GW 10 – Review

As football fans we should all be accustomed to a shock every now and then and it’s surely one of the many reasons we love the game, but can anyone honestly say they foresaw what was to come in gameweek 10?! Many of you had absolute shockers this week and there’s no reward for guessing which two results were mostly to blame for the spectacular dip in points recorded! We’ll save the bad news for later!

Let’s begin by looking on the brighter side of GW 10; some players did at least manage to amass highly creditable scores, despite the chaos happening around them! Congratulations to Zak Mitchell on topping the weekly table with a very respectable 81 points! Zak was able to capitalise on Rangers’ 5-0 demolition of Hamilton on x7 (The Gers picked a whopping 99 times), with West Brom (just 12 picks) registering a 4-2 victory over Cardiff on x5 to produce 55 of his points. 1 goal from the ‘City’s’ of Norwich and Swansea bookended Zak’s multipliers, which also featured Cove Rangers (yet another healthy 62 picks), East Fife and Cheltenham. Well done Zak, even if the top score did come with a dose of good fortune, given that The Canaries took until the 88th minute to finally net what was nothing more than a minor consolation in their 5-1 mauling by Aston Villa. Staring down the barrel of a -20 one minute, top scorer the next – only in this game can such extremes occur so quickly!

The bedlam of GW 10 also meant that for the second time this season there were NO admissions into Club 100, which really paints a picture for how this week’s Global Leaderboard looks. Unquestionably, the root causes of the poor to woeful scores many of you produced were the wretched performances of ever-popular Celtic (82 picks) and Manchester City (115 – that’s 77% of you!), who each fell to startling, yet stunning, 2-0 defeats! Adama Traore’s late brace at the Etihad handed the Citizens their second shock defeat of the season, but for them not to so much as score is almost unheard of! Meanwhile Livingston took full advantage of Ryan Christie’s 26 minute dismissal for The Bhoys, although a 0 goal return from them is far less of a surprise – they have a rather chequered history over the past few seasons! Kudos to Keith Crook’s who may have seen that result coming, placing Livingston on x8! What a shame Luton and Coventry let him down on x4 and x5!! These two scorelines in particular handed out our highest number of minus scores this season thus far…….a whopping 43! These were made up of 35 -20s, 6 -40s and 2 horrible -60s, and all of these ‘red scores’ meant that our average for gameweek 10 was a miserly 9 points! Yes… NINE!! It’ll be a tough job getting a lower average than that you’d think – what’s the likelihood of both the English and Scottish champions failing to score in the same week again……….but in this game you just never know!

One consequence of these sorts of weekends is that it could/should encourage greater diversity for next week’s selections. Not only might it cast some doubt over teams widely regarded as ‘bankers’ one week after the next, but results elsewhere might also bring a wider variety of teams into the reckoning. For example, none of you backed Aston Villa, who smashed 5 past Norwich, ditto Stoke City who had a terrific win at Swansea City in the top v bottom clash (43 picks for The Swans mind), whilst only 30 of you backed Preston against Barnsley, with the Lilywhites returning a 5 goal haul. AFC Wimbledon, Burton Albion, Colchester United, Dumbarton, Elgin City……….barely a pick between them, but all banging in the goals. Worth consideration going forwards?

So after the consistent high scoring towards the end of September, October could barely have got off to a worse start! Do not despair though, with an ‘international week’ coming up and the return of the National North and South leagues, there is plenty of opportunity to claw back those lost points in what is sure to be another drama-filled weekend! Let us know how you did in the comments below and get those selections in early! See you next week and good luck!

– Samuel Wilkinson