GW 8 – Review

What an exhilarating weekend of football that was! Gameweek 8 had a bit of everything didn’t it?! Big upsets, nerve-racking drama and most importantly – LOTS OF GOALS! There were some truly amazing scores this week, with a whole host of teams making hitting the back of the net look easy. However, as is typical with TUG, there cannot be the good without the bad and this week a few of you had absolute stinkers!

As ever here on TUG we’ll start with the week’s top scorers; a massive well done to Julie Keller and George Murphy! Both table toppers (along with 120 others) backed serial scorers Man City on x8 in their 8-0 humiliation of Watford at the Etihad, alongside 4 goal Rangers (picked 59 times) and 3 goal Celtic (84 picks) – these teams alone secured enough points for a +100 score! Savvy choices of Championship leaders, Leeds Utd (picked 52 times), West Brom and East Fife (both 29 picks) boosted Julie’s score to 137, while it was Arsenal (chosen 62 times), Cove Rangers (37) and Sunderland who did the business for George. However, George’s score would’ve maxed out at just 2 points if it wasn’t for Sunderland’s 92nd minute equaliser away at Bolton. The Trotters were close to their first, and very remarkable, win of the season, but Aiden McGeady’s injury time penalty saved the Black Cats, George’s score and the other 78 of you who were perhaps anticipating a cricket score here. How this game can change your fortunes in an instant!

With the goals flying in across all of our divisions yet again this weekend, Club 100 began to get a bit crowded with no less than 41 (that’s 28%!!) of you hitting three figures! That’s the highest this season, so well done to each and every one of you! (It would have been quite a different story had McGeady not netted at the University of Bolton Stadium i should add!!) Such was the plentiful supply of goals that there was a huge total of 186 points on offer should you have matched the Perfect 7, and although nobody could get close to doing that many of you very much cashed in – all helping to produce a decent average of 50 points! However, one eyebrow-raising and very much unexpected scoreline recorded this week saw Oxford Utd hitting 6 at Lincoln City, what a pity not a single player capitalised on The U’s’ thumping win. Other interesting and somewhat surprising results included Leicester’s 2-1 victory over Tottenham, with The Foxes again proving to be reliable scorers on hoe turf, and Sheffield Utd stunning Everton 2-0 at Goodison Park to move up to 8th……a result that did some serious damage to a few players’ totals!

However, despite the deluge of goals there were always going to be some minus scores. To be precise, we had nine minus 20s, five cruel minus 40s and one miserable minus 60, leaving 15 unfortunate souls licking their wounds, but there was worse to come! Pat O’Connor’s score took the eye, but for all the wrong reasons, clearly getting it all wrong (literally), with ALL 7 selections failing to produce a goal, meaning we witnessed the first eye-watering -140 of the season – the lowest score possible! Perhaps a case of the ‘Random’ button usage backfiring in the most spectacular way possible?

So well done to those of you who were able to take full advantage in an impressive week of goal scoring! It certainly was a gameweek to savour for you high scorers, but one to forget for those who missed out on a weekend that could have delivered so much more. Another beauty of this game is the fact there’s usually a chance to immediately right a few wrongs though, so be sure to get those selections in for gameweek 9! We’ll see you there!

– Samuel Wilkinson