GW 20 – Review

Well December has got off to a pretty good start hasn’t it? If gameweek 20 is anything to go by, the rest of this month could be a very productive one for many of you. But of course, TUG doesn’t comply with rules like these – there’s a long and busy month of fixtures to plough through. For now we’ll get straight into December’s first weekend of Ultimate Goals action!

Congratulations to Tom Roome on being this month’s first weekly Global Table topper! Tom opted for popular choice Liverpool (94 selections) to start him off on x2 and wasn’t disappointed, thanks to a 3 goal return. A daring choice of 2 goal Newcastle (4 picks) on x3 kept Tom climbing up the multiplier ladder, while 3 goal Peterhead and 1 goal Cove Rangers took our top scorer to his higher multipliers, and boy did they do well! 3 goal Dunfermline (19 picks) sat on x7, sandwiched between West Brom (30) and Tottenham (67), who each netted 5 times to take Tom into Club 100 with a massive 120 point return!

Tom was joined by 9 others in the illustrious club in GW 20, while the average score for the week was a strong, if not spectacular, 36 points – 46% of you beating this total. There were few extraordinarily high scores, perhaps down to some ever-popular choices not firing on all cylinders; for example Manchester City (64 selections) only scored once in a 2-1 derby loss, a late goal at that, while Chelsea’s 18 TUG supporters only got a 1 goal return in their loss at Everton. 27 of you put misplaced faith in Oxford Utd, who failed to find the net in a league match for the first time since mid-September, while the same story rang true for the 40 of you who saw Rotherham Utd suffer a shock 1-0 loss at home to injury-hit Rochdale. National League leaders Barrow (59 selections) only scored once against 19th placed Aldershot, and 87 times chosen Dundee Utd might have been expected to produce more than 2 goals against bottom of the table Alloa Athletic. However, the 31 of you who backed form team Leicester City to do the business were not left wanting, as the Foxes netted 4 at Aston Villa, while another favoured team at the moment is Leeds Utd – 36 of you backed them here and they scored 2 second half goals to sink Huddersfield Town.

This week’s ‘Perfect 7’ was an especially tricky one to achieve, with only six teams scoring 4 or more. Tottenham Hotspur and West Bromwich Albion each scored 5 for your x7 and x8 spots, while Leicester City, Bristol Rovers, Stockport County and Brechin City were the only 4 goal teams. Throw in any 3 goal team on x2 and you’d have walked away with a high score of 153 and a juicy jackpot that’s now sitting at £1,400!

The bottom end of the table doesn’t look too bad compared to what we know is possible here in TUG! Just the 15 minus scores, made up of 10 minus 20s, 4 minus 40s and a single minus 60 from the unlucky Philip Wynne make up the foundations for the week’s Global League Table.

That’s it for this week’s Ultimate Goals analysis! GW 21’s early fixtures feature popular choice Liverpool hosting bottom-placed Watford, while West Brom travel to Birmingham City in West Midlands derby. Don’t forget to leave a comment and get those selections submitted in time for kick off! Have a great week!

– Samuel Wilkinson