Gameweek 13

Good news – tricky Gameweek 12 is over and we are back to a full complement of 10 matches – welcome back Haaland, Cancelo, Jesus, and Martinelli – like old friends, it is good to see you again. Indeed some of you found it so hard to say goodbye that you never actually did, with over 30 of you sticking with either Jesus or Haaland as your captain (to be fair he is that good that it was worth a punt!).

In other captain news, Salah was finally the big dog again, getting almost 30% of your captaincy votes, but once again he misfired – so do we stick or twist this week? He’s playing the worst team in the league on Saturday but can we trust him? Or is it time to welcome back another Fantasy Football favourite – don’t forget it was only a couple of seasons ago that almost all of us had Bruno Fernandes as the first name on our team sheet, but sadly he’s been sulking pretty much since his Portuguese compatriot turned up. However could Wednesday have been the changing of the guard? Ronaldo eagerly accepted the sulking baton as he scarpered for the last train home, while Bruno chipped in with a goal, a disallowed goal, and created a massive 9 chances. Until then the biggest contribution he had made this season was not giving Liverpool the ball back, but now he’s seen Ronaldo literally walk out of Old Trafford, could he be an interesting differential? We shall see.

Free Hits and Wildcards a plenty this week too, with ‘Tinchy Sneijder’ very happy to see 26 of you take yourselves out of the Free Hit running – ‘K.E.T.H. UTD’ the pick of the bunch with 62 points, some way, off Tinchy’s marker of 85 set back in GW9, whilst four of you very patient players rolled the wildcard this week, with ‘Neil Madrid’ and ‘Henman Hillbilly’s’ both notching 66 points, to tie the highest scores of GW12 – well done guys – good strategy and good scoring.

Expecting to see a few more wildcards played this week – remember it’s only four games now until the World Cup and all those lovely free transfers, so if you are lucky enough to still have your wildcard chip, now is surely the time to roll the dice and see if you can steal a march before we pack up until the other side of Christmas. I have noticed there are at least 2 teams in the top 20 of the Evie Dove League sitting nicely on the shoulders of the leaders, that are yet to play a chip – I will watch with interest your approach to GW13!…….

Before we move on, a quick mention for Redmen, who continue to aim for all sorts of never before attempted FPL records – this week they aimed to beat the average GW score of 39 points with only 2 players, the rest of the team having long since departed for League One or Ligue 1, and it was a truly valiant effort with Trent as captain (16 points) and Alisson with a penalty save (15 points) almost delivering what would have been a surely unrepeatable (and mystery prize worthy) milestone! 

And that brings us neatly to our next gameweek – incredibly we are approaching a third of the way through the season and the league is starting to take shape – Gerrard beat Lampard to the sack, Arsenal did that thing that champions do where they win a game 1-0 despite not really turning up – can they really keep it going? Meanwhile the Man City machine will no doubt have been jolted by the defeat to Liverpool, they’ve not lost two games in a row since 2018, so watch out Brighton, yet to win a game since a change of managers. Meanwhile the other top four teams in the league all play each other, so we will start to see who is the best of the rest….should be an intriguing gameweek, and we wish as many of you as possible a green arrow!

All the best from all of us at the Evie Dove Foundation