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Season 4 Recap

Hello everyone and welcome to the Season 4 Recap! As promised, please vote for the Season 4 accolades using the form here and if you read all the way to the end you might even find a surprise draft availability link to fill out! This is probably going to be a very long, rambly post of me yapping and discussing various tables and stats, maybe even dive into random wormholes and see where we end up. That sort of thing. And you guys have been here for 4 seasons so obviously my yapping and random tangents haven't driven you away yet. Maybe I've even tricked a few of you into being interested in what I have to say (yeah I know you're just here to skim through the tables and see where you are on the all-time list, it's ok). Anyway, we have a bunch of new (active) people so I think a good place to start would be, well, at the beginning.

History of the Game of Stones

Okay maybe that's a little bit daunting. Something like

(Brief) History of the Games of Stones

might be a little bit more apt.

Season 1 (2022/2023 season)

Okay, Season 1. Our debut season. 16 managers right off the bat, with the following managers still playing:

  1. Me (obviously)
  2. Darryan
  3. Dylan
  4. Jesse
  5. Andrew
  6. MatthewR
  7. Scott
  8. Kevin
  9. ZachA (returned in S4)
  10. Cara (returned in S4)

Season 1 League Table


This was of course Darryan's title winning season, even though he didn't lead the PF table. And also, he won with like 3 or 4 gameweeks left if I recall correctly. Definitely not salty about that one at all. Nope. Anyway, great win by Darryan, good season by me and Dylan, Jesse did well even if you account for the 272 point season by Haaland on his team, and Andrew finished in the top 5, equal on points with Jesse and 1 ahead of MatthewR and Scott… and he had 5 draws.

Season 2 (2023/2024 season)

And onto the next! Perhaps my favorite season (no bias), this season we reduced the numbers to 12 and saw some current regulars in their first season, including:

  1. Luke
  2. Gavin
  3. Zach

Season 2 League Table


Unlike Darryan in Season 1, I won the league with 325 PF more than the 2nd highest, which was Dylan, who finished in 4th. Luke had a great season though, finishing runner-up in his debut, solidly ahead of Gavin/Dylan/MatthewR (but also solidly behind me). MatthewR remained in that "just behind the best of the rest" group and Kevin improved on a bit of an up and down first season stick just behind him. Darryan's fall off could be studied though, as he fell down to 8th and had equal points to Jesse. Zach's deput saw him sit solidly in 11th, out of 12. He did finish 7th on PF though.

Anyway, if you were curious as to how I ended up with over 1900 PF (over 50 points per week), that was the season that Cole Palmer went to Chelsea and I picked him up on waivers. Some other notable names I had that year were Isak, Watkins, Nicolas JACKson, Bowen, Gabriel, Maddison (before he broke both his legs or whatever), and probably a bunch of other guys I'm forgetting.

Season 2 also saw the introduction of mid-season cups! We played two cups that season, the December Cup and the Champions Cup.


Season 2 December Cup


And if you could've guessed, I won this one. Shoutout though to Andrew for finishing in 2nd, having defeated Gavin and Luke in the knockouts after somehow qualifying from his group with a single win.

For the format nerds out there, I went with 3 groups of 4, with the bottom team from each group eliminated along with the worst group stage performance of the 3 third placed teams. Sort of similar to some of the international tournament formats. Then, it was a single-eliminated quarters and semis which led to a 2-legged finals. That made it a total of 3 gameweeks in the group stage + 4 in the knockout stage to fit it all in December (iirc).


Season 2 Champions Cup Group Stage

Season 2 Champions Cup Knockout Stage


This tournament was a little bit longer. Two groups of 6 with the bottom 2 teams eliminated led into yet again an 8 team bracket. Unlike the December Cup though, every knockout stage was 2-legged. Which made the full cup 5 group stage gameweeks + 6 knockout stage gameweeks. Oh yeah, and I won this one too. (And if you want an idea of how absurd my scores were, my knockout stage scores were: 87, 55, 78, 84, 95, 44)

Season 3 (2024/2025)

The 3rd season it got a little bit weird. We once again increased to 16 managers (despite my opinion that 12 was optimal), in the hopes to expand to 2 leagues in Season 4. Mission accomplished! And this season brought with it a couple more debuts:

  1. Matt
  2. Coop

Season 3 League Table


And this season was MatthewR's win! And, not only did he not have the highest PF as the champion (again), but he took advantage of the weird and whacky season and set the record for most points in a season at 89! A single point higher than S1 Darryan. Kevin finished 2nd and set a similar record: the highest points total for any 2nd place finisher! Funnily enough, he had as many points in Season 3 as I did in Season 2 as the champion. And there was no funny business related to Kevin and Jesse and a player named Alexander Isak. Absolutely none. Anyway, Luke followed up his debut silver medal with a bronze, Matt had a very solid debut where he spent most of the season in 2nd before dropping a couple of spots, and I overcame great adversity to finish 5th. Gavin went back-to-back 66 point seasons, Zach figured it out a little bit and came in 8th, and Darryan went on an end-of-season tear to claw his way up to 9th. Dylan zoned out a bit and ended up in 11th, with Coop's debut going a little askew with a 13th placed finish.

And yeah, this season had 3 tournaments.


Season 3 Kick-Off Cup Group Stage

Season 3 Kick-Off Cup Knockout Stage


The first tournament (yes, there is a youtube video of me doing the draw…) began with 4 groups of 4, seeded based on the previous season's results (weighted of course). That group stage had no eliminations and was instead used to seed the first round of the knockouts: the Round of 16. All knockout stage matches except for the final were 2-legged, which meant the tournament was 3 gameweeks in the group stage + 7 gameweeks in the knockouts. And Scott defeated me in the final. Silverware for Scott and the first cup not won by me!


Season 3 Short n' Sweet Cup Group Stage

Season 3 Short n' Sweet Cup Knockout Stage


This season's festive cup was the Short n' Sweet tournament, named after the Sabrina Carpenter album + the fact that yes, the tournament was short and sweet. Exactly as short and sweet as the first December Cup at 7 gameweeks. Starting with 4 groups of 4 (again), the bottom manager of each group was eliminated, while the top manager got an automatic bye to the quarter final. The 2nd and 3rd placed teams of each group had to play in a "Round of 12" / playoff round, where the group winners were awaiting the playoff winners. Yet again the knockouts were all single legged, this time including the final, where Matt defeated Darryan 51-44.


Season 3 Champions Cup Group Stage 1

Season 3 Champions Cup Group Stage 2

Season 3 Champions Cup Knockout Stage

Season 3 Champions Cup Knockout Stage - Consolation


Okay so this one might resonate more with you format-heads, because I went a little wild with it. Two group stages. No eliminations until the playoffs. A single elimination round of 16 which led to double elimination matchups for the remainder of the tournament.

Basically, the first group stage placed managers into their second group stage groups. I.e. all 1st placed finishers went to Group E, all 2nd placed finishers went to Group F, and so on. This allowed me to seed based the Round of 16 in two ways:

  1. By 2nd Group
  2. By Finish

So, every 1st Group Stage top place finisher would play a bottom place finisher, based on how they did in the 2nd Group Stage. The idea was that the 2nd Group Stage would have these really interesting, evenly weighted matches because they'd be between managers in similar form. And I guess it didn't really? work because 3/4 of the 2nd group stage groups had a winner on 9 points while the 1st group stage only had one manager on 9 points.

Anyway, Luke won this one by defeating Kevin 91-81 in the final.

Season 4

And that brings us to the current day: Season 4! Well, post-season 4, since it ended just a few days ago. And before we begin with the deep dive, a quick reminder of the tournaments!

Season 4: The League

So, this tournament was one of the things I was the most excited about when expanding to two leagues (/24 managers). And honestly, I think it went pretty well! A 24 team group stage in which each manager played 8 matches seeded 2 rounds of playoffs in which the winners of those played against the top 4 teams.


The League Group Stage

The League Group Stage Matches


And the group stage ended as we all expected: with Jesse being the only undefeated manager.

I wanted to use this section to sidetrack a little bit (as I come back to writing this ~1 day later), and sort of deep dive this. Because I really like the idea of a big group stage table like this. I was skeptical at first when UEFA made this change, but after both seeing it in action and playing with a team in it a bit in Football Manager, I think it was honestly a really great change. I think the balance between drama at the end of the group stage (will I make the cut) and the forgiveness that having 8 whole gameweeks to do well and see your team find form and battle it out against a breadth of opponent makes for some really interesting matches. And also I find group stages kinda fun in FPL (and apparently love coming up with ways to schedule matches) so I figured maybe this could be a good idea! Definitely let me know your feedback and if you enjoyed it or thought it was too long!

Anyway, one metric(if that's the right word) that I think we can look at to gauge just how dramatic a group stage was is table movement. So I've compiled a little table to show this.


Season 4 The League Group Stage Movement


Okay so first, I want to get into some interesting things I found while making this table:

  • The amount of teams on the 2nd most points (thanks Jesse), was pared down each week, until the last gameweek. Starting in GW3 (2nd place on 6 points): 10 -> 6 -> 5 -> 5 -> 3 -> 5. Maybe those of us who were a game back locked in?
  • 13/24 teams did not move after Gameweek 6
  • Gameweek 6 saw no movement into or out of the top 4, 2 managers into or out of the top 8 (Darryan and I swapped spots), and 0 managers into or out of the top 16 (not including me and Darryan)
  • Gameweek 7 saw Zach and Chris replace MatthewR and Dylan in the top 4, me and Luke moved into the top 8 to replace Darryan and Alex, and yet again no movement at the top 16 line
  • Gameweek 8 saw me and Dylan replace Chris and Kevin in the top 4, Darryan replace MatthewR in the top 8, and once again, no movement at the top 16 line
  • The biggest movement before gameweek 4 (inclusive) was: Dylan +11 in GW3, Coop +10 in GW2, Zach and Gavin -10 in GW2, Alex +9 in GW2, Kevin +8 in GW2, Matthew2 and Dylan -8 in GW2, ZachA and Alex -8 in GW4
  • The biggest movement after gameweek 4 (exclusive) was: Alex +6 in GW5, Darryan -6 in GW5, Matthew +5 in GW5, MatthewR -5 in GW7, ZachA -4 in GW5, Zach +4 in GW7, ZachA and Mack +4 in GW8
  • MatthewR went from 2nd with 2 matches left to 9th in the final league table

I have to move on because I have a lot more recap to get to, but I feel like some takeaways from this are:

  • The group stage could have been shorter. As much as I'm glad my team made top 4 in the final week, we also had 2 pretty boring weeks after GW6.
  • The top teams were really close after both 6 and 8 weeks. 5 managers were at 15 points after GW6 and 18 after GW8. In fact, the top 4 was determined by PF in both weeks.
  • There comes a time when the worse teams just have no chance. GW5 was the last time the bottom 8 changed.

So, next season. I want to brainstorm some ideas to increase/keep the amount of competition and closeness at the top, while also balancing having more of a battle for the lower playoff spots at the top 16 cutoff point.


Season 4 The League Knockout Stage


The knockout rounds came with three unique twists: a "break" from GW9-GW20, 2 playoff rounds, and our first knockout stage tiebreaker. I think the break was a cool way to mimic the real life Champions League format. It gave teams the chance to evolve and find form to bounce back for the playoffs. However, I do think I could have done a better job at making it clear what cup was going on, considering the Boxing Day Bash was played during The League break.

I also really enjoyed how the 2 playoff rounds / bye weeks situation went. It felt like a nice way to mirror the real life CL (again), plus gave me a sort of qualifying round vibe. Plus, it obviously worked as a story teller, considering Andrew made a run from Playoff 1 to make the semi finals, and Matthew2 made the finals from Playoff 1.

And that brings me to the final twist: Andrew. Somehow in Playoff 1, he absolutely crushed fellow League B contender ZachA 44-25. He then followed it up with a 41-39 win against Luke in Playoff 2. And then, he met League A champion Zach in the quarter final and tied 56-56 over two legs. Our first ever instance of a two-legged draw in Game of Stones history. So, I decided that they'd take penalties by choosing 5 players to face off in a tiebreaker, which Andrew won 37-21.

I think this was a clever and interesting way to break the tie (thanks Darryan!), but the fact it took up an extra gameweek made the season feel just a tad bit more crammed, I must admit.

Anyway, Dylan spoiled Andrew's fairytale run and then beat Matthew2 in the final 80-74.

Season 4: Boxing Day Bash

The yearly super fast festive fixtures themed holiday tournament came back with intraleague tournaments. The format was the same between the leagues: two groups of 6 battled in a 5 gameweek group stage with the bottom 2 teams of each group eliminated. Then, a single elimination bracket in the final 3 weeks, for a total of 8 gameweeks.

League A


Boxing Day Bash Group Stage

Boxing Day Bash Knockout Stage


Okay, let's see… MatthewR won Group A pretty solidly while Zach did the same with his own 12 point peformance in Group B. Dylan from Group A, and Kevin and Luke from B were the surprise eliminations (sorry Gavin, your elimination was a little less surprising :/). Anyway, MatthewR went out in the first round of knockouts to Darryan, while I defeated Zach in the semi finals en route to my Boxing Day Bash winning victory over Scott, 41-27.

League B


Boxing Day Bash Group Stage

Boxing Day Bash Knockout Stage


On the other side of the Game of Stones world, Emma swept Group B as the only 15 point team in all 4 groups, while Alex won Group A with the usual 12 points. Divya exited Group A on PF ahead of Andrew, while ZachA and Morgs couldn't pick up the 1 more win to get themselves out of the danger zone. And interestingly, John somehow had 2 draws in Group A. I honestly don't think I've seen that one before.

And moving along to the knockout rounds, Group A winner Alex saw his cup run ended in the first round to Cara, while Emma defeated Matthew2 in the semis to find herself in the finals against Mack. Who, by the way, beat John 52-43 in the quarters, Cara 46-44 in the semi finals, and won herself a trophy by defeating Emma 51-50.

Season 4: Champions Cup

This season's kinda cramped Champions Cup was of course the second interleague tournament of the season and took our 24 teams on a 5 gameweek journey through 4 groups and dumped out the top 4 of each group into a classic single-legged knockout bracket. Plus, a not-so-classic double legged-finals, which adds up to 10 gameweeks for this one.


Season 4 Champions Cup Group Stage

Season 4 Champions Cup Group Stage Matches


Alright, let's start with the group stage and see if we can find anything interesting!

  • The 4 qualifying managers from Group A all had 9 or 10 points
  • This meant Group A had the lowest points total for the winner of any group (10)
  • Jesse (Group B) and Matthew2 (Group C) were the only two 15 point finishers
  • Coop (Group D) was the only manager eliminated on PF
  • Kevin (Group C) and Coop (Group D) were the only eliminated managers with 200+ PF
  • 5 out of 6 managers in Group D had 200+ PF
  • Scott (Group C) had the lowest PF of all qualified managers (151 PF)
  • He finished 2nd in Group C
  • There were 3 draws and all 6 managers involved qualified for the knockout rounds
  • Only 1 manager had the most PF in their group and didn't finish 1st: Luke (257 PF)


Season 4 Champions Cup Knockout Stage


And in the knockouts, Mack had a solid run where she defeated Darryan, Chris, and Luke, until finally going up against truly the final boss of this season: Zach. And Zach proved his League A win wasn't a fluke by putting up 115 points in 2 weeks against her 43.

Season 4 League Tables

Okay, finally onto the league results! Only took me like 3 days of writing but we're here so let's get started!

Season 4 League A Table

Season 4 League B Table


The Champions and the All-Time Tables

Obviously, have to highlight Zach's 6-point League A win and 90 PF gap above the next highest, in contrast with John's 1-point League B win and 2nd highest PF, but where do they stack up against past seasons?

  • Zach: Lowest Points total for a league winner (78)
    • S3 MatthewR (89), S1 Darryan (88), S2 Matthew (82), S4B John (82)
  • Zach: 8th highest Points total in a season
    • The above winning managers, plus S3 2nd place Kevin (82), S4B 2nd place Matthew2 (81), S1 2nd place Matthew (79)
    • He was also tied with S3 3rd place Luke (78)
  • Zach: 2nd highest PF total in a season (1731)
    • S2 Matthew (1912)
  • John: 4th highest Points total in a season (82)
    • S3 MatthewR (89), S1 Darryan (88), S2 Matthew (82)
  • John: 4th highest PF total in a season (1673)
    • S2 Matthew (1912), S4A Zach (1731), S4B Matthew2 (1716)
    • A note here: this season did introduce defcon, so this one and future seasons are expected to have more PF
    • In fact, in the top 20 PF scores of all time, 13 of them came from this season - and 8 of the top 10 did!
    • I am the only person to have 2 scores in the top 10 (3 if you count Matthew2), and neither of them came from this season (S2- 1912, S1- 1621)

Yet the question remains, how will this affect Lebron's legacy? Well, let's take a look at the all-time tables heading into this season:

All-Time Table (Pre-S4)

All-Time PPW Table (Pre-S4)

All-Time PPG Table (Pre-S4)


For those of us who can't remember these sorts of things, PPW is PF per week, and PPG is Points per week. So, starting with the all-time table, I headed into this season with my solid 18 point lead over MatthewR and +1000 PD, Kevin/Dylan/Darryan were within 2 points from 3rd-5th, and Luke was closing in fast with 38 less matches under his belt.

The PPW table also led by me, with Luke unsurprisingly hot on my tail as the only other manager averaging over 40 PPW. Matt's solid first season put him in the top 3, ahead of MatthewR, Dylan, Darryan, and Zach.

PPG looks pretty similar, the only notable difference being Gavin sneaking his way up to 5th (uh oh).

All-Time Table (Post-S4)

All-Time PPW Table (Post-S4)

All-Time PPG Table (Post-S4)


So, where are we now? Well, considering MatthewR and I finished the season on the same number of points, not a lot of movement there. I guess I can make a little comparison list here of the top 10 or so:

  1. Matthew (-) 294
  2. MatthewR (-) 276
  3. Darryan (+2) 256
  4. Kevin (-1) 252
  5. Dylan (-1) 250
  6. Jesse (+1) 232
  7. Luke (+1) 215
  8. Scott (-2) 207
  9. Zach (+2) 176
  10. Andrew (-) 168
  11. Gavin (-2) 145

Well, I did 11. Some other notables though include John debuting at #16 (with Matthew2 at #17), along with Alex, Chris, Morgs, and Mack taking spots 19-22. Also, I want to shoutout MatthewR's 9 draws in 4 seasons. That's commitment.

Okay, moving onto PPW, where Matthew2 and John take the top spots (for now). Alex, Chris, and Mack also landed in top 6 spots, with me being the only manager with more than 38 games of the 6, being in 3rd. Luke sits at next highest PPW in 7th, followed by Zach, MatthewR, and Darryan. I think to get rid of some of the defcon noise (although I definitely am not knocking our new managers because they did great), I'll do a comparison of the League A heads here:

  1. Matthew (-) 42.84 (-0.59) - 152 played
  2. Luke (-) 40.79 (+0.07) - 114 played
  3. Zach (+4) 39.77 (+2.89) - 114 played
  4. MatthewR (-) 39.11 (+0.37) - 152 played
  5. Darryan (+1) 38.95 (+1.41) - 152 played
  6. Matt (-3) 38.95 (+0.19) - 76 played
  7. Dylan (-2) 38.65 (+1.09) - 152 played
  8. Kevin (+2) 37.43 (+1.81) - 152 played
  9. Gavin (-) 35.27 (-0.9) - 114 played
  10. Jesse (+4) 33.76 (+2.17) - 152 played
  11. Scott (+1) 33.59 (+0.57) - 152 played
  12. Coop (+5) 32.92 (+2.55) - 76 played

Some observations here include the huge jumps up by Zach (+2.89), Coop (+2.55), and Jesse (+2.17). It seems like Zach made his jump up to the top tier of managers, while Coop and Jesse have been righting the ship. Kevin (+1.81) and Darryan (+1.41) also saw solid increases following some up and down from previous seasons. And interestingly, the only 2 managers who decreased their PPW is me (-0.59) and Gavin (-0.9). Oops, guess my first 3 seasons were too good.

And onto PPG! Which of course looks pretty similar to PPW, especially with John and Matthew2 at the top following their top 6 all-time single season point totals. And honestly, I tried finding some interesting things but only came up with a couple bullet points that weren't even that interesting. This chart is just too similar to PPW so I think the most cool thing about it is seeing how our new managers measured up against the old heads' average seasons.

League A Tables

Season 4 League A Table

Season 4 League A Performance Table

Season 4 League A Luck Table


Okay, our first set of tables, starting with League A. And right off the bat, we had a pretty clear top 3 between Zach, Jesse, and Darryan. Which, if you would have asked me who would be the third between Zach and Darryan, probably wouldn't have chose Jesse. But that's the beauty of FPL, anyone can ~~get lucky~~pick up players who score lots of points and win you matches. Enough joking, he played a great season and won when Darryan couldn't and finished in the top 2. Then, we had a very strong contingent of managers from 4th to 8th who finished the season 1 point apart. Which is reminiscent of Season 1, where we had 4 managers within 1 point from 4th to 7th. Kevin was the standout of us 5 though, with 1628 PF (3rd most), followed by a ~70 PF gap between the next highest PF (Dylan, 1593) and the lowest (MatthewR, 1528).

Following the top 8 was Matt all on his lonesome, with sub-1500 PF and a pretty solid gap ahead of Coop and Scott, who were sub-1400, and then poor Gavin, with not only the lowest PF but the highest PA as well.

Which is a great segue into the Performance and Luck tables, where the most notable entry is Jesse's 7th highest PF, least PA, and 2nd place overall finish. Otherwise though, the Performance table aligned almost perfectly with the League Table. The Luck table, however, had a little bit more intrigue going on. Jesse and Coop were by far the luckiest managers with 1411 and 1422 PA, respectively (Coop was ~50 PA less than Zach in 3rd), Gavin was by far the unluckiest manager with over 1700 PA, and most managers sat in the ~1500 +-20 range. Matt and Luke were slightly unluckier than average by 40-70 points, which was about the same gap that Zach had under the average. So, that's approximately 2.5 points per week that Luke went up against when compared to Zach. And Gavin's PA averaged almost 45 points per week. oof.

Season 4 League A xP Table

Season 4 League A All Managers Table


The next couple of tables to look at are our remaining Copium tables, the xP and advanced xP (or, all managers) tables. As a quick reminder, the xP table is manager vs average every week, while the All Managers table is managers vs every other manager every week. So xP is a measure of consistently beating the average, while the AM table is an actual count of how many managers you would have beaten every week.

Anyway, Zach unsurprisingly topped both of these tables with a pretty sizeable 6 point gap (also, how much he won the league by). After that though, these tables have a bit of a disagreement on who was better. Here's a list so we can visualize it (amP is all managers points):

  1. Zach: 78 pts - 71 xP (1) - 73.18 amP (1)
  2. Jesse: 72 pts - 51 xp (8) - 59.27 amP (6)
  3. Darryan: 70 pts - 63 xP (4) - 66 amP (2)
  4. Kevin: 64 pts - 65 xP (2) - 63.36 amP (4)
  5. Luke: 64 pts - 65 xP (3) - 59.09 amP (7)
  6. Dylan: 63 pts - 62 xP (5) - 63.73 amP (3)
  7. Matthew: 63 pts - 56 xP (6) - 59.36 amP (5)
  8. MatthewR: 63 pts - 54 xP (7) - 58.55 amP (8)
  9. Matt: 49 pts - 47 xP (9) - 53.64 amP (9)
  10. Coop: 42 pts - 34 xP (11) - 41.36 amP (11)
  11. Scott: 40 pts - 40 xP (10) - 43.36 amP (10)
  12. Gavin: 13 pts - 31 xP (12) - 38.45 amP (12)

Alright, so the tables are great at determining the 1st and last placed teams. Other than that, due to the fine margins of FPL and the fact that 1 point or 1 matchup can change the table so drastically, it's hard to use these as a predictor past general place. For example, Darryan's actual finish was 3rd and he finished 4th on xP and 2nd on AM, Kevin finished 4th when he was 2nd on xP and 4th on AM, and Luke finished 5th with a 3rd place xP finish and 7th on AM. So the ranges are for the most part correct, but you still end up with Jesse's 2nd place finish while 8th on xP and 6th on AM. Or even in a lesser sense, Dylan's 6th place finish at 5th on xP and 3rd on AM. And Dylan finished in the top half of the luck table.

So all that to say, FPL is a crapshoot sometimes. You have to play the cards you're dealt and sometimes you're gonna lose a lot or win a lot despite your actions week to week.

League B Tables

Season 4 League B Table

Season 4 League B Performance Table

Season 4 League B Luck Table


Okay, switching gears to League B so that they don't get too bored and close out of the tab to never return. As mentioned about a thousand times throughout the season, the top 2 race between me and John was extraordinarily close (and definitely the closest title race this league has seen). The promotion spots were also well fought for, with Alex putting up a solid 72 points and a 3rd place finish. Chris rounded out the top 4 on 70 points, while 5th place Morgs, 6th place ZachA, and 7th place Mack were all between 66 and 63 points. Emma rounded out the top 8 a ways behind Mack, yet also a solid way ahead of Cara and Andrew who finished in 9th and 10th. Travis and Divya were the unlucky souls to take the bottom couple of spots.

And taking a look at the first couple of copium tables, not a lot different from the league table. I was slightly ahead of John on PF, Mack and Morgs swapped places, and Andrew underperformed his PF by a couple spots as well, but nothing too crazy. The luck table does paint a bit of a picture though, with Alex being the main benefactor of low PA in League B, with ~200 less PA than Mack, who suffered the most (about 5 points per week against more). Cara and Andrew joined Mack in that "super unlucky" category, with over 1480 PA, while Morgs and John saw similar PA values to Alex.

Season 4 League B xP Table

Season 4 League B All Managers Table


Okay, these two tables are a lot less different than in League A. The only differences I can notice are:

  • Chris in 3rd in both of these (finished 4th)
  • Mack ahead of Alex on the xP table but not on the AM table

And really, that's it. Chris and Mack were the two managers most snubbed, with Chris surprisingly close to John in these tables and solidly ahead of Mack/Alex. Morgs also vastly overperformed her expected, with these tables putting her closer to Andrew than ZachA.

Manager of the Months

Alright, zooming in a little bit (and also speeding up maybe, I need to be finishing this soon lol), let's take a look at our Manager of the Months (Managers of the Month?).

  • August: Darryan and ZachA
  • September: Luke and Matthew2
  • October: Zach and John
  • November: Scott and Matthew2
  • December: Zach and Emma
  • January: Matt and Alex
  • February: Zach and John
  • March: Jesse and Morgs
  • April: Zach and Matthew2
  • May: Zach and John

That means our total counts per manager were:

  • Zach: 5
  • Matthew2: 3
  • John: 3
  • Darryan: 1
  • ZachA: 1
  • Luke: 1
  • Scott: 1
  • Emma: 1
  • Matt: 1
  • Alex: 1
  • Jesse: 1
  • Morgs: 1

I believe that is a record high for Manager of the Month wins in a season for Zach, beating the previous record of 3, co-held by Kevin and MatthewR in Season 3 plus Gavin in season 2! On top of that, nobody else in League A won more than 1, which goes to show just how dominant Zach's season was (and how up and down our other title contenders' seasons were).

In League B, the lion's share of Manager of the Month awards were given to Matthew2 and John, with 3 each. Which is pretty solid and honestly could've been way different considering how many of these were won on PF (5/10).

Just a sidenote here, I feel like usually I'd go into the Game Changers stats here, but to save time (especially because I didn't update the spreadsheet for the entire 2nd half of the season) I'll skip it for now. If I get a huge uproar I can throw together some stats and update the spreadsheet at a later date, but for now I'm gonna move on.

Stats Tables

Season 4 League A Gameweek Breakdown

Season 4 League B Gameweek Breakdown


Alright, starting with the Gameweek Breakdown table. The one that you've probably been completely unable to read for a lot of the season. Well don't worry, I'll take a more hi-res screenshot this time.

Anyway, let's dig into some stats

  • Highest Average Week:
    • League A: DGW33 - 57.17
    • League B: DGW33 - 50.5
    • League A (non-DGW): GW4 - 45.58
    • League B (non-DGW): GW15 - 42.5
  • Lowest Average Week:
    • League A: BGW34 - 32.08
    • League B: BGW34 - 28.5
    • League A (non-BGW): GW38 - 33.5
    • League B (non-BGW): GW38 - 30.42
  • Highest Score:
    • League A: DGW33 - Zach - 80 pts
    • League A (non-DGW): GW18 - MatthewR - 77 pts
    • League B: GW15, GW16, DGW33 - John, Travis, Matthew2 - 74 pts
  • Lowest Score:
    • League A: GW18, GW28 - Dylan, Gavin - 15 pts
    • League B: GW38 - Divya - 2 pts

Heads up, here's where I got back from my vacation and haven't looked at this in over a week and I kinda gotta wrap this up, so I might speed up some.

Anyway, check out these tables! There's some cool stuff, such as how in League A GW19, 8/12 managers scored in the 40s, or in League B GW22 8/12 managers scored in the 30s.

Season 4 League A Manager Breakdown

Season 4 League B Manager Breakdown


And moving onto the manager breakdowns, here's some cool things:

  • League A
    • Dylan scored in the 40s the highest of any manager (16)
    • Zach scored 50+ the most (14)
    • Darryan and Kevin each accomplished this 12 times
    • Every manager scored 50+ at least once
    • Darryan, Kevin, and Zach scored 60+ 6 times each
    • Coop and Gavin were the only managers unable to crack 60
    • Darryan, me, MatthewR, and Zach (twice) were the only managers to score 70+
    • Scott scored under 20 the most (3)
    • Dylan and Gavin did twice
    • Coop did not do this (interestingly)
    • Zach only had 2 scores in the 20s
    • Next least was Dylan and Luke (4)
  • League B
    • Cara scored in the 30s 20 times
    • Matthew2 and Alex scored 50+ the most (13)
    • Every manager scored 50+ in League B as well
    • Emma and Morgs were the only managers to not score 60+
    • John scored 70+ twice, and Matthew2, Travis, ZachA did once
    • You may recall that one of John's 70+ weeks and Travis's were vs me in back to back weeks
    • The highest low score was held by Alex, John, and Matthew2 (22)
    • John and Matthew2 only had 1 week in the 20s
    • The next lowest was Alex and Chris with 5

Timelines

Season 4 League A Position Timeline

Season 4 League B Position Timeline


Okay let's breeze through these ones:

  • League A
    • Dylan started well and slipped into the midtable
    • Zach did the opposite, flying out of midtable and making a home at the top
    • The fight between me/Luke/MatthewR/Dylan in the last ~10 weeks
    • Darryan finished how he started, in 3rd
  • League B
    • John pulled a Zach and went from 10th in GW6 to 2nd in GW13
    • Alex stumbled a little from GW9 to GW24 but locked in for the run in
    • ZachA was in a good spot until GW18 and then fell into the midtable scramble with Mack, Morgs, and Chris
    • Emma was flying from GW9 to GW20 but then settled into ~8th

And I'll just let you peruse the other timelines since they're about as you'd expect (and I'm selfishly saving time)

Season 4 League A Points Timeline

Season 4 League B Points Timeline


Season 4 League A Points For Timeline

Season 4 League B Points For Timeline


Alex's Corner (name in progress)

Not only did Alex make waves on the sporting side of things in his first season by securing promotion from League B, but he also put together a sick spreadsheet with a ton of stats and stuff, I definitely recommend taking a look and critiquing your own (or your friends') teams. Or, take a look at the curated list put together by Alex:

League A

  • Best Weekly Performances:

    • Total FWD Pts: 30 - Kevin - GW35 (Calvert-Lewin, Gyokeres, Joao Pedro)
    • PPFwd: 17 - Matthew - GW8 (Mateta)
    • PPFwd (when more than 1 FWD played): 13.5 - Kevin - GW2 (Gyokeres, Joao Pedro)
    • Total MID Pts: 42 - Scott - GW16 (B. Fernandes, Amad, Wilson, Neto)
    • PPMid: 10.5 - Scott - GW16
    • Total DEF Pts: 49 - Darryan - GW2 (Saliba, Timber, Calafiori, Spence)
    • PPDef: 12.25 - Darryan - GW2
    • Total GK Pts: 16 - Zach - GW27 (Dean Henderson)
    • Total Pts: 80 - Zach - GW33
    • Played Pts (no points missed): 70 - Matthew - GW26

  • Worst Weekly Performances:

    • Total FWD Pts: 0, Several Managers, Several Weeks
    • PPFwd: Same (obviously)
    • Total MID Pts: 1 - Gavin - GW38 (Wirtz and 3x 0 minutes)
    • PPMid: 0.25 - Gavin - GW38
    • Total DEF Pts: -1 - Coop - GW26 (Cucarella, Collins, O'Brien) and Gavin - GW34 (Hume, Kayode, Trippier)
    • PPDef: -0.33 - Coop - GW26 and Gavin - GW34
    • Total GK Pts: -3 - MatthewR - GW5 (Sanchez)
    • Total Pts: 15 - Dylan - GW18 and Gavin - GW28
    • Points Missed: 23 - Darryan - GW11 (Mamardashvili, Onana, Georginio, Ballard benched, Played Points 20)

League B

  • Best Weekly Performances:

    • Total FWD Pts: 27 - Matthew2 - GW21 (Mane, Evanilson, Thiago)
    • PPFwd: 16 - Chris - GW33 (Watkins)
    • PPFwd (when more than 1 FWD played): 12 - Matthew2 GW20 (Evanilson, Thiago)
    • Total MID Pts: 45 - John - GW15 (B. Fernandes, Szoboszlai, Grealish, Dewsbury-Hall)
    • PPMid: 11.25 - John GW15
    • Total DEF Pts: 37 - Chris GW9 (Truffert, Saliba, Van de Ven, Tarkowski, Acheampong)
    • PPDef: 10.67 - Travis GW16 (Gvardiol, Gusto, Virgil)
    • Total GK Pts: 16 - Morgs - GW27 (Dean Henderson)
    • Total Pts: 74 - John - GW15; Travis - GW16; Matthew2 - GW33
    • Played Pts (no points missed): 74 - John - GW15

  • Worst Weekly Performances:

    • Alex was too coward to write it out because it's all Divya (and if the more inactive managers are excluded it's all ZachA, somehow) which is nice of him but also Divya is a valued member of our league and we appreciate her efforts no matter what the stats are.
    • Oh but he did want to include this statistic:
    • Points Missed: 31 - John - GW32 (Mavropanos and Mateta benched, Played Points 51, he still won by 16)

Okay I'm not gonna lie I started looking through the spreadsheet for stats to add here that I found but honestly me picking out little bits and pieces doesn't do it justice. Go explore and look at your team and how it stacks up against other teams (especially the Draft Strategy Tracking pages (scroll all the way to columns AT-AW)). A huge shoutout again to Alex for his time and efforts in putting this together, genuinely super cool stuff!

Season 5

And finally, let's take our first peak into our fifth Game of Stones season! And it's absolutely insane I've been doing this for almost 5 years now. Hopefully this can continue for years and years and years and y'all never get bored of me spewing nonsense stats and soccer shit at you for 10+ months of the year.

Anyway, League A's (tentative) current roster is:

  1. Alex
  2. Chris
  3. Coop
  4. Darryan
  5. Dylan
  6. Jesse
  7. John
  8. Kevin
  9. Luke
  10. Matthew
  11. MatthewR
  12. Zach

*I've received word that Matt is not likely to return

And League B has:

  1. Andrew
  2. Cara*
  3. Divya*
  4. Emma
  5. Gavin
  6. Mack
  7. Morgs
  8. Scott
  9. Travis
  10. ZachA

*Haven't received a yes or no yet

I'm going to do my best to dissuade that asshole Matthew2 from joining next season, but in case he does he will be #11 with a new manager joining for #12. And, that manager has already been decided because this is a first come first serve sort of thing and we already have 2 new managers who have filled out the form. So if you have any friends who are stragglers and want the chance to be in League B should any additional managers drop out, tell them to fill out the form as soon as possible! It also helps me because I'm not really sure what the numbers for League C will look like at this point.

And lastly if you've made it this far I get to request you fill out the when2meet for the draft! It will (hopefully) take place over the weekend of August 15th and 16th so please fill it out at your convenience! Also before you fill it out double check the timezone because I'm not sure if it'll default to Pacific time or not.

Thank you all again for an incredible Season 4, I'm so hype we got to run promotion/relegation this season and I'm super excited for the future of the league!

See you in Season 5!