GW 13 – Review

After October’s very shaky start, followed by the dramatic recovery in last week’s Ultimate Goals action, this gameweek was a fairly solid end to the month. There were plenty of sufficiently good scores recorded and lots of talking points to go over. Let’s get into the analysis!

As ever we’ll begin with our top scorer in the global leaderboard, congratulations Christopher Exley! Manchester City (picked 105 times!) got Chris started on x2 with 3 goals against Aston Villa, while Ipswich Town (32 picks) and Oxford Utd (45) also netted 3 apiece on x4 and x8. Padding out Chris’ score with a brace each was West Brom (49 picks) and Glasgow Rangers (a massive 75 selections!) on x3 and x6 respectively. But it was 5 goal Albion Rovers (37) and 4 goal Celtic (an unusually low 31 picks!) on x5 and x7 who bagged the most points for our top scorer this week, as he finished the weekend on 113, comfortably in Club 100! Well done Chris!

However, Chris’ table at Club 100 was a lonely one as he was the only player in the green this week! There was plenty of opportunity to score high, with the aforementioned Albion Rovers in the Scottish Cup and Bromley of the National League each scoring 5. These two ‘goal machines’ made up the x7 and x8 spots in this week’s ‘Perfect 7’ score, which amounted to a huge 155 points!

GW 13’s average score was a passable 35, with 47% of players going beyond that total! Well done to all of you who bested that average. If you failed to hit 35, let us know in the comments below who let you down, was it an unwise team selection or a reliance on the ‘random’ button?! We certainly had some interesting results this week, along with the standard controversy that is now commonplace in the Premier League – not least at The Emirates, where 26 of you were denied a 3 goal haul as VAR ruled out Sokratis’ late goal for Arsenal. Chelsea (19 picks) bagged 4 at Burnley, with VAR overturning a penalty shout that could have made it 5! Elsewhere, only nine of you profited from high flying Preston’s 3-2 home win (if you reached the multiplier that is), while Exeter City and Swindon Town each hammered home 4 goals against Plymouth and Crawley in England’s lower leagues.

Now as the good ends the bad must begin, so I’ll try to keep it short! The good news is that with just 13 minus 20s and a single minus 40 and minus 60, this week’s 15 reversals were by far the lowest of October! So there’s a glimmer of light from the darkness! Selections of usually reliable Falkirk (28 picks), Cowdenbeath (27) and Stenhousemuir (36) let players down here, with all three teams losing their fixtures without finding the back of the net. The latter two in particular were major letdowns, as both lost 3-0 to part-time opposition in their Scottish Cup replays, on what proved to be a thoroughly miserable afternoon for them (and those of you who backed either/both of those sides!)

Well that’s it for this week’s Ultimate Goals breakdown. Don’t forget to get those selections in sharpish – gameweek 14’s early kick offs see Bournemouth hosting Manchester United, while in the Championship Swansea travel to Wigan. Good look for November’s first gameweek and look out for the monthly review for October!

– Samuel Wilkinson