GW 9 – Review

After GW 8’s insane weekend of goal scoring, you would think that would be hard to top. Well GW 9 proved that The Ultimate Goals is the gift that keeps on giving! There were lots of BIG scorelines across all of our leagues, from both reliable and surprising sources. So without further ado let’s get into the summary!

Congratulations to Heather Roome on clinching the crown for GW 9, reaching the summit of the weekly table for the second time this season! A sumptuous combination of 6 goal Dundee Utd (19 picks) and 3 goal Man City (dipping under 100 selections this week at a mere 98!) on x7 and x8 returned a cool 66 points for Heather, with Peterborough Utd (49 picks) and the ever popular Cove Rangers (an astounding 83!) each scoring 3 to nicely boost her score. Things could have been even rosier for our top scorer if only she’d have swapped 5 goal Glasgow Rangers (49 picks) on x2 for 1 goal Portsmouth (49) on x4! But a high score of 116 and a ticket to Club 100 is not to be sniffed at, well done Heather!

While there were plenty of high scoring teams to benefit from this week, it will come as quite a surprise to learn that just 7 of you got past the bouncers at Club 100! This was partly due to some rather surprising results; Liverpool’s less than impressive performance away at a resilient Sheffield Utd yielded just a single goal – a perfect x2 pick, but a let down for many of the 85 of you who selected them, while Championship favourites Leeds Utd (15 picks) failed to score at the Valley, as newly promoted and surprise package Charlton Athletic ran out 1-0 winners. Sheffield Wednesday (picked just once) had dismantled Middlesbrough at the Riverside 4-1 by half time, whilst the always heavily favoured Celtic (88 picks) were held to a 1-1 draw at Hibernian. 49 of you backed out of form Portsmouth, surely on the simple basis that they were up against Bolton, but they scored just once, the same outcome for Inverness CT (also backed by 49 of you). However, more predictably Ipswich (picked 41 times) maintained their imperious form with a 4-1 thumping of Tranmere Rovers. Finally, Leicester (just 17 picks) hammered 10-man Newcastle Utd 5-0 at the King Power Stadium, proving once more that they could well be a force to be reckoned with this season.

However, while we had just 7 members of Club 100, the average points tally this week was a sterling 51 – our second highest this season – with 61% of you above the mark! Well done to you all! With the goals flying in this weekend we had just 14 minus scores in GW 9, made up of 13 minus 20s and only 1 minus 40 – no -140s this week i’m delighted to report! Chief among the culprits were Dagenham & Redbridge and Falkirk, both of whom have been in very decent scoring form recently.

So last weekend proved to be quite a productive one for many of you, but fear not if you missed out. Predicting the unpredictable has always been difficult so don’t be too disheartened by a low score, this coming weekend gives you the chance to put it right straight away. Make sure you remember to get those predictions in early to avoid missing out on goals from an early kick off; GW 10’s lunchtime games include Tottenham travelling to Brighton and Fulham taking on Charlton in a tasty London derby. Don’t forget to leave a comment below and let us know how you did! Stay tuned for September’s Monthly Review and good luck for the weekend!

– Samuel Wilkinson