Aventum Fantasy Football - Manager of the Month February

Already we are into March, and fast approaching the business end of the Premier League season. It’s building to an exciting conclusion, Liverpool just 6 points behind Manchester City as of the end February, with a game in hand on the champions. It’s tight too in the Aventum Fantasy League. Just 25 points separate the top two, as both took advantage of Mo Salah’s double set of home matches in Gameweek 26 against Norwich and Leeds to score well into the triple digits. Like many managers in the league, they recognised the golden opportunity to use their triple captain chip on Salah for these inviting fixtures, and scored 84 points through Salah alone. Of those managers that didn’t triple captain Salah, most at least limited their losses by captaining him, although probably still tumbled a few places down the table.

However, all is not lost for those still with their triple captain chip intact. The Premier League table continues to have a disjointed look due to teams having played a various different number of matches, due to all the postponements earlier in the season. Therefore, future double-match gameweeks remain a certainty for most teams, including Liverpool, meaning Salah could yet have another gameweek where he scores even more than the 28 he bagged in Gameweek 26.

Doing well in February is great way to fire yourself back into contention for the overall top prize of an Apple Watch, and so it proved for this time around. Scoring 10 points more than his closest challengers in February, Leighton Carhart of Reg Hambly Insurance Brokers had an incredible month, amassing 352 points in total, and shooting himself up into the top 5 overall in the process. Congratulations Leighton, a bottle of champagne is on its way to you.

For almost the whole season it has been a game of cat and mouse between first placed Mark Horgan, and second placed Steven Hale. Having moved into with 14 points of Horgan’s lead by the end of January, February saw Hale fall back to 25 points off the lead. With 11 weeks to go though it’s still anyone’s to win, especially with some big scoring gameweeks coming up. There’s still time for many managers to make moves on top spot, albeit the big scores have to start registering sooner rather than later.