The pre-season
predictions.

Ciara enters Puppet Masters with a clean slate.

Unfortunately, the three FPL seasons we do have are less clean.

There hasn't yet been the sort of finish that suggests an immediate attack on the top half, although three seasons is still a relatively small sample and joining a competitive mini-league can change how seriously people play the game.

Expectations, at least, could hardly be lower.

There was a very good FPL manager here once.

A top-6% season and several strong earlier finishes prove that beyond much argument.

The problem is what happened afterwards.

Recent Paddy has spent considerably more time in the bottom half of FPL, including top-70% and top-80% finishes in his last two recorded seasons.

He manages a county U20 GAA team in real life, which does raise one awkward question.

Is actual management easier?

Garry's recent record is impressively consistent.

That isn't entirely a compliment.

Four consecutive finishes clustered around the middle-to-lower half of FPL make him one of the easier managers to place, although an older top-22% season shows there is at least a higher level somewhere in the archive.

The team name may already contain the most important tactical instruction.

Paul has eighteen recorded seasons.

There is therefore no hiding behind sample size.

The career contains some very respectable finishes, particularly further back, but recent seasons have generally settled around the middle or lower half.

The experience is undeniable.

The evidence that another top-10% season is imminent is considerably harder to find.

Bryan's career contains enough genuine quality to make writing him off dangerous.

There have been top-2%, top-4% and top-8% finishes, proving the ceiling is considerably higher than 16th.

The problem is finding that Bryan often enough.

And then there is the Jonathan Walters captaincy.

-8 points.

Some mistakes fade with time. Others become part of the competition's cultural heritage.

There is nothing useful to analyse here.

No old ranks. No recent percentages. No suspiciously selected career highlight.

So 15th is less a prediction than the point where we eventually decided Declan had to go somewhere.

That makes him one of the biggest unknowns in the entire field.

Martin's official FPL history begins last season.

Nobody believes this.

All we can actually inspect is a respectable top-30% finish, which tells us enough to avoid the bottom few places but nowhere near enough to establish his real level.

He did win the Puppet Masters World Cup competition this summer, so the competitive instincts clearly remain intact.

Debbie returns from retirement without any surviving FPL history.

Normally that would make prediction almost impossible.

Two Puppet Masters titles make things rather more interesting.

Wins in 2013/14 and 2019/20 prove she has previously been good enough to beat this league, even if there is absolutely no recent evidence showing what level she returns at.

As a tax consultant, the disappearance of records relating to previous winnings feels entirely appropriate.

Greg gives us exactly one season.

Fortunately, it was a decent one.

A top-19% finish is comfortably strong enough to put him above several managers with much larger bodies of mediocre evidence.

It is not enough to know whether that's his normal standard.

One more season should tell us considerably more.

Scott has only two recorded seasons, but they're moving firmly in the right direction.

Top 34% became top 17% last year, and another comparable improvement would put this prediction in serious difficulty.

Some attention has admittedly been diverted towards alleged irregularities elsewhere in the league, particularly Brian Brennan's sudden transformation into a champion.

Perhaps the best strategy is to keep climbing while gathering evidence.