With over three million participants, most of us are realistic enough to appreciate our chances of winning FPL are extremely slim at the outset of the season. With only ten Gameweeks to go, I’d expect the potential pool of winners to have dramatically reduced. I’m happy with my current ranking of about 3,000 but know I have no chance of the overall win. But how high do you need to be to still be in with a chance?
In this article I look at how overall rankings and points deficits have fluctuated over the season for the current top 20 in the overall rankings (as of Gameweek 28). I’ve also added in my team’s performance and seven other well-known contributors and posters on FFScout for comparison. I then use this information to estimate how big a deficit someone could plausibly make up by the end of the season.
Analysis of overall rankings
The graph shows overall ranking plotted against Gameweek. Some points of interest to note from this:
- None of the current top 20 were within the top 20 in the first seven Gameweeks.
- Gameweek 8 was the decisive point of the season to date. Only one person in the current top 20 (rank 17) didn’t get a big boost in their ranking that week. Most jumped into the top 10,000 and haven’t dropped out since then.
- Ten Gameweeks ago (Gameweek 18), all the current top 20 were within the overall top 1,000 and most were in the top 200 by then.
- The top 20 has stayed pretty stable for the last few Gameweeks.
- The performance of the world number 17 gives a crumb of hope for the rest of us. As recently as Gameweek 15 I was ranked above them – when personally I believed the deficit to the top 20 was insurmountable.
- Looking further down the rankings, Ruth_NZ showed that by ignoring the Aguero and Sanchez post-injury bandwagons it was possible to jump from 100k to 10k in just seven Gameweeks.
Analysis of points deficit
But rankings only tell us part of the story. The game is all about points. The second graph shows the weekly points deficit between each team and the highest total points score at that time (from the teams shown here). This graph shows that:
- The current world number 1 has been within 54 points of the top throughout the season. He reached the summit by making up 40 points in three Gameweeks (21-23).
- The biggest deficit to the top of any of the top 20 was 135 points for rank 17 in Gameweek 15. Since then they have closed the deficit by 84 points.
- Going back ten Gameweeks to Gameweek 18, several teams had a deficit to the world number one of about 100 points. This has now been reduced to about 40 points.
- For the non top-20 teams shown, several of us have consolidated our place in the top 10k and improved our rank but the gap to the top has steadily widened.
Current deficits from world number 1
- 10th = 42 points
- 20th = 58 points
- 50th = 72 points
- 100th = 81 points
- 500th = 114 points
- 1000th = 132 points
Implications for overall winner
There are still ten Gameweeks of the season left so plenty of points remain up for grabs, particularly with double Gameweeks looking likely for several teams. The data above shows a 40-point deficit can be made up in just a few Gameweeks. This bodes well for the top 10. A deficit of 60 points is not impossible to make up (i.e the top 20 can still win). Beyond that it becomes much more unlikely – personally I think the overall winner will almost certainly come from the current top 50.
9 years, 2 months agoSo looks like I have no chance...oh, well next season maybe. 😉