The FTBL ranking of veteran midfielders has undergone change, with Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs grabbing the leadership from Hamburg’s former Brazil international Ze Roberto (pictured).
Ze Roberto has been running the show in this category since last August, at times widening the gap with his nearest rival to more than 30 rating points! His overall FTBL rating even peaked at 130 rating points, an enormous achievement for any player beyond 35.
But Giggs has been patiently eating away at the difference, finally overtaking Ze Roberto this week. But the change in the leadership was quite uneventful: one of Ze Roberto’s most productive games, in which he earned a whopping 25.5 rating points, was simply dropped from the 18-month period usually taken into consideration when computing the rating in our system. The system was factoring in 10% of the rating points earned in that game in computing Ze Roberto’s overall rating. That 10% has now turned to 0.
But the Brazilian has a perfect chance to claim back the top spot if he can pull in decent numbers in his next 5 games. In fact, Giggs is the one with the back against the wall, as he will have to “defend” 20 rating points more than Ze Roberto in that stretch. So, we predict that the Brazilian will return the leadership in the ranking as early as this coming weekend and will remain there up to the beginning of November. We predict that Giggs will lose approximately 15 rating points in that interval and will retreat to the 90-point region.
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