Final Top 1,000 Teams

Last week, I posted a review of the final top 10,000 teams. Today, I’d like to present a similar review of the final top 1K. For the most part, it contains similar diagrams, so I don’t explain them in detail here.

TOP 1K History Pages

To start with, let’s take a look at their previous history.

Previous Seasons History of TOP 1K Teams 2013/14

#	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	TOTAL
Seasons played before	65	134	170	115	119	137	120	140	1,000
%	6.5%	13.4%	17%	11.5%	11.9%	13.7%	12%	14%	100%
Previous top 10K finishes	721	167	65	30	10	4	3	0	1,000
%	72.1%	16.7%	6.5%	3%	1%	0.4%	0.3%	0%	100%
Previous top 1K finishes	929	54	13	3	1	0	0	0	1,000
%	92.9%	5.4%	1.3%	0.3%	0.1%	0%	0%	0%	100%

• Compared to the top 10K, the top 1K teams were a tad more experienced: average number of seasons played before was 3.45 and 3.68 for these two samples respectively. Only 6.5% had no previous history.
• 93% never finished in top 1K before, 72% never even finished in top 10K.
• For only 18 teams in the top 1K it was a second consecutive top 1K finish.

Heroes

• For 2 teams in the top 1K it was a third consecutive top 1K finish: The Last Boyscouts from Norway & Crazy Penguins from England.
• For QD2013 from Hong Kong it was a 5th top 1K finish; no other team in the top 10K can brag about so many top 1K finishes. He is also one of those 9 teams in the top 10K of this season with 7 top 10K finishes out of 8 possible.
• Premier Pie has a mediocre FPL history. Yet, he is another hero of the top 1K. Why? Read the next section.

Players Selected

He went without Luis Suarez all season and still managed to finish in top 1K!!!

Suarez seemed absolutely essential at one point of this season, and not just as a pick, but also as a captain. The poll I posted in the previous post has shown that two thirds of the readers wouldn’t expect anyone without the mighty Uruguayan to have finished in the top 1K this season. Personally, if I didn’t know the answer, I would have voted the same. However, the reality is that even in a season when Suarez beat all possible FPL records, and when in certain weeks every man and his dog were too scared not to captain him (and rightly so!), there was a guy who went without him all season and still finished in top 1K. Un-believable.

Here is a table showing how many teams ignored a particular FPL player all season and still made it into the top 1K. I have also calculated the average number of weeks that a certain player spent in an average top 1K team.

Players Selected by Top 1K

#	Player	Selected at Least Once By	Never Selected By	Average Number of Weeks in Average Team
1	Suárez Luis	999	1	31.3
2	Hazard Eden	991	9	21.1
3	Ramsey Aaron	979	21	15.7
4	Touré Gnegneri Yaya	978	22	23.5
5	Lukaku Romelu	960	40	13.2
6	Coleman Seamus	947	53	27.6
7	Rooney Wayne	942	58	10.2
8	Sturridge Daniel	923	77	13.5
9	Agüero Sergio	915	85	9.5
10	Mata Juan	892	108	7
11	Silva David	843	157	6.4
12	Lallana Adam	821	179	9.3
13	Walcott Theo	801	199	3.9
14	Giroud Olivier	790	210	7
15	Özil Mesut	785	215	8.2
16	Zabaleta Pablo	781	219	10.3
17	Dzeko Edin	760	240	4.1
18	Barkley Ross	749	251	8.8
19	Adebayor Emmanuel	748	252	4.5
20	Boruc Artur	714	286	11.1

• That no-Suarez fella was the only exception. An average team had Suarez in 31.3 gameweeks out of 38 possible. A very impressive number taking into account that Suarez missed the first 5 games. I’ve built a graph with his ownership dynamics, click here to see it. The final top 1K were very quick to get the Uruguayan as soon as he was back after serving the ban. Three guys even did this in advance in GW 5 when they played their wildcards and benched him for one week. Great planning 🙂

• Having spent 27.6 weeks in an average top 1K side, Seamus Coleman was the second most important player for the final top 1K after Suarez.

• Only 9 teams ignored Eden Hazard all season. There were also 21 and 22 Ramsey and Yaya haters respectively. In contrast, 38 guys had Yaya all season. Here are the ownership graphs for all of them:
  • Hazard
  • Yaya
  • Ramsey
  • Coleman

Road to Success

a. Getting there for the first time

• Compared to the final top 10K, the final top 1K teams got into their sacred land later in the season. Only 22% of them were in top 1K in the middle of the season. 50% got there for the first time during the last third. The final few gameweeks were very important: 48% of our teams were outside top 1K just 5 gameweeks before the finish.

• I’ve also plotted a diagram depicting when the final top 1K teams entered top 10K. It shows that 75% of the teams were in top 10K at some point during the first half of the season.

b. Overall Ranks

Below, I calculate average overall ranks for different percentiles of the final top 1K.

• By the middle of the season, 50% of the teams were inside top 5K; only 5% were outside top 50K.

c. Overall Points

The diagram below shows how a distance from the current top 1K mark changed for different percentiles of the final top 1K.

• The maximum gap of 166 points was closed by 15 Spartans.
• A cracking finish let Young Guns close a 147 point gap from top 1K in the last 7 gameweeks.

Point Hits and Transfers

a. How many transfers did a top 1K team make this season?

The final top 1K teams made 45.2 transfers on average ranging from 21 (Alamiels Army) to 76 (Del Boy Bosque L.L.W. and PARALIES).

On average, they spent 44.0 points on transfers. The above mentioned PARALIES spent more than anyone else: 168 points.

b. Total number of transfers and overall ranks

Here are the final two diagrams showing the number of transfers and point hits for each team in the final top 1K.

There is a small positive correlation between the overall rank and the amount of points spent on transfers. The very best teams took on average 1 hit less than the teams ranked closer to the 1K mark.