Meet Susan, the current World #1.

An International Break Special

Alright?

Don’t worry: Gameweek 30 isn’t 24 hours away…yet. We’re emailing you out of schedule because of a rare and exciting opportunity that passed across the LazyFPL newsdesk* at the weekend. It would’ve been rude of us not to share it with you.

You see, we got to speak to Susan.

Which Susan? This Susan:

Susan is the current World Number 1. The best FPL manager in the world. The bar that 11 million chasing managers are trying to reach.

And, prior to captaining him last week, Susan had never heard of Bruno Fernandes.

In this newsletter, we’ll hear a little bit more from Susan and her remarkable journey to the top of FPL’s world rankings.

*For posterity, the LazyFPL newsdesk is The Professor’s crusty mattress.

The Stuff You Should Know

There’s been some news we want to fill you in on first:

🤦 Chris Wood has picked up a suspected hip injury with New Zealand. He was seen holding an ice pack to it at full-time after being substituted.

🟥 Matheus Cunha has been given an additional one-match ban and won’t return until Gameweek 32.

🤕 Anthony Gordon has withdrawn from the England camp after picking up an injury against Albania.

👌 Jean-Philippe Mateta given the all-clear and is fit to play Fulham in Gameweek 30.

🩼 Vitalii Mykolenko was forced off through injury against Belgium. The nature of his problem and its severity remain unclear.

👀 There’s a rumour that Josko Gvardiol is injured - but we haven’t been able to verify it prior to sending this email. One to keep an eye on.

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“I’m shocked…”

Susan has just two seasons under her belt prior to this one:

It’s hardly the history of someone who might expect to be at #1 OR going into Gameweek 30.

Even Susan herself is surprised at her remarkable ascension.

“I’m shocked but enjoying the reaction of my family and friends.”

Speaking of family and friends, she’s competing in just one invitational league: a five-person competition called Game of Bones. The manager in second place is ranked 42k - usually more than good enough to ensure a lead in a five-person league.

But they’re nearly 200 points behind Susan.

Has Susan used all of her chips?

Those hoping to chase down Susan will be disheartened to learn that she still has her Free Hit, Wildcard and Bench Boost left.

Remarkably, she didn’t even use her first Wildcard (why fix it if it ain’t broken?).

Her Triple Captain was activated in Gameweek 24 - when most managers were activating their Assistant Manager chip.

Susan’s Triple Captain:

DGW24: Mohamed Salah | 87 points

Her Assistant Manager was activated in Gameweek 25 - against the conventional wisdom.

Susan’s Assistant Manager:

GW25: Fabian Hurzeler | 21 points
GW26: Oliver Glasner | 20 points
GW27: Oliver Glasner | 20 points

Not a bad use of chips so far, then.

Pen and paper.

What’s Susan’s secret? Is she a professional data analyst? A football talent scout? Is she Professor Trelawney?

We had to ask her.

“At the ripe old age of 67 (you can call me old fashioned!) my weekly lists with pen and paper seem to be the secret to my success!”

There’s a lesson here. For all that we talk about underlying stats, heat maps, fixture trackers, predicted points and bookies’ odds, sometimes the most reliable metric is one’s own intuition. Susan has placed unshakable faith in hers.

It’s going pretty well so far.

What else makes Susan’s approach different?

For us, the most remarkable part of Susan’s season is her refusal to own Erling Haaland, even when he had scored 54 points in the first four gameweeks of the campaign.

Whilst now it might feel obvious that Mohamed Salah was the better investment, nothing about the start of the season suggested that’d be the case. Haaland was the most owned player in the history of FPL, and Susan wilfully went without.

Intriguingly, she’s also never taken a points hit: another voice to the camp who believes that points hits - whatever the circumstances - are always the wrong move.

She’s also owned Cole Palmer for the entire season…until she removed him last week.

Susan is a lesson in doing things your own way: a parable that The Professor regularly drones on about to our premium members.

We’ve long been of the view that achieving consistently high FPL ranks is a skill, but getting to World Number 1 is mostly luck.

It’d be delusional to suggest that Susan hasn’t benefitted from extremely good fortune in places, and her previous seasons tell a story of what can happen when the dice don’t land the way you need them to.

But as FPL becomes more data-driven, more AI-powered, more automated, and more head than heart, let Susan be a reminder that sometimes, all you need is a pen, paper and a bloody good gut instinct.

Stay lazy,

The LazyFPL team.