GW 1 – Review

Welcome back to your Ultimate Goals weekly review! I’ll be here every week taking you through all the statistics from each weekend’s goalscoring action. You’ll find out how you compared by average, who managed to reach the heady heights of Club 100 and whether the fabled ‘Perfect 7’ and its cool £7,777 jackpot was close to being claimed, or dare I say it won! So let’s get into the first analysis of the 2020/21 season!

We’ll kick off at the top of the weekly Global League Table where Jamie Adams’ impressive 126 points see him miss out on that Perfect 7 by just 13 points, what a start to the season that would have been!! Jamie’s selections of 5 goal Celtic (102 selections) and 4 goal Rangers (106) & Liverpool (the most selected side with 118 picks) at x6, x7 and x8 gave him the bulk of his score, with four other 3 goal teams propelling him into Club 100, alongside 12 other players. Nice work!

Harrogate Town (just 5 selections), fresh from their first ever promotion to the Football League, were the only other side to net 4 goals this weekend, putting them in the Perfect 7 lineup for the first gameweek of the season. Any 3 goal team in the remaining multiplier slots would have seen you reach 139 points and become £7,777 richer!

So we know some of the most picked teams, but in which positions were they selected?

Predictably, Celtic were chosen most at x7 and x8 to get the biggest points return (and they didn’t disappoint, scoring five times at Ross County!), while ‘sure-to-score’ Liverpool were most selected at x2 (and x6), helping many players get their multiplier ladders started and avoid a devastating opening weekend minus score! Arsenal’s impressive end to last season saw 88 of you back The Gunners to do the business and they were the most selected side at x4 and x5. Sunderland meanwhile, were most picked at x3 and left it late to bag an equaliser against Bristol Rovers, much to the relief of many of the 65 of you who backed The Black Cats against Bristol Rovers.

Overall, the first gameweek of the Ultimate Goals season got off to a steady start. Well done if you were in the 41% of players who beat this week’s rather mediocre average of 26 points. However, a couple of players had weekends to forget. Ann and Louise Rawson each recorded sorry scores of minus 80, and in total there were a slightly worrying 30 minus scores served up. That’s opening day unpredictability for you!

So another Ultimate Goals season gets underway. Where will you end up in the Global Table and your various Mini Leagues? Don’t forget to get those selections in nice and early to have a chance at profiting from the early kick-offs, with Everton hosting West Bromwich Albion in The Premier League and Cardiff City travelling to Nottingham Forest in The Championship. Good luck and happy scoring!

-Sam Wilkinson