Somewhere in the twisted, labyrinthine sprawl of Berlin, a city sodden with history, there resides a man battling with the many sides of himself. Ideas ricochet like bullets off the walls of his mind, neurons firing as he runs the numbers, looking for a new angle, a cutting edge to fire him to a spectral glory lurking just around an icy urban corner. He winds his way to Herr Lindemann’s, a ragged, chic Neukolln cocktail bar at which he indulges his tendency to alchemy, concocting potions throughout the night for the dilettante proclivities of the city’s bourgeois it-crowd. His fingers dextrously flit from knife to glass as he mixes elixirs much as he does the contrasting, effervescent sides of his competitive personalities. His is a story of daring ideas and cold feet, of manic alchemy and jocular pyromania. His is the tale of a man who flew too close to the sun, and burst gloriously into flames. Thus a competitor caught equidistant between genius and insanity suffered a fate fitting in its concurrent fairness and injustice:
Mediocrity.
These are the many faces of Jessi Parker.
Jessi the Scholar
Parker, a relative newcomer to the world of ‘soccer’, is competing in what is essentially his second language. Having grown up with all them yank sports like Ice Fighting (NHL), American Hand-egg (NFL) and Almost Cricket (MLB), you’d be forgiven for expecting Jessi to take a little while to develop a proficiency for Fantasy Football. However, though this year marked his debut in the Classic Grand, his first taste of FPL came one year prior, in the inaugural ProMax World Championship, and his efforts were impressive: a 4th place finish out of 12 is laudable enough, but what the final standings neglect to tell us is that he began the final game-week within touching distance of the summit. Luck deserted him, and then some: Jessi was ultimately pipped to a podium finish by Tom Barklamb’s 45-point Sadio Mane triple captain. All three of those that finished ahead of him could boast significant prior FPL experience. His performance without a doubt warranted a medal of one colour or another.
So how did this novice interloper trump two-thirds of the division? Well firstly, unlike a good few managers competing in the Classic Grand, Jessi is at least fluent in the language of sports in general. Much like how a knowledge of Latin is supposed to make it easier to learn other Romance languages, Jessi’s understanding of US pro sports, which includes experience with fantasy American football, worked very much in his favour. The systems weren’t alien to him, and he adapted with ease.
Secondly, he worked. Hard. He crunched the data, he watched the highlights, and he read the columns. He put his back into it, and his labours were rewarded. This combination of focus and determination saw him do even better this season: The Whopping Mollies came a comfortable second in the 2019/20 ProMax World Championship, the only team other than the The Rhythmic Schism to spend even a second at the top of the table, and the only team to even remotely threaten Max Selby’s vice-like grip on the title. However, a glance at the final standings for the 2019/20 Classic Grand sees Jessi sitting sort of awkwardly in 5th place. Bottom of the top half, mid-table mediocrity, almost as many victories as defeats, and only one point more than the Shuai Ge Tigers, whose manager couldn’t tell you which team any of his side plays for.
So what happened?
Jessi the Economist
The seeds of Jessi’s disappointing Classic Grand harvest were sown on GW1. His XV consisted of a relative who’s-who of ‘who’s that?’, featuring a host of curious, left-field picks such as Kyle Walker-Peters, Sebastien Haller, Wesley, Leandro Trossard, and Ahmed El-Mohamady. His ‘star’ picks weren’t really stars at all, among them Seamus Coleman, Chris Wood, Ilkay Gundogan, and James Ward-Prowse. His first captain was Eric Lamela.
Eric. Lamela.
Let that sink in.
Was this a sign of confused inexperience? Far from it; here was evidence of an acute awareness of format, and a quite admirable courage. Y’see, Jessi identified an inefficiency in the strategy adopted by most other managers, whose teams blew huge sums on household names but often ended up looking so similar as to essentially cancel each other out. That might work in the single-minded pursuit of capital required for World Championship success, but in the Classic Grand’s weekly battles to the death Jessi saw a need for the kind of wholesale advantage that only originality can offer. If – indeed when –a superstar misfires, Jessi would be there, waiting to pounce. He brought ‘Moneyball’ to the Classic Grand.
Take his captain picks: Jessi was one of only six managers who selected a captain that wasn’t also given the armband by at least one other manager in the same week, three of those coming in the first month:
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# of unique captains (GW first captained)
Jessi – 4: Lamela (GW1), Wood (GW2), Wesley (GW4), Pogba (GW33)
Nial – 2: Alli (GW16), Foden (GW34)
Tom – 1: Martial (GW37)
Glen – 1: Pukki (GW8)
Scott – 1: Giroud (GW36)
Colin – 1: Grealish (GW22)
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That takes some gumption. GW2 demonstrated the beauty of this approach: taking on the reigning world champion, The Molly Whoppers – thanks to goals from Bernard, Trossard, and Lamela (away at Manchester City, no less) – ran out 55-52 winners against a Rhythmic Schism team containing the likes of Mo Salah, Kevin de Bruyne, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Lucas Digne, and captain Raheem Sterling. You’ve got to admire the chutzpah.
Sadly, it seems the fates just weren’t on board. Anyone familiar with the story of Billy Beane and the 2002 Oakland Athletics will know that it did not start well. It would be the same for The Molly Whoppers. Take those captains mentioned earlier: their combined total over the first four game-weeks, including their x2 bonus, came to a pathetic fourteen points. By the time GW5 rolled around, Jessi’s impressive albeit narrow victory against The Schism was the only one the Molly Whoppers could boast. In 2002 the Oakland As would get over their slump and set a new record for consecutive wins. Baseball, however, has a 162-game regular season. A premier league campaign offers far less leeway, and Jessi knew it.
And so, he put on a new face.
Jessi the Hipster
Burdened by the unique decision to juggle different teams for each competition, Jessi decided to homogenise. His World Championship side – The Whopping Mollies, with whom he had adopted a strategy similar to that of the previous season – was already a top three team, and closing in on 1st. And so, he used his Wildcard in the Classic Grand and re-crafted the Molly Whoppers as the mirror image of his more successful team. From GW5 up until the outbreak of Covid-19, Jessi was essentially doing what everyone else was: playing one team in both tournaments.
However, though he’d called time on the ‘Moneyball’ era, Jessi retained his keen eye for a differential. Despite returning to a more conventional model his teams were often among the most – if not the most – unique in the division. Jessi loved to shop cheap and trendy: the GW5 rebrand may have seen the introduction of flashy, generic, H&M brands such as de Bruyne, Vardy, and Aubameyang, but it also featured Oxfam bargains like Harry Wilson, Joel Matip, Tyrone Mings, and the first known sighting of John McGinn.
Jessi had Nick Pope before he was cool.
Like any true hipster, Jessi didn’t like to spend: his season’s transfer expenditure amounted to a frugal eight points. Of all the managers that knew their FPL login password, only Nial opened his wallet less often. And like any typical vinyl-playing, art-house-loving, indie-film-watching, politically progressive Berliner, Jessi loved to do things just a liiiiittle differently. Sure, there were three other managers who captained a defender, but nobody else was cool enough to use their triple-captain on one! It paid off, too: Trent’s 33-points helped Jessi to a GW24 score of 94, the fourth highest GW total of the season.
The rebrand put the wind back into Jessi’s sails, and the results were impressive. In the World Championship monthly rankings, which of course now reflected his exploits in the Classic Grand, Jessi won Manager of the Month for September, tied for 2nd in January, and came 3rd in February. His overall points average for the first third of the season was the 3rd highest, even with those dubious first four weeks. His mid-season average cracked the top 4.
However, what the averages don’t tell you is how utterly unstable, how dangerously erratic those weeks were. Far from being a sturdy, professional unit cruising at high-speed, Jessi had in fact created a monster, a Jekyll and Hyde outfit, borne of the perfidious, tinkering mind of a mad scientist.
Jessi the Alchemist
In his Berlin laboratory, surrounded by beakers of bubbling, phosphorescent liquid, experiments popping and whistling in the background, Jessi would pore over data, manically calculating the next risk. Mr Hyde would drag absolute randos though the door only to hoof them out moments later. Todd Cantwell, in GW5, out GW9. John McGinn, in GW5, out GW9. Seamus Coleman, the only survivor of the Great Purge of gameweek five, would last only two more weeks before he too was disappeared. Twenty-two transfers were made before gameweek ten. And then Dr Jekyll would return, and the merry-go-round would slow; only nine more swaps would follow over the next twelve game-weeks. The results were sheer madness: a line graph of Jessi’s GW scores looks like the electrocardiogram of a person being attacked by a troupe of burning circus clowns. Jessi, by quite some distance, led the league for erratic behaviour:
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# of times GW score was 20+pts different from previous week
Jessi – 20
Glen – 16
Max – 13
Tom – 12
Amy – 12
Elys – 12
Matt – 10
Nial – 10
Colin – 8
Scott – 6
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It doesn’t end there. Jessi is tied 1st for the most games won by 24 points or more, and yet, if we exclude the league’s two absentee managers, finishes top for most games lost by the same margin. He recorded the game-week’s lowest score a league-leading nine times, and yet is somehow tied 3rd for recording the game-week’s highest score, only one less than Tom in 2nd place. It’s positively schizophrenic!
The sheer insanity and reckless overthinking manifested itself in some other ghastly ways: Jessi left a staggering two-hundred-and-forty-nine points on the bench. Only two players would throw away more, and one of those was the truant Colin Wilkinson, and even he was only three points further ahead (our outlier, Nial Taylor, squandered a truly heartbreaking 290).
Whilst some of this hysteria cost him other such lunacy reaped huge rewards: Jessi selected a league high sixteen different captains over the course of the season, more than any other player, and only one other manager would more often change their captain from the previous week.
Was it worth it? You bet! Jessi ended up tied 2nd for the Captain Marvel award, ahead of seven other managers by quite some distance.
However, this exposure to alternating heat and cold caused cracks in The Molly Whoppers’ structure. This could go on no longer. Twenty-four solid weeks of utter mania had left Jessi fragile and exhausted. It was time for a new approach.
I’m not sure anyone could have predicted what was to follow.
Jessi the Piss-taker
He called it … Team Dead Sexy.
Jessi turned his team into a god-damned Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue.
Spearheaded by the granite-jawed sexual magnetism of Olivier Giroud, Jessi let the world know that he had officially sacked off the ProMax Classic Grand. The stress was just too great. The rollercoaster ride that was his World Championship team would carry on elsewhere, even momentarily giving The Rhythmic Schism an awful fright over the first few Premier League fixtures of the penultimate game-week. But the Classic Grand was now a circus side-show, with results to match: losing six of his nine games post-restart, his only victories came against Matt (twice) and Colin, both of whom had checked out long ago.
There remained menacing shades of his other personalities: the presence of the likes of Jan Bednarek, Stuart Armstrong, James Justin, Dwight Gayle and other such strangers harkened back to more hipsterish sensibilities, whilst there remained more than a hint of that deranged mid-season haphazardness: of the final nine fixtures, Team Dead Sexy registered a score in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, three in the 60s, and one more each in the 70s and 80s. ‘Consistency’ is simply a word that Jessi just does not have in his vocabulary.
So that’s that, right? Jessi’s multiple personalities threatened greatness, self-destructed, and ultimately achieved the exact opposite of what was intended: they cancelled each other out. Nineteen wins, eighteen defeats, one draw. A winning record against Matt and Elys, a losing record against the top three, and ties everywhere else. The dust had setttled. Once the carnival leaves town, you’d never know it had ever visited. Show’s over, folks. We’re done here.
Well, actually, there is one more item on the agenda.
Jessi the Time Lord
Let’s play a little game of ‘what if?’
What if, rather than fielding separate teams, Jessi had done what every other manager did and sent out the same team to contest both World Championship and Classic Grand? Would much have changed? The fixtures would have stayed the same, so all we need to do is swap out The Molly Whoppers’/Team Dead Sexy’s game-week score for that of The Whopping Mollies’, and hey presto! An alternate universe!
Join me, in this hypothetical reality, and marvel at our other present.
Spoiler alert: rather disappointingly, only four results would have changed. However! This is enough for a surprisingly energetic round of musical chairs. We start with those four results, which are as follows:
GW2 (original score: Jessi 55, Max 52): Jessi’s only victory during the Moneyball era goes right out the window as he succumbs, by a measly four points, to a Rhythmic Schism outfit who will still finish 2nd, but nevertheless three points more indignant. Final score – Jessi 48, Max 52. Max gains three, Jessi loses three. A W becomes an L.
GW4 (original score: Jessi 29, Nial 49): In our alternate reality Jessi absolutely crushes Nial, racking up 85 points in a total demolition job. Jessi gets back those points from two weeks prior, Nial drops by three. An L becomes a W.
Jessi’s synchronisation of his two teams occurs now, and despite a handful of minor differences in the two side’s scores, brought on by the increase in price of a tiny handful of high performance players owned by his World Championship team and subsequent inability to create completely identical line-ups, none of these discrepancies are enough to alter any scorelines up to the Covid interruption. Enter Team Dead Sexy…
GW33 (original score: Jessi 28, Scott 49): Scott sees victory snatched from his grasp as The Whopping Mollies leap out of an alternate timeline to squeak an absolute nail-biter by the tiniest of margins. Jessi 51, Scott 49. Jessi reclaims another three, Scott slips back by the same margin. An L becomes a W.
GW35 (original score: Jessi 30, Amy 44): What was once a handsome win for Hakuna Juan Mata flips totally on its head as Jessi bursts from the ether to brutally snatch another victory. Tack on another three for Jessi, Amy says cheerio to the same. An L becomes a W.
And that’s your lot. Jessi hauls in a pretty tidy catch. The 2019/20 ProMax Classic Grand goes from this….
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2019/20 ProMax Classic Grand: Rank – Player – W – D – L – Total – Pts
- Tom – 24 – 0 – 14 – 2052 – 72
- Max – 22 – 0 – 16 – 2257 – 66
- Glen – 21 – 1 – 16 – 2058 – 64
- Amy – 19 – 1 – 18 – 2060 – 58
- Jessi – 19 – 1 – 18 – 1974 – 58
- Matt – 19 – 0 – 19 – 1867 – 57
- Scott – 16 – 3 – 19 – 1969 – 51
- Elys – 15 – 3 – 20 – 1995 – 48
- Nial – 15 – 1 – 22 – 1954 – 46
- Colin – 15 – 0 – 23 – 1802 – 45
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… to this:
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PMCG if Jessi had played as The Whopping Mollies: Rank – Player – W – D – L – Total – Pts
- Tom – 24 – 0 – 14 – 2052 – 72
- Max – 23 – 0 – 15 – 2257 – 69
- Jessi – 21 – 1 – 16 – 2098 – 64
- Glen – 21 – 1 – 16 – 2058 – 64
- Matt – 19 – 0 – 19 – 1867 – 57
- Amy – 18 – 1 – 19 – 2060 – 55
- Elys – 15 – 3 – 20 – 1995 – 48
- Scott – 15 – 3 – 20 – 1969 – 48
- Colin – 15 – 0 – 23 – 1802 – 45
- Nial -14 – 1 – 23 – 1954 – 43
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Okay, okay, so it’s not as if Corbyn won, dinosaurs still exist, and Yeovil are in the Champions League. Barklamb is still victorious, and Selby stays second, albeit at reduced distance and increased sense of injustice. Outside of the top two, however, it’s all change. Colin dodges the wooden spoon, Nial racks up a 2nd consecutive last-place finish, Amy drops out of the top half entirely, Elys and Scott swap places, Glen falls off the podium, and Jessi, the tinkering, shape-shifting madman, picks up a bright, shiny bronze medal.
You can’t say he wouldn’t have earned it.
Jessi the Unknowable
What we witnessed this season will likely never be repeated. For weeks, in private correspondence with yours truly, Jessi – regretful of this self-imposed balancing act – would express his anguish as the disparate parts of his psyche tore each other apart. More than once he declared his intention to axe one of his two halves. Alas, he couldn’t exit the Classic Grand lest he void the season’s results up to that point; neither could he bring himself to fold his World Championship team, the only side with any hope of catching the remorseless juggernaut that was The Rhythmic Schism.
And so Jessi found himself locked inside a cell of his own making, trapped with the two sides of himself: the academic and the arsonist. Now the season is over, the dust has settled, and sanity has been restored. But beware; from the embers of this once raging fire there will emerge a driven competitor with unfinished business. Take it from me; I spent the whole damn season watching over my shoulder, puzzling over Jessi’s inexplicable decisions, and recoiling in abject horror as time and again his otherwordly prescience revealed itself and he inched closer and closer week after week. Only with great efffort was I finally able to shake him off. No distance felt safe. I still don’t feel clean.
Mark my words, dear reader, Jessi shall rise again. His scheming is not done. He will rekindle his furnace, resume his Machiavellian chicanery, and this time he could very well win the whole damn thing.
Or burn the league down in the process. You have been warned.
Whatever happens next, there will never be another campaign like the raw, hysterical dementia of 2019/20s Jessi Parker.
Lush Gutters 