FPL Cup Night Stalker, Round Three (GW19) Preview

Happy Happy Joy Joy! It’s FPL Cup Time, Round Three!

And that means more psychopath level oppo research on the various FPL managers who our FMLFPL gang are up against in the FPL Cup this week. There are all kinds of crazy things you find when you go down the rabbit hole and I’m happy to be your tour guide.

Round Two / GW18 Recap

How did we do last week? Well, the five of us remaining went 3-2, so we win right? No, not so much. We might have to draft in a few more replacements to the squad

– Walsh moved on with an 81-77 win over the Director of Communications for Derby County Football Club. Our fearless leader bagged five cleans out of a possible six, plus got returns from Salah, Sterling and Captain Rom, but needed a cheeky little six-pointer from RLC coming in off the bench in order to nip the win.

– Our other fearless leader, Alon, did not fare so well against auto body mechanic CAT-D F.C., crashing out of the Cup 40-53, in what he feels was his all-time worst GW rank ever. Quite probably correct because it was his worst this year, at 4.4 million GWR, and I don’t think there were even that many people playing the game last year. Soz Alon, brutal week, no two ways about it.

– Producer Nate went out in Round One, and Guest Jason joined him on the benches this week, after losing 43-52 to the mystery woman Brazilian assassin numerologist chick. Straight killshot. Both teams had #CaptainFails (Morata and Kane), but Nate’s opponent got eight and six from her other two forwards (Lukaku and Calvert-Lewin) as opposed to the two and one that Nate got from Vardy and Kane. That proved the difference.

– Derek was matched up with a Canadian curler of some renown and accomplishment and he put the guy on ice, 63-58. Derek got double-digit points from Kev and from Captain Haz, while his foe suffered a #CaptainKaneFail of the two point variety.

– I was up against some Ghostship of a team, nominally led by a tree surgeon from Worcester, and I chopped him down decisively, 73-38.

So what’s on tap for this week?

Round Three / GW19 Preview (Stalk)

Walsh – 1,028 points, 37,638th place



Zev0o – Saif Salah – 933 points, 790,691st place



Saif is an FPL Rookie but is still active and has made a move for this week. He spunked his Bench Boost chip in GW1 and got ZERO added points for it. Good Job by Him! Now some player profiles make me a bit nervous when I see them and I come straight out of the chutes pessimistic about my abilities to find them. Iraqi players with fairly generic names who only play in fairly large public leagues are amongst those profiles. Now I know it’s hard to believe that I don’t speak Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen or any of the other various neo-Aramaic languages spoken in Iraq, but it’s true. Those are on my to-do list for 2019 but until then, it makes it a bit hard to track down some of these guys and dolls. But I got lucky with this one. A Google of his name and his idiosyncratically formatted team name zev0o yielded this guy, for whom zev0o is the username in his URL. He lives in Erbil, the capital city of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. His FB page consists mainly of selfies and you wouldn’t even suspect him to be a soccer fan, until you get to one of his old profile photos which is a giant wallpaper of Andrea Pirlo. Saif has an injured Doucore in his squad and a front line before any moves, which consists of Kane, Firmino and Abraham, and a midfield of KDB, Salah and Sterling. His main differentials against Walsh will consist of KDB and Firmino, but if Lukaku goes off or if Walsh’s Chelsea Crew come through, this one could also get ugly.

Derek – 1,042 points, 18,760th place



DK – Deepak Kadam – 820 points, 3,163,372nd place



This is Deepak’s first FPL season and he still seems active, although he hasn’t made a move yet this week. This one is ridiculous also. One minileague with just three other guys in it. I can’t link anybody to anybody and as far as I got is that the minileague name Chetana Boys may refer to a youth hostel in a residential area of Bangalore City. My mantra in this has been to not let the truth get in the way of a good story, so I’m going to go with Deepak being this guy, an award winning filmmaker in India, and that when he was making a documentary about the young lost souls of that hostel, his heart was moved and he adopted three of them. He has taken them into his palatial estate and they just geek out on FPL all year long and this is their minileague. Or maybe they got compromising photos of him and blackmailed him into playing FPL with them as their brush with greatness. Each are equally possible. In any event, the team doesn’t look as horrible as the rank would suggest. And he started in GW3, so that affects things a bit as well. He has Lukaku and Firmino up top, and a midfield featuring Salah, Coutinho and Hazard. He has Otamendi and Monreal, and then it gets ugly in back, as Valencia is hurt and his other two defenders are Mbemba and Hunemeier. DDG goes in goal. Derek also has DDG, Salah and Hazard, and counters with differential spots of KDB, Kane, Austin and Christensen. Good luck Derek!

Desertonians – Scott Ostdiek – 1,037 points, 24,189th place



Lone Ranger – Frank Hennelly – 826 points, 3,043,668th place



And here’s my guy… Frank is an FPL newbie and is still active, although he hasn’t made a transaction this week. He was a surprisingly easy find, as a search for his name autofills with Frank Hennelly London and leads to this guy. His one league is called C412 Bond Street, which is the name of some big underground metro tube station overhaul project in London that was awarded to the company in his LinkedIn page. It also leads to him here on Facebook, where you can see a video of him sparring in a boxing ring. He’s married with a couple of kids, is a Quantity Surveyor, whatever that is, and he’s apparently had spinal surgery. He has a masters degree in Construction Economics and lived in Australia for a while as well, apparently.

Since I had a few extra minutes and since our original numbers are dwindling, I’m calling in a couple of subs. Eddie is active on the FMLFPL Patreon’s Slack channel and is in my minileague, so I had already dug up his opponent, and same for another Slack member, Rincon:



Return of the Yeti – Eddie Fredericks – 1,068 points, 4,540th place



Gabriel27947 – Gabriel Tan – 968 points, 335,119th place



It’s also the fifth year in FPL for Eddie’s opponent, but he’s clearly still active, at least as of last week. His top ever finish was two years ago at 85K. He played his Triple Captain in GW15 on Sterling, home to West Ham, to the tune of 2x3=6 points. Whoops. An England flag and two minileagues with the same small number of people with generic names did not bode well until I just Googled his team name and found him on Twitter. And with some Instagram pictures of food and minions here. And here, on another photosharing site. I didn’t parse through these well enough to find out exactly what he does, but he seems to be from Singapore, likes to travel, and likes soccer and beer, and he’s comfortable with large cucumbers, which would probably make him a good fit for the Slack channel. Too bad we will have to dispatch him from the Cup.

Cechmate – Alex Stephens – 897 points, 1,496,983rd place



FC 2-footed tackles – Gustav Loth – 901 points, 1,397,488th place



Gustav is a first-year player and hasn’t made a transaction since back in GW13. He has a Swedish flag flying on his team page and I was nervous that it might be hard to find a Swede named Gustav, but there he is, with two of the other three members of his league as friends. He lives in Lomma, Sweden, on the southern tip of Sweden, and it’s not clear what he does, but two of the friends appear to be researchers, one at a med school. The three of them went to the same high school together in Lund, Sweden. Gustav likes to surf and travel, by the looks of it, so maybe he’s independently wealthy. His default formation has him with one striker who is the now-suspended Alvaro Morata, so that slot will get filled by Ayoze Perez. He also has injuries to Ward and Valencia and will likely be absent Daveed Silva, so he will be unlikely to field eleven. His armband is on DeBruyne, so that can always be fruitful, and he has DDG in goal and a pair of Chelsea defenders in Azpilicueta and Alonso to deal with.

Yes, that’s three members of my minileague in the Patreon Slack; can you say that about your league? Invite them to the fun! The more the merrier!

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. Merry Christmas to me!

Good luck!

- Scott AKA @tempebug on twitter AKA desertbug on Slack