Meet The Man Behind The Fantasy Football Leaks That Have Caused Clubs To Ban FPL
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A 32-year-old man from Norway is behind the Fantasy Football leaks that are causing a serious stir at the moment.
A few days we told you how Fantasy Premier League is becoming an issue for clubs and was even discussed at board level.
It came after an injury to Aston Villa skipper Jack Grealish was known before it was officially confirmed after a number of his teammates transferred him out of their sides prior to the game against Leicester City.
The Athletic reported that Matt Targett, Conor Hourihane [on loan at Swansea City] and Neil Taylor all transferred the 25-year-old out of their team, as did physio Rob Marshall.
Foxes manager Brendan Rodgers admitted he was aware of rumours that Villa's main man might be out, while a fuming Villa boss Dean Smith called for an investigation.
And all of this started because Villa fan Henning tweeted about it. Earlier this month he set up a Twitter account to update fans on FPL transfers and changes made by "insiders" - players and coaches.
The page has over 35,000 followers and uses a bot to monitor the activity from those in the know. Updates are then posted minutes before the transfer deadline.
:warning::small_red_triangle_down: [AVL] Multiple insiders transferred OUT Grealish!
- FPL Insider (@insider_fpl) February 19, 2021
○ [02-19] Matt Targett
○ [02-19] Conor Hourihane
○ [02-19] Neil Taylor
○ [02-19] Scott (1st Team Performance Analyst)
○ [02-18] Rob (Physio)#FPL #GW25
https://t.co/dklQQPnYId pic.twitter.com/sPgX9FwQDv
- FPL Insider (@insider_fpl) February 21, 2021
Although he regrets it involved the team he supports, Henning is adopting a "sorry not sorry" attitude over the situation and his tweet only confirmed rumours that were doing the rounds.
"I can understand the frustration but this is already available information," he told BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat.
"I'm just structuring it and packaging it in tweets.
"They know that opposition players play fantasy football weekly and I would imagine big clubs all have some kind of analyst that has access to this data already."
Villa made the decision to ban their players from playing Fantasy Football going forward.
Henning, who is just outside the top 100,000 in overall FPL standings, explained how he came to cause chaos in the Premier League with his algorithm.
:warning::small_red_triangle_down: [2021-02-19] [LEE] Liam Cooper has transferred OUT their own teammate Alioski! #FPL #GW25
- FPL Insider (@insider_fpl) February 19, 2021
:warning::white_check_mark: [CRY] Multiple insiders transferred IN van Aanholt!
- FPL Insider (@insider_fpl) February 13, 2021
○ [02-12] Frazer (Fitness Coach)
○ [02-12] James Tomkins#FPL #GW24
"At the start it was very manual and tedious," he added.
"I had to spend hours on Google, LinkedIn and Football Manager 21 to find staff and even junior players.
"It's a lot different between the clubs because some of the clubs have almost official team leagues.
"Wolves have a league where it's basically all the first team players. Everton had funny names that you really had to be clever to find out who they were.
"I just had to list it and create some logic in the bot to pick up the transfer activity and connect it to Twitter".
Finding players on FPL is much easier than one might think, with fans recently finding Nicklas Bendtner's team.
Ironically named 'Draftlord' in reference to his 'Lord' moniker, Bendtner has 1722 points at the time of writing and is ranked 199th in the world.
Featured Image Credit: FPL/Henning
Topics: Aston Villa, Football, Jack Grealish, Fantasy Football, Fantasy Premier League
