GW26: Patriots plant flag, Rambo bags 3

An increasingly rare report that lands at least the day before the actual matches start, does anyone have anything to say about it? Do they? Well? Right, let’s move on.

Top score this week was Keith Lambert’s The Lamb with 78 big ones. Points were spread around liberally, with Danilo, Doucoure, GroB, Salah and even goal-shy fop Lukaku chipping in. Keith’s haul saw him leap up to 7th from, I think, just outside the top ten the week previous, chapeu Keith.

At the other end of the fantasy wedge, Mark Winter’s Expecting Failure won’t have been surprised to score just 20 points. No Mahrez for Mark, at least his second highest scoring starter was his captain, but sadly his second highest scoring starter was Sterling, who scored 3. On the bench, reserve keeper Lossl scored 10 points, or 50% of the starting 11 put together. Oh dear.

At the top, after weeks of Bench Warmers FC showing the rest of us his suspicously pert behind, we have yet another new leader. Penfolds Patriots went top with 51 points, thanks in no small part to Captain Mo Salah delivering double his juicy 15 points. Dropping back to second was Gary Chapman’s GFC (C) who scored roughly the same amount of points as Trevor but had the misfortune to hand the captains armband to Sergio Aguero who delivered two times… two. Thanks for that Sergio.

Little other change in the top 10, a bit of nip and tuck, but a tawdry 28 points for Paul Hope’s English XI saw them drop two places to 8th. And my own dismal run of form saw Los Yobos clinging to the top 10 by two points. A small man in my position would point to Captain Kane missing a pen, my Palace defender being stretchered off after 20 minutes, and Marco Alonso being mysteriously dropped by a manager who appears to have seen how much cash he’ll get if he’s fired by Abramovich. And so I point to all those things.

Last and least, but with a rare ray of good news, Raymond Conley Smith’s Alasdairs Army scored a, relatively, mammoth 48 points to remind us all that he’s not finished yet. Salah and GroB providing the rump of the points.

On the actual football pitches of real life, top scorer as a player was Rambo Ramsey with useful scores also posted by newly moved Mkhitaryan and newly re-transferred from Barca Gerard Deulofeu. Interesting transfer options? Don’t ask me.

That’s your lot!

GW18: Wellesley Wander into 4th, King Kev gets the plaudits

So, one week away from the halfway point. The league may not be won in December, but it’s certainly taking shape and it’s unlike that any newcomers can break quickly into the top 5 and….

WAITTAGODDAMMINUTE!!!!! Who’s this romping up the league and breaking into the top 5  faster than Chris Froome straight after he’s received his latest asthma medication? It’s Andrew Donkin’s Wellesley Wanderers! The Wanderers top scored this week with a mighty 85 points, a good 30 points more than anyone else in the top 10.

So how did  he do it? Well it wasn’t the defence, that’s for sure. But the midfield was solid gold, 43 points coming courtesy of the combined talents of Liverpool City’s fab four; De Bruyne, Sterling, Coutinho and Salah. But the real coup de grace came with the inspired transfer of Wayne Rooney, and then making him captain. Rooney’s 13 points in his win over Swansea coming from a combo of a goal, 2 assists and 3 bonus points. Even missing a penalty (-2) didn’t stop him.

Elsewhere, another big score came from the other end of the table, Ricky’s Un Paquet a 40 Avec scoring 81 points. A wide range of scorers here, with 8 players scoring over 5 points. 32 of those points were scored by the hitherto unlikely front three of Lukaku, Benteke and Rooney.

32 points, sadly, was the total score of this weeks lowest scoring team, erstwhile frontrunner, Mike Pollard’s The Unconsoled. Thank god for Magic Mo, who’s captaincy and 8 points (doubled to 16) made up 50% of The Unconsoled’s total score.

Apart from those highs and lows, the top 3 remained the same as last week, with Bench Warmers FC maintaining top stop. My own Los Yobos continued their spiral down the league, stopping this week at 6th but already programming 9th in the sat nav for my next expected destination. At the bottom, Alasdair’s Army  remain adrift, 17 points off second last. Chin up Raymond!

That’s about all I can manage this week, as I battle heroically with a cold. Just time to remind you that there is a Friday game this week so the deadline is earlier than usual (18:45 on Friday).

Now, where’s the fuckin lemsip?

GW16: Kane, Salah, hurrah… Whatever will be will be…

The weekend is barely over and yet already the next game week Brighton and Hove Albions into view. The game weeks come thick and fast this time of year, and who else encapsulates those two attributes better than Mike Pollard, manager of The Unconsoled. Not surprisingly Mike didn’t let me down, and filed his report by return of post…

This game week saw a return to form for Spurs and the continued success of Mo Salah in front of goal.  As a result, the high point scorers in Fray Bentos had Salah or Kane in their teams, usually as captain.  Top scorer, Andy Dawkins, had both players and amassed an impressive 75 points, but risks running seriously foul of the Trades Description Act with his team “Bottom by Christmas”.

Well done to Thomas Ashman, whose Benchwarmers retained top spot with 67 points (Kane and Salah).  An honourable mention for Alison Breakwell’s Raised by Wolves, who bagged the second highest points tally of 72, thanks to Kane and Ottamendi.  As if Man City don’t have enough goal scorers in their side, Ottamendi now has 5 goals and is the 2^nd equal rated defender, points-wise.

Morata shows off how many goals he’s scored lately.

But plenty of the current hot picks failed to deliver for their managers – notably Morata, Aguero, DeBruyne and Lukaku.  GW15 saw many of those teams slide down the table, including my own Unconsoled – that’s real commitment to the name, Andy Dawkins!  My score was not helped by Morata, RIcharlison and Abraham missing golden chances to score when clean through on goal.

On to the actual matches, 3 cracking derbies on paper produced only a few goals and two shock results – Chelsea losing to WHU and Everton getting a draw at Anfield.  The verbal fireworks between managers was also muted, although Mourinho managed to get in a nice pre-match dig when he accused the City players of diving.  Jose had obviously forgotten about Ashley Young in his team, but he was proved more or less correct when Walker and Jesus showed off their diving skills.  Despite that, Man City probably deserved to win and the PL title race looks over already.

Group photo from latest Premier League Managers convention.

The manager merry-go-round is working overtime, but I enjoy having characters like Roy Hodgson and Sam Allardyce back in the PL.  I’d like to see more managers who resemble their teams in some way.  Arsenal and Arsene lead the way, of course, although they’re sometimes known as Wenger’s Whingers.  We’ve got Klopp at the Kop, and I look forward to the arrival of Jurgen’s brother Klippety.  Man Utd are known as the Red Devils – not, as you might think, a reflection of their attacking play, but a tribute to the bright red face of Sralex Ferguson caught in mid rant.  I just looked up the English translation of “Guardiola”, hoping it meant something like enormous sense of entitlement, or stupid money, but apparently it means “booth”, as in ticket booth, although Man City did have a player called Tommy Booth in the 70s…….

Anyway, Roy Hodgson was very disappointed he didn’t get to see Santa at the North Pole this Xmas – he just couldn’t get past Iceland.  Which brings us to the World Cup draw and the chance to see which unexpected minnow England can lose to this summer.  Having been recently beaten by Australia in cricket and rugby league, it would be nice if we could get some revenge in the most important sport worldwide.

Poor sod.

Australia beat Syria to qualify for the World Cup finals, and Syria had to play their home match in Malaysia due to their domestic “troubles”.  The USA will not be in Russia this summer, having been knocked out by Trinidad and Tobago.  This meant a sacking for the wonderfully named US coach, Bruce Arena.  If he’d taken them to a World Cup final, just imagine what the new national stadium could have been called!  The World Cup will probably be won by one of the usual suspects, but we’re bound to have some shock results along the way.  One reporter tried to explain how football actually works at the 1998 world Cup: “Norway beat Brazil, who beat Chile, who drew with Italy, who beat Norway.  Therefore, clearly Norway are a much better side than Norway”.