GW 43 – Review

Welcome back to your weekly review of all the Ultimate Goals stats you could dream of! It was another enthralling weekend of action, you know the score, let’s get going!

As usual, we’ll start with the weekend’s Global League Table. Will Bowen’s incredible three week stay at the top is ended by Lee Thacker, who tops the table for the second time this season (the first coming all the way back in GW 2). Liverpool (78 picks) and Barcelona (66) each scored once for Lee on x2 and x3, while Rosenborg (19 picks), Krasnodar (7) and Sevilla (56) kept him climbing the multiplier ladder, before securing a whopping 82 points from smart picks of 6 goal Bodo Glimt (56) and 5 goal Manchester City (the most chosen side with 86 selections) on x7 and x8. All this produced a cool 126 points and the top seat at the table in Club 100 – with 12 other players joining Lee there. Nicely done all of you and well done to the 45% of you who bested the weekend’s solid average of 39 points!

However, no one came close to the Perfect 7 score of 158, a total made possible by Bodo Glimt and Manchester City’s goal frenzy, who were joined by the far less popular Real Oviedo and, unbelievably, West Ham and Bournemouth (with just one selection apiece!) who each netted four times. Any 3 goal teams on x2 and x3 would have taken you to that magic 158 figure and a tidy £1000! But with no player getting close to that total, who did you back to do the business?

Predictably, Liverpool were the most picked side at the foot of the multiplier matrix, while Manchester City occupied the x3, x6 and x7 spots. A Spanish duo of Barcelona and Atletico Madrid were most popular on x4 and x5, with Bodo Glimt wisely chosen the most on x8. The 24 of you who put them there clearly anticipated those 6 goals coming!

As for the bad news, it was a horrid week for Joanne Tarpley and Mel Hallworth who both recorded the first minus 80 scores for eight gameweeks. Bad times! They’re joined by 12 others who lost points this week, with Chelsea (17 picks) and Cagliari (7) the teams upsetting most players’ scores.

That’s it for the weekend’s stats review. GW 44 is spiced up by the presence of an Arsenal versus Manchester City FA Cup semi-final fixture. How will you fair with the magic of the Cup to consider? We also have the welcome return of the National League and NL North and South, by way of the long awaited play-offs. Meanwhile, in the Championship’s early kick-offs, Stoke City host Brentford while Wigan Athletic head to Charlton Athletic off the back of that incredible 8-0 humiliation of Hull City on Tuesday. Will that tempt a few unexpected Wigan selections out of a few of you? Good luck and happy scoring!

Good luck!

– Samuel Wilkinson