GW 12 – Ones to Watch
Ally: After the promised goals in the Scottish League Cup largely failed to materialise in the expected quantities last weekend, this gameweek sees league action resume in the top divisions of England and Scotland after the international break.
Kicking things off for me this week is the League One clash which sees Peterborough United welcome Blackpool to London Road. The hosts are no strangers to these pages as they tend to score plenty of goals, but they are also prone to the odd slip up too, as a number of players (39 to be precise) can testify as recently as last week when they fell to a surprise 2-0 defeat to Crewe. However they are a different beast on home territory having won 4 games out of 5 in the league, plus a comprehensive 4-2 defeat of Fulham’s U21s in the League Cup to boot, scoring 18 goals in the process at an average of 3.00 per game. That would tend to suggest they aren’t missing the goals of last season’s leading marksman Ivan Toney, who moved to Brentford for £10m in the summer and is now looking every bit a top quality striker at Championship level. Visitors Blackpool are on a four match winning streak themselves, albeit two of those have been in cup competitions, but in 9 away trips since the restart the Tangerines have kept only 2 clean sheets, both in cup competitions. On that basis I’m expecting The Posh to make home advantage count and get back to their goalscoring ways.
Staying in the east of England, I’m dropping two divisions to the National League for my second tip as the game between King’s Lynn and Dover has caught my attention. The main reason for this is the 9 league games that The Linnets have played this season have featured an incredible 38 goals, albeit the Norfolk side have only scored 14 of those. The lack of organisation at the back is slightly surprising given that their manager is former Norwich City defensive stalwart Ian Culverhouse, but it is still enough to see them comfortably occupy mid table, and their goalscoring exploits put them joint third in the league on that front. Half of those goals have come in their 4 home games, but the visitors from Kent have conceded a whopping 22 goals in their 8 league fixtures so far, a feat surpassed only by King’s Lynn themselves, and they have lost all 3 away matches so far. If you want entertainment this weekend, this could well be the place to be this weekend with 66 goals in the 17 matches these sides have featured in, at an average of 3.88 goals per game but I’m expecting the East Anglians to come out on top here.
Good luck with your selections!