GWs 41 & 42 – Review

It’s been another highly entertaining week for many of you here on The Ultimate Goals. The weekend’s action (GW 41) produced a mixture of great and ghastly scores for our players that typifies the nature of this game, while scores from midweek (GW 42) reflect your solid selections on x2 and a trend of solid rather than spectacular totals.

We start at the top of GW41’s Global Weekly Table, where Andy Roome shares first place with Will Bowen, who makes top spot for the second week running. Both wisely selected 5 goal pair Manchester Utd (the most chosen side with 88 picks) and FC Porto (58) in their x6 and x7 places, plus 4 goal Braga (46) on x8 to yield 97 of their 142 points! Nicely done both of you! The other two teams to net five times at the weekend were Reading and Bodo Glimt (of the Norwegian top division). Throw in any 4 goal teams on x2, x3 and x4 and you would have secured the fabled Perfect 7 score of 166 and a cool £1000!

It was clearly a productive week for many of you, as 34 players dined in Club 100 while 46% of you beat the weekend’s average score of 46. But the great stats must be balanced out by the bad, and unfortunately 27 unlucky players recorded minus scores, the worst for four gameweeks! It’s pretty obvious that goalless Manchester City were the main culprits here, their surprise 1-0 loss at Southampton meant that they were responsible for 16 of the 27 reversals – much to the annoyance of those of you chose them to start your ladder on x2!

On to the midweek action then where, quite extraordinarily, Will Bowen took the top spot for a THIRD consecutive gameweek! What’s your secret Will?! Can you make it four in a row? It was ‘sure-to-score’ Liverpool (46 picks) starting Will off nicely on x2, with the only 5 goal team of the gameweek, Man City (79), on x6 quickly rediscovering their goalscoring touch! Throw in 4 goal scorers CSKA Moscow (17 picks – the Russian Premier League making its debut and proving reasonably popular) and Young Boys (heavily backed with 66 picks) on x7 and x8 and you’ve got the basis for a hefty score! And hefty it was; at 112 Will’s score sees him safely into Club 100 with 5 other players, but still 31 points behind the Perfect 7 score for GW 42.

At the foot of the table just 5 players recorded minus scores, the lowest in a single gameweek this entire season, while 60% of you managed to beat the average score of 56, well done!

So which teams are being picked to reflect this sort of form? Well for GW 41 Manchester Utd and Juventus each occupied three spaces on the matrix, joined by Liverpool on x8, while in midweek the spaces were shared more evenly. Manchester City were picked most to get the ball rolling on x2, with Brentford popular to keep players climbing on x3. An Italian duo of Atalanta and Lazio took up x4 and x5 with Young Boys extremely popular on x6 (42 of their 66 picks came here!) Barcelona ended the matrix by taking up x7 and x8, their disappointing 1 goal return against Espanyol probably the reason why so few of you made Club 100!

That’s it for this week’s round-up of Ultimate Goals action. Remember to get those selections submitted in good time for the weekend’s early fixtures. Norwich host West Ham and Newcastle travel to Watford for the early Premier League kick-offs. In the Championship, Reading make the journey to Charlton, while Derby County host Brentford. Good luck!

– Samuel Wilkinson