GW 1 – Review

A big welcome to both our returning and new players alike, hopefully you enjoyed the opening round! The Ultimate Goals returned in style for the 2021/22 season, thanks to a cascade of goals throughout our available leagues and a large number of high scoring games. So without further ado, let’s crack on with the first gameweek review of the season!

It simply wouldn’t be right if we didn’t start by visiting the top of the Global Weekly League table upon our return, so I take great pleasure in announcing Mike Kokins as GW 1’s table-topper! Mike’s multiplier ladder made for very impressive reading, with all his teams scoring at least 3 times – what a way to begin! The best of the bunch was clearly 5-goal Cove Rangers (40 selections) and Manchester Utd (53), who stood out from the crowd on x5 and x7 respectively and propelled Mike to the summit of the table on 129 points. Nice going! It was a narrow win for the victor though, as there was fierce competition from Duncan Campbell and Michael Richards, who both bagged 127 points to make Mike sweat a little.

Cove Rangers and Manchester Utd were joined by Fulham (13 picks) in netting a fantastic 5 goals at the weekend, to make up the business end of the first Perfect 7 matrix of the season. West Ham Utd (just four selections) struck four times away at Newcastle Utd and were the only other named side in the matrix, meaning x2, x3 and x4 would have seen any 3-goal side round off a perfect score of 152 and bag that £7,777 jackpot prize!

Many of you will be very pleased with your start to the season, 42% of you beating a challenging average score of 39 points. Let’s hope there’s lots of fierce competition in your various Mini-Leagues this season to keep these averages high! It’s certainly been a promising way to open up proceedings on the ton front too, as 13 of you cracked the code to the doors of Club 100. There’s not too much to report on in terms minus scores either, with just 12 of you starting the season off in the red – the first gameweek of the season an often result in far worse devastation! It’s OK though, it happens to the best of our players and there’s a whole season ahead to get back on track!

Let’s turn to the selection statistics then and see who won favour for most players this week. Chelsea were the highest selected side (98 picks) with 46 of these selections coming on x2, as a lot of player’s ‘sure-to-score’ banker side. Leicester City (52 total picks) were the most popular x3 and x4 choice, while Queen’s Park (39 total) and Liverpool (85) were the most chosen x5 and 7 sides respectively. Meanwhile, Celtic (61) were the favourites on x6 and as your x8 points earner and, like the aforementioned Chelsea, Queen’s Park and Liverpool, rewarded their backers with a 3-goal haul.

That’s it for the first Ultimate Goals weekly review of the season. Remember to get those GW 2 selections in promptly if you want to profit from those devious early Saturday kick-offs; Liverpool host Burnley in the Premier League and Barnsley travel to QPR in the Championship, both at 12:30, before a potentially feisty Yorkshire derby between Rotherham and Sheffield Wednesday kicks off at 13:00 in League One. Good luck!

– Sam Brooke-Wilkinson