they offer a large selection of category D vehicles for sale. I think our boy Mike works there. That’s what I’m sticking with.

As for his FPL team? It’s kinda crap with a front line of Jesus, Lacazette and Rondon. He has Salah and Dilva for points but also has Willian, Matic and Romeu in the midfield, bleh. He’ll be hoping Rudiger makes the lineup and looking forward to return of Mee to his defense. The DDG factor will be neutralized as both teams own him.

Guest Jason – 933 points, 155,496th place



Once a Blue…. – Corrinne Charlton – 815 points, 2,154,156 points



Corrinne finished 416K last year in her first season, and is an Everton fan from England but she hasn’t changed her team since GW8. It’s been strictly set and forget and there is a Kane captain coming Jason’s way. The rest of her front line is Lukaku and Calvert-Lewin and the midfield sports Salah, Eriksen, Richarlison McArthur and Capoue. The only leagues she is in are a couple of pretty big ones. 150 for the standard league and over 100 in a H2H league. They are both named DACBC something, but not sure what that stands for and I’m not getting anywhere with it. Dead end. Uggh. Oh well, when in doubt, it’s time to make something up.

The first thing that I could find that DACBC stood for was Dual AC Boosting Compensation scheme and deals with multistage amplifiers with low power and large capacitive load. I’m sure that means something to somebody, and maybe this league is composed of those who are in the know. But then it got really weird. Only look here if you are totally insane. And then I also kept coming across these guys, the Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos, one of the largest ammunition manufacturers in the world. So she’s either an electrical engineering wizard, an insane numerologist, or a Brazilian assassin mercenary. Watch out Jason. Just eliminate her before she does something dangerous.

Derek – 979 points, 19,887th place



The Invincibles – Peter Eddy – 918 points, 261,178th place



Peter is also an FPL veteran, in his tenth season. He claims Arsenal and Canada allegiances and played his free hit chip, but nothing else yet. His highest season rank was three years ago when he clocked in at 2,114 OR at the end of the year. This is an interesting one, where one of the hits from a minileague seems intriguing and then you get the flavor of the whole league. His minileague, The Hooliganship seems to be largely made up of people in the curling community of Canada and has several people who have competed at national and international tournaments. One of them was a silver medalist in the Nagano Olympics. The Eddy family includes Lori, who isn’t in this league, as well as Steve, who leads the league and appears to have been fairly successful, and our opponent Peter, who I’m assuming is this guy who shows up in the page on the 1998 Canadian Junior Curling Championships. But since he probably has to keep a day job, he might be this guy.

Anyway, he has a Kane, Firmino, Abraham front line and runs a 352 most weeks with a midfield of KDB, Cout, Richarlison, Grob and RLC. Derek will counter most of that and put his Salah, Hazard and Dilva up against Peter’s Cout, Richarlison and Grob. I’ll take Derek in that every day. Stick to curling, Peter.

Desertonians – Scott Ostdiek (ME) – 964 points, 41,994th place



Champions 2016/17 – Mark Nicholson – 862 points, 1,066,791st place



Mark has played for nine years now and is still waiting to crack the top 100K. He’s in two leagues, one is the SJL Insurance Cup and they are an insurance brokerage based in Worcester. I find faceshots and pages for a bunch of the leaguemates there, but this guy isn’t upper echelon enough to warrant a page, it seems. His other league also seems to have a number of people in the insurance industry in it, but ugggghhh, this guy seems just a wee bit out of reach. So in a touch of holiday good spirit, I’m going to go with this guy, a Mark Nicholson in Worcester UK who is a self-employed tree surgeon but who was out-of-work when he was undertaking this bit of civic improvement.

He’s kinda gone Ghost the last five weeks though, with no transactions, and no roster moves, so I’ll be seeing a Captain Kane, along with Vardy and Rashford up top, and a midfield with Alli, Eriksen, Sterling, and Livermore. I think it looks favorable, but I’ve been in a serious rut, so no guarantees of anything.

Well, that’s our trip down the rabbit hole this week. Hope we all come out safely on the other side and I get a new box of puzzles to unlock for the next round.

Good luck!

- Scott AKA @tempebug on twitter aka desertbug on Slack