GW 29 – Review
So what did you make of that? The FA Cup fixtures available for selection at the weekend were always going to be a popular choice – and for good reason! Runaway Premier League leaders Liverpool were backed by 75 of you to do the business at Shrewsbury Town and were rewarded with 2 goals (full credit to The Shrews for that thrilling comeback of course), while a whopping 99 of you saw Man City’s thumping of Fulham coming (the 4-0 scoreline was the least to be expected after Tim Ream’s 6th minute dismissal for The Cottagers). However, it was the red side of Manchester who really piled up the points, but with Utd in poor league form it’s little surprise that just 31 of you backed The Red Devils at Tranmere Rovers. A flurry of first half goals left the result in no doubt, before Greenwood’s 56th minute penalty gave Utd a sixth and a spot in the ‘Perfect 7’ combination for gameweek 29. One Premier League side who certainly weren’t going to feature there was Newcastle Utd, who ruined the weekend of plenty of you by failing to score past League One Oxford Utd. The FA Cup regularly throws up these surprise results!
Sharing the position for top scorers at the weekend were Falkirk (52 selections), who scored 4 goals in the last ten minutes to sink Forfar 6-0 in the Scottish 3rd tier. After that there were a handful of 4 goal teams that contributed to the ‘Perfect 7’; Manchester City have already been mentioned, Livingston (0 picks!) came from behind to see off Hamilton 4-2 away from home, while Raith Rovers (just 2 picks) edged a 7-goal thriller at home to Montrose and League One Portsmouth beat Championship strugglers Barnsley 4-2 at Fratton Park. Throw any other 3 goal team into the mix on x2 and you’ve got yourself a perfect score of 168 and that £1,500 jackpot! Closest to that mark was Heather Roome, who topped this week’s Global League Table. Both Falkirk and Man Utd were in there on x6 and x7, with Manchester City on x8. Heather scored an incredible 135 points to pip second placed Dale Bayford by just a single point and land herself top of the pile, with her name first on the Club 100 guest list, alongside 13 others. Well done Heather!
Other highly picked teams this week included Celtic and Dundee Utd, with 107 and 67 selections respectively, while Rangers were a choice for 56 of you. Cove Rangers remain a consistently popular choice with 69 selections and Airdrieonians were backed 37 times, with their 0-0 draw against Stranraer coming at a cost! As for the most popular teams on each multiplier, it was Celtic who bookended the matrix x2 and x8 whilst also being the most selected on x5. Scottish clubs Dundee Utd, Falkirk and Cove Rangers in that order filled the x3, x4 and x6 spots, while Manchester City were most popular on x7. We had 22 minuses this week but it could have been so much worse, as there were more than 70 minus scores as Saturday drew to a close, until the late intervention of Dundee Utd in particular! Following Sunday’s ‘free for all’ in terms of goals, we ended the weekend with an average score of 32. Well done to the 39% of you who beat that!
That’s it from me this week. Remember to get those selections in for the next round of fixtures. The weekend’s early kick offs are Chelsea’s trip to Leicester City in the Premier League top four battle, while Hull City host Brentford in the Championship play off race. Good luck and happy scoring!
– Samuel Wilkinson
