GW 1 Review

Matt: How’s everyone feeling after gameweek 1 then? I’m sensing a fairly wide range of reactions and looking at the leaderboard it seems we had a huge array of scores, from eye watering -60s (ouch!) up to very commendable high 90s. That’s one of the beauties of this game, there’s always the chance of massive swings due to the nature of the scoring and with so many players now involved, we’re going to see enormous amounts of chopping and changing in the standings, not only on a week by week basis, but also on a goal by goal basis during the course of each gameweek.

I have to admit that i did have a slightly mischievous smile on my face when i saw the full time result from Tynecastle Park, where Hearts overcame Celtic in one of the 12:30pm kick offs. Those of you who are new to the game and who picked Celtic (almost everybody’s pre season SPL title favourites) will have felt that sinking feeling when the full time whistle blew without them finding the net. Those of us who have been playing the game for longer have labelled this as a COTEKO (curse of the early kick off) and it’s somewhat mystifying how often these early fixtures cause carnage, to the point where some players simply will not pick a team playing earlier than 3pm for fear of ruining their Saturday afternoons! It’s times like this when you can see why they take such an approach!

Well done to our first weekly top scorer of the season Shaun Rafferty, whose total of 97 saw him head the week 1 table. I think i’m right in saying this was Shaun’s first ever attempt at Ultimate Goals, fair to say he’s made an absolute flyer and will no doubt be looking for a repeat performance in GW2. To be within a goal of a debut ton (affectionately known as Club 100 by many) is a mighty fine effort and it seems his ploy of selecting six out of seven Premier League sides clearly paid off; only Leeds United were a non PL choice and they too racked up the goals! Whether this is a tactic Shaun plans to employ throughout the season remains to be seen, but in my experience you’ll need to utilise all of the leagues and cups on offer if you plan on being ‘in the mix’ come May!

Don’t forget that there’s a jackpot prize up for grabs every week! If you can predict the seven highest scoring teams and then get them in the correct order to give you the highest possible score, there’s £1000 heading your way! Take a look at week 1’s ‘Perfect 7‘ to see how close (or not!) your line up was.

As i’m sure you’ll have noticed, gameweek 2 is already set up and ready to go, so it’s time to start drawing up your shortlists and figuring out which teams are going to do the business for you. There’s almost always a hidden gem or two in any given week, if you can find them you could well be sitting pretty at the top end of the leaderboard. We’ll be casting our eagle eyes over the fixtures in the coming day or two and giving you our verdicts on the sides to look out for; we had a pretty healthy return in GW1 with a 100% success rate and a total of 16 goals from our top tips, let’s see if we can do even better this time around!

Hope you all enjoyed GW1 and are looking forward to more Ultimate Goals action this weekend!