GW 11 – Review

Gameweek 11 brought our second ‘international week’ of the season, meaning a return to the fold for the fiendishly erratic National North and South divisions, as well as the equally devilish Scottish League Cup fixtures. These rounds nearly always throw up a few surprises, as well as some profitable high scores. It’s normally advisable to do your research to make it big in these gameweeks and also help avoid a dramatic dip in points!

It does indeed look like that research was done by plenty of you too! The highest score recorded was a lovely 124  points (84% of the P7) by Richard Fulwood. A smattering of three and four goal sides made up most of his matrix, astute picks of NLN Gloucester City (25 selections) and NLS Eastbourne Borough (20) raking in 60 points alone on x7 and x8. Richard’s party in Club 100 was a fairly exclusive event, as just two other players, Will Bowen and Dale Bayford, received invites (Dale by the skin of his teeth with 100!) Although not many of you made it to a century, an average score of 39 (with half of you beating that) and only 14 minus scores to report reflects a solid weekend’s Ultimate Goals yield!

If your brain works like a calculator, you may have worked out that the Perfect 7 jackpot could have been won with a score of 148 points. (Alternatively you can always keep track of this on the P7 page as it’s updated live during the gameweek!) Sutton Utd’s (18 picks) 5-1 win over King’s Lynn Town saw them top the P7 ladder as the only 5 goal team, with any 4 goal side in the remaining multipliers. Quite a difference from its predecessor, which saw a mighty P7 score of 219!! So high-scoring teams were pretty thin on the ground, but which teams found the net four times?

Alloa Athletic (24 picks and 2-0 down with 20 minutes remaining!), Livingston (47) and Hibs (16) were the Scottish League Cup sides to bag four, while Fleetwood Town and Tranmere Rovers each scored four away from home in Leagues One and Two respectively. Gloucester City and Bradford PA (0) shared the points in a humdinger 4-4 draw in the National North, while Eastbourne Borough and Dorking Wanderers (14 picks) both hit four in their National South home games.

However, the most picked side at the weekend was Cove Rangers with 67 of you backing them, a disappointing 1-0 victory against Forfar not what the majority of you were hoping for, with The Wee Rangers also the most popular x6 selection overall. On x2 and x3 it was Hull City who stole the show as most players’ preferred ‘banker’ side, with Livingston and Ayr Utd (chosen 43 times) most popular on x4 and x5. Raith Rovers were seen by many of you as the likely high scorers, being the most picked on x7 and x8, but Rovers failed to fire as they stuttered to a 1-0 win at Cowdenbeath.

The return of the big boys in GW 12 will see early kick-offs of Newcastle Utd v Chelsea in the Premier League, Bournemouth v Reading in a top of the table Championship clash, Gillingham v Charlton in League One and Crawley v Carlisle in League Two (a fair old trek for the Northumbrians there!) Who’s prepared to back any of these teams in a bid to profit from some early goals? Good luck and happy scoring!

-Sam Brooke-Wilkinson