Fog Dude
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Posts posted by Fog Dude
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Last time out, I managed 48 points in the Fantasy League, slightly above average but still too much on the low side for my liking. I lost a place or two in one of the UKFF leagues. Eze turned out to be a poor choice for the armband, as Palace and Everton produced a stalemate with one of the lowest combined xG stats since that measure was introduced. His 3 points for a clean sheet doubled up to 6 but Toney, Martinelli, Ødegaard and Kane all scored at least twice what he did. Even though Spurs were humbled at St James's it was still Højbjerg who got the assist for Kane's goal, meaning he scored higher than any of my 6 defensive players... but I'd left him as a sub!
I've now used my Wild Card and swapped out 10 players, all of whom play for teams that are up to date with their fixtures but have also massively gone off the boil. I hope all the arrivals can bag me a shedload of points since they've all got at least one double round coming up soon. So far this week I've got zero because the only people I brought in who played tonight are a Fulham duo that I left on the bench. Am eagerly awaiting points from, among others, new signings Declan Rice and John Stones tomorrow night since I've made them captain and vice-captain respectively.
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The final scores were up in the initial post on Sunday night as per usual, with the table updated now too. It was a bad week for Tilde as he slips to third, level with Stinky but behind him on most three-pointers. MVP RULZ takes full advantage and has now gone five clear. Vegeta was the worst performer but that only allows me to close the gap at the other end by a single point. Rory had a great round since he was responsible for two thirds of the spot-on guesses this time, as well as being the only participant into double figures. All it does is leave him in limbo though: well clear of the bottom two but still a full 14 points behind the top five with time to catch up running out.
The 'wildcard' fixtures was match #9 in Eindhoven, a surprisingly comfortable home win at the Philips-Arena where nobody opted for the precise scoreline, but ultimo was the only person not yet mentioned who at least managed to bet on the right result. Elsewhere, wins for Man City, Liverpool and Newcastle were generally good for one-pointers whereas two goalless draws in London and a comeback victory for the Foxes caught most people out. Score draws in Brentford and Brazil (two very similar places, I'm sure) and a home reverse for Juve, meanwhile, proved more of a mixed bag of picks.
The next card, including the penultimate D2D of the season, will be up in the opening post in just a tick.
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8 hours ago, Version1.0 said:
Is Persona 4 old enough to be nostalgic?
The original version of it was released on a console which came out 23 years ago, so I'd say yes at this point.
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18 hours ago, garynysmon said:
Wrexham town centre seemed to be absolutely rocking last night, bet it was a great night.
But if Reynolds and McElhenny want to turn babyface in my house they’ll have to send an application to the FAW to join the Welsh Premier.
What makes you think they should go straight into the Premier? Colwyn Bay didn't. If the co-owners really want to tell another Hollywood promotion story, make them start in the Adran North!
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Noticed Almirón hadn't even been playing much lately, so ahead of a much bigger clearout next week I shipped him out in favour of in-form Palace's Eze who goes straight in as captain, with Alisson as backup – because he's bound to keep a clean sheet against Forest, right?
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Just to reassert my previous statement, that's what I'm gonna pick for the Predictions League too:
FA Cup Semi-Finals (@ Wembley)
Manchester City 3-1 Sheffield United
Brighton & Hove Albion 1-2 Manchester UnitedPremier League
Brentford 0-1 Aston Villa
Crystal Palace 4-0 Everton
Leicester City 2-3 Wolves
Liverpool 2-0 Nottingham Forest
Newcastle United 0-0 SpursSerie A
Juventus 2-1 NapoliEredivisie
PSV 2-2 AjaxSérie A
Vasco da Gama 1-1 Palmeiras -
I got 61 points in the Fantasy League, just about above average for the round but with under half the top scorer's haul. That puts me on 1,714 points overall – so not on course for the magic 2k – and up in two private leagues (including the Chippy Tea one), but my position seems to have settled down in the rest. No real terrible selections, just a squad of players who either don't start much, get rotated in and out or are just plain off form. In particular, I signed a bunch of Arsenal and Newcastle players when they were flying but lately their seasons have hit the skids even though most fans would've bitten your arm off for 2nd and 5th place respectively back in August.
Anyway, more specifically it was Gündoğan who didn't play so Ben Mee was subbed in for an additional point. I started the wrong keeper as Raya's 5 for a making a bonus-worth number of saves bests Alisson's 2 for not keeping a clean sheet, despite Brentford's actual result being much worse than Liverpool's. I did send the armband the right way for once though, as Haaland's dozen doubled up to 24, with Ødegaard the only other possible decent choice on 10 as no further players even made it close to getting into double figures.
You can't use more than one Chip in the same week, so I'm planning to cash in my second Wildcard next time and then I can take advantage of Bench Boost and Triple Captain during the final two double rounds of any significance. The only teams that might have a double round outside of the expected 'free' midweeks with no European games are Brighton and Newcastle, in a fixture that baffling still hasn't been rearranged from Carabao Cup final weekend. The only way that realistically isn't being played in Gameweek 36 is if Bayern overturn a three-goal deficit tonight.
In the meantime, I'll decide by the time I make my Predictions picks what I'm doing with this week's one free transfer and let you know then. Possibly shipping out a City player since they, Man Utd, Brighton and Chelsea all have no league match this weekend.
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The results went into the first post on Sunday night, including the scores for the FPL Cup semis, with Vegeta and best performer ultimo coming out on top. They both scraped through to the knockouts by the skin of their teeth but have come into form at the right time. They're also the only two players left with a D2D turn outstanding, but that's just by chance. I may organise this but I don't write the scripts!
Also, the table has now been updated. The extra good news for Vegeta is that he's pulled himself further away from last place, while it's not such happy reading for Stinky as he relinquishes the lead by being the only participant apart from me not to get any exact scorelines. Tilde and MVP RULZ are effectively back in joint top spot and on course for a play-off, although the former's chance of The Double has now gone. He was the other participant to get the 'wildcard' fixture (randomly selected as match #5) of Forest v Man Utd spot on, at least.
Any such play-off would reduce the short gap between this campaign and the next. I started planning the 2023-24 spreadsheet the other day, with Greece v Gibraltar the first fixture pencilled in for September as we don't know any of August's club games yet. But that's just housekeeping since I'm certainly not bored of the current term which promises to have an exciting finish.
Wins for Palace, Wolves, Man Utd's women and Chelsea Ladies all proved fruitful, but the Scottish and Aussie outcomes – plus a potentially crucial home reverse for Everton against a Fulham side in flip-flops – caught a few people out alongside more hilariously dropped points for the bottle job Gunners. If there *is* someone writing an EPL script then it was very uncreative for the same thing to happen two Sundays in a row.
An ordinary set of 10 will go live at the top of the thread shortly.
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On 4/13/2023 at 8:41 PM, Keith Houchen said:
Iconic, and beautiful. I think my favourite thing about this goal was the scenes in Sunderland with some Man Utd fans cheering thinking they were champions and then it hits them.
Having their hearts broken with the last kick of the game and knowing they had the extra long journey back to Euston to cry about it. Couldn’t have happened in a better way to a nicer bunch of wretched cunts. Hang it in the fucking Louvre.
On 4/13/2023 at 8:59 PM, gmoney said:There's a bit in the middle of the very niche Venn diagram where "decisive moments in end-of-season Man City v QPR clashes" and "great 90s own goals" meet, in the form of this masterpiece:
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On 4/13/2023 at 12:19 PM, mim731 said:
I still don't understand how this rises the whole time, from that distance.
There's another goal from around that era involving Atleti which appears to defy the laws of physics. Like most of these, I can't seem to find it in decent quality anywhere so here it is from an Italian news report:
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Premier League
Everton 1-0 Fulham
Southampton 1-3 Crystal Palace
Wolves 2-1 Brentford
West Ham United 0-3 Arsenal
Nottingham Forest 2-2 Manchester UnitedWomen's FA Cup Semi-finals
Brighton & Hove Albion 0-2 Manchester United (@ Leigh Sports Village)
Aston Villa 1-2 Chelsea (@ Walsall men's FC)Scottish Premiership
Motherwell 0-0 Dundee UnitedA-League
Wellington Phoenix 0-1 Brisbane Roar
Sydney 1-1 Perth Glory -
On 4/8/2023 at 1:20 PM, Fatty Facesitter said:
Going to respectfully tap out at this stage in the season folks and concede overall defeat and claim the wooden spoon. Thanks again to Fog Dude for running the thread 👍
Aye, that's what I gathered from your last post. Plus you and Shy Dad would have been thrown out this week anyway for skipping 3 on the bounce. You might be able to tell from the timing of this post that my sleeping pattern has been shot to pieces lately as well.
Anyway, when I saw you'd replied again I thought maybe you'd honoured us with a Fantasy League update so as I said, do feel free to bring us up to speed on how that's going if it ever again takes your fancy.
Speaking of which, over the weekend I finished on 67 points, so above average. Biggest blunder was probably selecting Raya over Alisson in goal with the former ending on zero due to one of Newcastle's strikes technically counting as an own goal off of him. No surprises, then, that my next lowest scorer and the only other weak link in my starting XI was his teammate Ben Mee.
The other mistakes were again related to the captaincy. Kane's goal meant his 9 points doubled up nicely to 18, but the only reason I didn't stick the armband on Haaland is that he was marked down as doubtful to start and then he went and bagged himself a dozen points. I'm not making that error again for this coming round! A smarter choice than either of those, though, would've been Martinelli who went one better than even the Norwegian boy wonder.
As expected, Che Adams didn't play and has no return date listed, so Dan Burn came off the bench to cause a change of formation and add another solid 2 points to the total. Perhaps unwisely I've replaced Adams by maxing out on Brentford players, bringing in a back-on-form Ivan Toney. Cue the inevitable gambling suspension in 3, 2, 1...
With our own knockout competition very much approaching its business end, I'm reminded that the first of my private leagues started its Cup recently. I got a bye through the first round (I think I'm right in saying that's based on league position and not just random?) but was knocked out the following week when I had to face an actual opponent.
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Cue the seamless transition back to Predictions League talk: the results went into the opening post on Monday night. I've put the Cup group stage standings on the latest table update so you can see that we've ended up with the people who won and were runners-up in each group going out, meaning the semis will be contested by players who finished third and fourth. Scoring was about what you'd expect for a double round, the equivalent of a 6.57 average in a regular 10-match week.
Only Rory failed to make it into double figures and contrived not to manage a single exact scoreline. In contrast, seph leapfrogged ultimo into the top 4 with a great performance – half the outcomes correct and nearly half of them three-pointers. (Incidentally, his old rule about giving everybody else an extra bonus point when somebody gets 4 or more exact scores has been modified since he was in charge and besides, it's suspended during double and 'bumper' rounds anyhow for obvious reasons.)
At the summit, we've got a proper title race on our hands for the run-in. Last week's leader TildeGuy drops to third, whilst MVP RULZ remains in second spot despite also getting 10 results right. One point separates the top 3, with Stinky ahead on countbacks for the moment, but the prospect is a five-match play-off on men's Champions League final weekend is drawing tantalisingly near. On the other hand, with this season already turning into the longest slog ever, perhaps it would be best for that to wait at least another year to happen.
The bottom half were strangely much better at helping themselves to bonuses this time out. The first 'wildcard' fixture was match #2, Wolves' single-goal win over a Chelsea side in disarray, which ultimo and I both got spot on. The next was match #15 (or match #5 of the second half, if you're the sort of person who says a goal was scored "in the 20th minute of the second half" instead of "in the 65th minute") which was another 1-0 home victory, this time at The Circle* where three participants picked the winner but not the score.
Elsewhere, success for Man City, Derby, Celtic, Sunderland, Swansea, Derby and Chester generally proved fruitful, whilst the scale of Palace's triumph at Elland Road caught everyone out. Rest was a mixed bag of guesses again, really.
An ordinary set of 10, plus a reminder of the two FPL Cup semi-final ties, will be up in the original post shortly.
*That's what tiger_rick always called it on here. Google says it's currently known as the MKM Stadium, but sod that for a lark.
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Ugh, what a waste of my Free Hit. I finished on 88 points, just about above average but for using that chip in a double round you really need to be getting into treble figures. My positions are looking more settled in the Private Leagues at this late stage now, but I'm up in one and down in another – which is one of the UKFF leagues, naturally.
It was that man Gündoğan again who got more points from one match than 3 people did from two, was level with 4 more and managed only one point fewer than a further 3 double-duty players. So of course I'd left him in the position of last sub, meaning there was no way I was getting his points.
Solly March's 8 points doubled up to 16 for me, but Newcastle defenders Kieran Trippier and Fabian Schär or even Dominic Solanke would've all been better options. The worst selection decision was undoubtedly Virgil van Dijk starting ahead of second-choice sub Ollie Watkins at the back. The latter scored zero as Liverpool shipped 4 on Saturday, then stayed on the bench at Stamford Bridge in midweek. Meaning that nought doesn't get swapped out for anyone else.
Watkins, meanwhile, soared to a haul of 17 points, behind only Callum Wilson in the Team of the Week. And I can't even say I now have him in my squad since it was part of a one-time deal. Oh well. At least I chose the higher-scoring of my two keepers.
Spaffing that chip up the wall means I'm back with old, rubbish squad and just one free transfer. Two players are listed as definitely injured and two more as doubtful. Of the first duo, Saliba doesn't seem to have a return date so is probably out for the season. I've already maxed out on Magpies so I've brought in Watkins' Villa teammate Tyrone Mings to shore up the defence.
He goes straight in as vice-captain with Kane once more getting the nod for the armband. Raya again favoured over Alisson in goal. Both are at home but with difficult-looking fixtures.
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Week 36A
Premier League
Brentford 2-2 Newcastle United
Wolves 1-0 Chelsea
Southampton 0-3 Manchester CityChampionship
Blackburn Rovers 1-1 Norwich CityLeague One
Forest Green Rovers 2-1 Derby County
Oxford United 3-0 Sheffield WednesdayLeague Two
Crawley Town 3-1 Bradford City
Harrogate Town 0-0 WimbledonScottish Premiership
Celtic 2-0 RangersA Primeira Liga
Benfica 1-2 Porto
Week 36BPremier League
Leeds United 2-2 Crystal Palace
Liverpool 1-0 ArsenalChampionship
Cardiff City 1-1 Sunderland
Coventry City 0-3 Watford
Hull City 2-2 Millwall
Wigan Athletic 0-1 Swansea CityLeague One
Cheltenham Town 3-1 Ipswich TownLeague Two
Tranmere Rovers 1-2 Swindon TownNational League North
Southport 0-0 ChesterNational League South
Weymouth 2-1 Bath CityI think now I've played that leaves @ultimo the great as the only one of the remaining players yet to make their picks this week. With all these pings, don't let it be said that I didn't try to stop his annual act of self-sabotage!
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9 hours ago, Fatty Facesitter said:
Apologies @Fog Dude - appreciate the effort you go to run the thread.
Cheers. Thought I might've been a tad harsh there. It's a relief to see you accepting your fate with good grace.
Of course, your other legacy is that I've been trying to juggle Fantasy League updates as well as Predictions League ones all campaign long. I'm going to persevere with boring the pants off of people for the remainder of the season with my own ups and downs in that competition, but I'm thinking that next year it might be wise to split up the threads again since it hasn't really worked out.
Do feel free to add how you got on in that once the 2022/23 EPL is over too.
In other news, time for a mea cupla: I noted down one of the scorelines wrong on Sunday night (but not the result), which affected two people's number of points scored. The initial post has been amended accordingly. I've also corrected the spreadsheet on my hard drive and backed it up, so the slight changes will be reflected in the next update.
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On 4/1/2023 at 12:08 PM, Shy Dad said:
@Fog Dude in all honesty this is probably my bow out for this year at least. It really is a combination of working every weekend since the New Year and pulling some weeks close to 50 hours on top of my PhD application that means I'm lucky if I get to sit down and watch TV let alone 90 minutes of football.
Hopefully once we have the staff and I don't have as much training and admin for two different things on the go I might make an appearance next year. At least FPL wise potentially, I can just about keep tabs on one league and then Hereford/Celtic.
But as always thank you for running this for everyone and I can only apologise for how tardy I've been this year. I wanted to make sure my D2Ds were complete to not mess anything up, but without just predicting 10 1-1 draws for the rest of the season each week I honestly don't have a clue about sport right now.
First of all, thanks for taking the time to post this instead of just running down the clock. I appreciate that you're being honest with yourself about the situation and then in turn with us. Secondly, that sounds like an utterly inhumane schedule and I'm pleasantly surprised you're even managing to browse the forum at all. A lot of places seem to be short-staffed at the moment and it feels like a lot of things are broken in general. It appears you're bearing the brunt of that and deserve to catch a break sooner rather than later.
I wouldn't go so far as to say you 'fulfilled your obligations' because nobody really has any towards our silly little competition, but actually making sure your participation in the D2Ds and FPL Cup was over first at least shows respect to the remaining participants, and really given how hectic things are for you at the moment if anything, you were doing us a favour.
Lastly, all the best with your PhD application. I attended one meeting about a possible thesis proposal during my first attempt (i.e. the unsuccessful one) at a Master's and decided doctoral study would be far too daunting for me and probably go over my head. As I've mentioned, you'll be welcome again next season if you're in position to have enough spare time and head space to actually follow football again.
I realise @Fatty Facesitter is also a busy man and that On Topic has been the focus this week for self-evident reasons, but sadly his enthusiasm from last summer has turned into a cheque he couldn't cash. Surrendering his place in the Cup and then not even turning up for the second D2D bet really is poor etiquette, especially as I pinged him twice and we can all see he's been very active elsewhere on the boards.
And the sad thing is, he would've done very well with a punt on the boys from the university city as the U's pulled off a much-needed rare away win at Vale Park. Instead he leaves with a points deduction since there are no second chances at D2Ds. One word of praise as he departs: he spent the first half of the season almost comically unable to get exact scorelines right. Since the turn of the year though, despite the fact he often didn't play, his record of getting three-pointers when he did make picks has been worthy of top-half form.
Speaking of no second chances, @seph is only through to the FPL Cup semis by default and needs to be careful not to forfeit his place in that tie by posting late or failing to participate at all. He did salvage avoiding the wooden spoon this week from just 2 matches compared to Rory's 10, so kudos for that. I hope he isn't suffering from being under the weather yet again when said semi-final rolls around the weekend after next. While we're on that subject, here's the draw:
seph vs. Vegeta
TildeGuy~! vs. @ultimo the greatAnd yes, I'm pinging ultimo there to complete the naughty step this time because he's been on decent form lately and I wouldn't want him to ruin that by once again forgetting that it's Easter and we always include Good Friday games as part of the Paschal double round, and will continue to do so until somebody prises a chocolate egg from my cold, dead hands.
Anyway, sorry this hasn't been a regular write-up in the slightest. The last round was low-scoring, there was no movement in the table and Tilde still leads by the same 5-point margin. The 'wildcard' fixture was the very last one, Der Klassiker, from which 4 people got the right result to claim a bonus point each, but nobody thought there'd be 6 goals at the Allianz Arena.
The Trophy produced two duds as both meetings went to penalties. Really think the FA needs to look at retuning to two-legged semis there, or at least consider reintroducing extra time before the final. Meanwhile, a majority of players correctly foresaw a Leverkusen victory in Gelsenkirchen. The rest was a mixed bag of guesses to be honest.A new set of 20 will be up in the opening post shortly.
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I'm doing okay in the Fantasy League double matchday, but have made a few poor selection decisions so far. Obviously the round is ongoing so a more detailed update will have to wait until later in the week.
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I noticed that four players in my squad were listed as either injured or doubtful, while most of the rest only have one fixture coming up this week so I bit the bullet and used my Free Hit. Still saving my second Wildcard for Gameweek 34 and Triple Captain for a probable partial midweek round in one of the following three matchdays. I've temporarily brought in *deep breath* Van Dijk, Salah, Solanke (I know, I know, but he's cheap and likely to play at least 2x60 minutes), Jensen and Watkins plus March as captain and Ings as vice-captain.
Both the keepers I already had have got a double week but they're also two beastly away fixtures. I've gone for Raya over Alisson in goal anyway, perhaps unwisely. Gündoğan is my only player now left with just a single fixture, so he stays on the bench.
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The semi-final draw for the FPL Cup will go into the initial post in due course. In the meantime, here are my latest picks:
Premier League
Bournemouth 2-1 Fulham
Brighton & Hove Albion 2-2 Brentford
Nottingham Forest 1-1 WolvesLeague One
Port Vale 1-0 Cambridge United w/O Nicko LoucoWomen's Championship
Sunderland 0-0 Crystal Palace
Bristol City 3-0 Sheffield UnitedFA Trophy semi-finals
Altrincham 2-0 Halifax Town
Gateshead 3-1 BarnetImitation Bundesliga
Schalke 0-1 Bayer Leverkusen
Bayern Munich 1-2 Borussia Dortmund -
Managed to get the results of the actual football up on Sunday night, but it was Monday morning by the time I managed to figure out the FPL Cup scores on top of that. The table's since been updated as well (literally just now as I type, because I was concentrating so much on the Cup that I forgot to do various steps of a regular update). We have a new leader again in the form of this week's best performer TildeGuy. The randomly selected 'wildcard' fixture was match #4, from which Tilde plus two more of the chasing pack got the scoreline spot on to claim a pair of bonus points each.
A returning Vegeta also made it into double figures. Overworked stalwart @Shy Dad is on the verge of being removed, but at least he was out of the Cup anyway and both of his D2Ds are done. Even if he doesn't make it to the end of the campaign he'd of course be welcomed back with open arms next season.
On the other hand, @Fatty Facesitter did simply surrender his place in the Cup, plus his second turn at D2D is imminent so with any luck he'll notice one of these pings. To be fair, ol' Nicko did seem to be quiet on the forum last week (or perhaps I'm just following the wrong threads) but appears to be back in business these past few days.
International rounds tend to be fairly high-scoring, and so it proved. Wins for Scotland, Turkey, Germany and New Zealand all worked out pretty well for most, plus a lopsided away victory win the women's North London derby turned out to be good for one-pointers. A rare reverse for Chelsea Ladies, a late equaliser for Wales in Croatia, a loss for Brazil (albeit against a team that went further in Qatar in December) and a disappointing defeat for Norn Iron, in contrast, all ended up as a mixed bag of guesses at best.
The next set of matches has gone through various iterations over the past couple of months as things get chopped and changed, so I hope what we've been landed with is acceptable to everyone. That'll be popped in the opening post shortly.
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I'll figure out what I'm doing with my Fantasy League team before Thursday evening...
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UEFA Euro 2024 qualification (various groups)
Scotland 3-1 Cyprus
Armenia 0-0 Turkey
Croatia 2-0 Wales
England 1-0 Ukraine
Northern Ireland 2-1 FinlandInternational friendlies
Germany 3-0 Peru
Morocco 1-3 Brazil
New Zealand 1-1 PR ChinaWSL
Spurs 0-2 Arsenal
Manchester City 2-2 Chelsea -
So I captained Martinelli in the end, whose 7 points double up to 14. Only last week's captain Che Adams would've done better on 9. Vice-captain Kane was my only other decent scorer with 6 points. None of my players was listed as doubtful last Thursday, but ultimately both new signing Almirón and hitherto defensive stalwart Saliba didn't play on Friday and Sunday respectively so I ended up with just 10 players who got minutes, one of whom was Højbjerg on 2 points anyway even though I'd left him on the bench initially. Kilman played a whole match but scored zero regardless as Wolves contrived to let in four at home to Leeds.
Overall that leaves me on 40 points for the round and tantalisingly close to 1,500 for the season. That's still above average because it was a low-scoring week since a lot of people didn't alter their squads to allow for the blank league matchdays from some teams. I'm up in half my private leagues (including both UKFF ones) and static in the rest. I've now got a week and a half to decide which people to bring in next. Keep in mind that of the four midweek rounds remaining over the next couple of months, only one officially counts as a separate matchday, so the rest are double weeks. Go fill your boots!
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Speaking of low scoring, there wasn't much to write home about in the Predictions League this time out. The results went into the initial post on Sunday night as usual, and the table has been updated now too. The bottom two are getting cut adrift due to chronic absenteeism, with a returning Vegeta very narrowly still the worst of the rest of the bunch. Worst performer Rory is once again looking down rather than up.
For the first time in ages, I've left in a reminder of how the FPL Cup group phase finished up way back in the autumn as we look ahead to the knockout stages. The semi-finals and final have shifted around in my spreadsheet but are now set for Weeks 37 and 41, a little earlier than planned but conveniently the same time as the real-life women's FA Cup semis and final. The female tournament is on a more traditional trajectory since they still have a post-season World Cup to look forward to instead of enduring a mid-season one.
We have a new leader in the shape of top scorer Stinky Dad. He was the sole participant to get more than one exact scoreline, but notably nobody made it into double figures. He was helped by being the only person to guess Chelsea's 3-1 win at Reading spot on in what was later randomly selected as the 'wildcard' fixture which not only snatched two bonus points for himself, but also denied a lot of other people a point each.
No D2D means no further bonuses awarded for this round. The remaining three turns have had various spanners thrown in the works, but they're currently set to be spread out neatly, with the last one falling in the penultimate week of the season. Right, with that bit of housekeeping over, let's take a look at the other matches...
Narrow home victories in El Clásico and two capital city derbies were generally good for at least one-pointers, but the rest of the games caught most people out in one way or another. A six-goal thriller at St Mary's and the aforementioned one at Molineux, more dropped points for The Bees in west London, a home reverse for Inter, Villa knocking Man City out of the Cup in extra time and an away victory by the odd goal in five in Holland all proved more difficult to foresee.
And after all that, it's a bloody international round again to stifle the season's momentum send everybody's motivation through the floor. The 10-game card plus the four FPL Cup quarter-final ties will go live at the top of the thread soonish.
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Following last night's games, I finished the Fantasy round on 68 points, one away from niceness but just about above average, brining me up to 1,458 overall and inside the top 4.4m players. I'm up in one league, static in most but down in two, including one of the UKFF ones. Both my keepers only scored 2 so there was no selection headache there. The main issues were picking Højbjerg on 1 point ahead of Gündoğan who nabbed 6, plus a bad captaincy pick as I suspected.
Che Adams' bog-standard 4 points for 2 matches doubled up to 8, but my choice as vice-captain Ben Mee would've been a wiser nod for the armband with 9 points. Once again it was Harry Kane who proved most efficient, mind, with a baker's dozen from a mere 90 minutes of action. For next week, I realised that neither of my goalies has a fixture so I swapped out Leno for Raya. The latter also has a double round soon whereas the former isn't due one just yet.
As Fulham players are therefore no use in the short term, I've also brought in Almirón for Andreas. All that gives me the luxury of leaving Højbjerg on the bench by playing a 5-3-2 since neither Man City player has got a league game this weekend either. And I still haven't used my Free Hit or second Wild Card yet!
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Premier League
Brentford 2-0 Leicester City
Southampton 3-0 Spurs
Wolves 2-1 Leeds UnitedWomen's FA Cup Sixth Round
Reading 0-2 Chelsea
Aston Villa 0-3 Manchester CityLa Liga
Barcelona 2-2 Real MadridSerie A
Lazio 3-1 Roma
Inter 1-0 JuventusProper Bundesliga
Austria Vienna 1-1 Rapid ViennaEredivisie
Ajax 0-0 Feyenoord -
The current Fantasy League week is still ongoing, so a full update can wait. It's not gone too badly so far but once again it'll probably turn out that I'd have been better off captaining a player with just one fixture instead of presuming someone with a double round would automatically work out as more useful.
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As for the Predictions League, the results went into the initial post on Sunday night. It was a triumphant round for Rory, but looking at the updated table, all it's done is leave him 16 points clear of the bottom 4 and 14 points adrift of the top half. Without the D2D bonuses (although a couple of people did agree with his bet of a draw), Tilde would've been the best performer, so he's now 2 points ahead at the summit. Lowest scorer Shy Dad moves closer to Nicko at the other end. I move back ahead of Vegeta only because he didn't play this time.
There were no further bonus points awarded because the randomly selected 'wildcard' fixture was match #1, where nobody thought Everton would win at all, let alone nick a 1-0 for the third time in four home games since Sean Dyche took charge at Goodison Park. Elsewhere, it was slim pickings. Victories for Chelsea, Spurs, Halifax and Barcelona – spot the odd one out there* – plus a score draw at El Madrigal were generally good for one-pointers. The outcomes at Leeds, Maidstone and York, meanwhile, caught most participants out.
A couple of matches I had in mind for D2Ds next month have been brought forward to unreasonable start times (one to Friday night, the other to Saturday lunchtime), so things have had to be rejigged again on that front. Luckily none of that affects the next round, which was never pencilled in for a D2D in the first place, so the card for that will be up at the top of the thread very soon.
*Yes, it's Tottenham.
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On 3/10/2023 at 10:14 AM, BomberPat said:
In fairness, X-Pac worked Heat that night (I don't know if/how Wrestlemania bonuses panned out for wrestlers working Heat rather than the show itself), and that was right in the middle of X-Pac being the byword for "outstayed his welcome", no matter how good he was. It was around the time of "X-Pac heat", and Edge & Christian cutting promos to him about how, "1998 called, they're sick and tired of you".
Didn't they say that to Billy Gunn (possibly with 1999 as the year instead) the night after Edge won King of the Ring? Or had they used the same line on X-Pac a few months earlier and hoped everyone would just forget about it? Because if so, I certainly did.
Mind you, if anything, that reinforces the point to were making to Raidy. He was such an afterthought by the spring of 2001 that E&C wouldn't have even bothered directing a promo at him. I can't imagine appearing on Sunday Night Heat counted as being on the Mania card when it came to payouts though.
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Premier League
Everton 1-2 Brentford
Leeds United 1-3 Brighton & Hove Albion
Leicester City 0-1 Chelsea
Spurs 2-0 Nottingham ForestFA Trophy 6th Round
Aldershot Town 2-1 Halifax Town
Maidstone United 0-2 Barnet
York City 1-0 AltrinchamLa Liga
Villarreal 1-1 Real Betis
Athletic Bilbao 2-2 BarcelonaZweite Bundesliga
Hanover 3-0 Hansa Rostock w/Rory -
Below average week for me in the Fantasy League with just the 35 points. Alisson and Kilman were decent on 7 points each, but Gündoğan didn't prove such a great choice of captain as his 3 points only doubled up to 6, whilst Haaland on 4 was the only other player to nab more than 2 points apart from Andreas – whom I naturally left on the bench – with 8.
For next week, I've brought in Che Adams for the misfiring Aleksandar Mitrović now that Saints have found a bit of form (and Fulham have shown they're no longer too reliant on the Serb). He goes straight into the starting line-up with the armband, and has Ben Mee as back-up since they're my sole players with a double round, the midweek fixture coming against each other on the south coast.
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The Predictions League results went into the opening post on Sunday night as usual. As for the table, we have a proper title race in the latest update as joint leaders MVP RULZ and Tilde were equal worst performer this time out, allowing Stinky to close the gap on them to a single point. There was movement among the bottom 4 too, but mid-table is where we find our level top scorers who also happen to have great taste in terms of the team they support.
The D2D bet was wrong as the Rossoneri succumbed to defeat in Tuscany, and six of the eight other participants correctly bet against an away win, even if some of those did plump for a draw. The scoreline at the City Ground earned seph and extra two bonus points from its status as the 'wildcard' fixture.
Elsewhere, matches at the AmEx and Anfield that you might've expected to be decided by the odd nervy goal both ended up as emphatic home wins, which meant they were good for one-pointers at best. Apart from that, single-goal home wins were the order of the day in the EPL which meant people's picks for those turned into more of a mixed bag for the most part.
The outcome of the Women's League Cup Final went against the form book from a mere one week earlier and so caught everyone out. Juve's reverse at the Stadio Olimpico would also have been a dud had it not been for my guess. I had a feeling the team who've lost twice to Cremonese this term (who, in turn, otherwise haven't won a top-flight game since James Richardson had hair) could turn the Old Lady over with a bit of Mourinho magic.
A new set of 10 will be up in the original post shortly, including a D2D that should be the last one this side of Easter.
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Yeah, fair point. The term 'ought to' was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Don't want to risk the wrath of Midlands Spurs spokesman Raidy again!
I presume Truss saw no need to even pretend to be interested in football before she became an MP.
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7 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:
Isn’t he a Villa fan? Or did he forget which claret and blue team he said he supports?
Yes, he mixed them up during a general election campaign once. IIRC it was 2015?
Truss now claims to be a Norwich City fan because she represents a constituency in Norfolk, but based on where she grew up, she ought to support either Leeds Utd or St Mirren.
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Almost broke a century in the Fantasy League this week but ended up on just the 97 points and up in all my leagues. From my defenders and midfielders three only got a point each and two only managed three points apiece, but my bench collectively scored a pitiful two so it wasn't a question of the wrong picks, just a weak squad at the minute.
From the players who had just the one league fixture, forwards Kane and Haaland came good on 6 and 10 points respectively. The real fun was to be found with players who had two games though: Alisson got 12 points for two clean sheets even if Liverpool were left disappointed by the first of those two results, while Saliba of Arsenal joins him on a dozen. I captained Ødegaard whose 11 points double up to 22, but Martinelli is where the armband should've gone. After a recent indifferent run of form, he bagged a whopping 26 which would've been perfect for the Triple Captain chip if I'd been feeling especially lucky. As it is, I didn't even hand it to the right title-chasing Gunner in the first place.
Looking ahead, the next week is the last 'normal' one for a while as there's some doubling up in matchday 27, then in Gameweek 28 six teams are without a match due to the FA Cup quarter-finals, then after the international break it's double headers galore (as things should be around Easter time, natch). With that in mind, I've brought in Ben Mee of Brentford for the injured Thiago Silva, who was playing for a troubled team in Chelsea anyway. The Bees are usually good value, have two double rounds coming soon and were kind enough to get themselves knocked out of the Cup at home to West Ham at the earliest possible opportunity. Just maybe avoid signing Ivan Toney for the moment, eh lads?
As an aside, I noticed I got knocked out of the 'Wales Cup' a few rounds ago despite drawing with my opponent because their players apparently scored more goals that weekend. Never knew that was the tie-breaker. Always read the small print, folks!
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Bloomin' heck, it's Friday night already! My picks:
Premier League
Aston Villa 2-0 Crystal Palace
Brighton & Hove Albion 3-1 West Ham United
Chelsea 0-0 Leeds United
Wolves 2-1 Spurs
Southampton 1-1 Leicester City
Nottingham Forest 1-0 Everton
Liverpool 2-2 Manchester UnitedWomen's League Cup Final
Arsenal 0-1 Chelsea (@ Palace FC men's ground)Serie A
Fiorentina 3-0 AC Milan w/MVP RULZ
Roma 3-2 Juventus
UKFF FPLs 2022-23
in Off Topic
Posted
Gutsy of Tilde to make his picks when there was still 70% of a full midweek programme left to play. Said round of matches is over now and my provisional Fantasy League score is a cack 44 points. Should've made Stones captain instead of just the backup because he got 9 points whereas Rice just managed the basic 2. The obvious choice of Haaland would've been an even wiser choice as he bagged a haul of 14, although some of those were down to a 95th-minute intervention that was hardly crucial in the title race. Only other decent scorer was TAA on 5 points.
My two 'keepers were in direct competition and I went the wrong way, sub Alisson beats starter Fabiański 2-1 as Liverpool won by the same score at West Ham. Another of my new signings, Danny Welbeck, appears to be injured or out of favour as he hasn't played 90 minutes since before the World Cup break, and rarely even gets to the hour mark. He came off the bench for all of 17 mins last night for a solitary point. Then again, nobody I left on the bench did particularly well either.
This coming round feels like the best time to use my Bench Boost chip since 13 of my squad have got a double round while the other two are playing at home to the bottom club (and still have a double to look forward to in mid-May). The remaining midweeks have zero, one and two catch-up games respectively so the next round is the best time to fill your boots as no fewer than six teams have got two fixtures for the price of one in Gameweek 34. I'll make Haaland captain for now instead of trying to be too clever about the armband pick, and save my Triple Captain for matchday 36 or 37.
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Even without knowing what ultimo's bet will be, here are my guesses:
Premier League
Brentford 2-0 Nottingham Forest
Brighton & Hove Albion 3-1 Wolves
Bournemouth 1-0 Leeds United
Fulham 1-3 Manchester City
Manchester United 1-1 Aston Villa
Liverpool 2-1 Spurs
Scottish Cup semi-final
Celtic 3-0 Rangers (@ Hampden)
Serie B
Benevento 0-0 Parma w/ultimo grates
Venezia 2-2 Modena
French Cup Final
Nantes 0-1 Toulouse (@ Stade de France)