October Monthly Round-up

As another month of the 2019/20 season comes to an end, it’s safe to say that, unlike its predecessor, October was a month to forget for many of you here on TUG. The month’s 4 gameweeks had it all; an international week, some truly jaw-dropping results that did plenty of damage in the process and some (rather unwanted) records set……October really was a turbulent month! Let’s get into The Ultimate Goals’ monthly analysis!

We’ll commence this month’s review on a positive note by heading to the top of the Global League table, where the title race is starting to get very interesting! Congratulations to Ally Jessop on knocking Oliver Norman off the top. His score at the end of October was a massive 929 points. Oliver, last month’s leader, has slipped down to 3rd place on 896 with Heather Roome nipping in to take 2nd place, 27 points behind Ally. However, 27 points can mean very little in this thrilling game, after all just 1 goal can be all the difference between a minus score and a ticket to Club 100!

Shall we just get the bad news out of the way now? It’s fitting that I’m writing this on Halloween, because some of these stats are terrifying! October twice set the record for lowest average score this season, with gameweek 11’s current record low of a measly 7 points surpassing gameweek 10’s previous worst of 9. Back-to-back horror shows to start the month off…….and the nightmares didn’t end there! We had more minus scores than ever in October. Smashing through the 100 mark, the 126 minus scores recorded really set a few players back and sent them tumbling downwards! Overall, the average number of minuses per week was a frightening 32, beating September’s average of 20 by some distance.

That’s not to say there weren’t some players who managed to bag a healthy points tally for the month. Christopher Whitelegge managed to reel in 252 points in October, despite the challenging circumstances. That’s 63 points a week on average, well done Christopher! In fact 8 players secured scores of 200 or more over the month. Unfortunately for Charlie Pearch, it seems November couldn’t come around quick enough. Out of the 17 players who all ended the month with less points than they started it with (never a good sign!!), he was the only one to record a minus score that was into the hundreds, his -129 total for the month rooting him firmly to the bottom of October’s form table.

Gameweek 12 (or ‘recovery week’ as I’m now calling it due to the shaky first two weeks of the month) saw George Murphy secure the highest points tally (146) in a single week of October, indeed that was the second highest of this season! Well done George! We actually had a total of 29 three-figure scores, but this was way down from the 69 ‘green’ scores we had last month. The Ultimate Goals always bites back!!

In our top selections in each multiplier, for the second month in succession we have Man City bookending the matrix as most selected on x2 and x8, whilst also claiming the x5 spot. West Brom, Celtic and Rangers were most popular on x3, x4 and x7 respectively, while Albion Rovers are the month’s surprise inclusion as they make an unexpected appearance on x6. The two fixtures against Fort William in the Scottish Cup were obviously to the liking of a large number of our competitors.

Well that’s it for October’s review of Ultimate Goals action! Will Ally be knocked off top spot by the end of next month? How will you approach the ‘international week’ in the middle of November, given the headaches they’ve caused already this season? Leave a comment below on which fixtures you think will cause the most upset. Good luck for November and happy scoring!

– Samuel Wilkinson