Gameweek 4

Gameweek 3 is done – a low scoring week – only 48 points on average with those premium defenders letting us all down! Trent and Cancelo topped the list with zero points, closely followed by James, Cucurella, Van Dijk, Robertson, Ederson and Alisson all notching 1 point – not to mention minus points for Koulibaly, with a long plane bus journey home to rub salt into the wound – ouch!

Well done to  ‘Forest in the Prem’, with a total of 204 points, you have a slender lead of 1 point, in the race for the £300 top prize, closely pursued by Hotel? Thiago, Finding Timo, Cheesy Iheanachos, and King Erik LUHG, who are all on 200 points or more. Good scoring guys, great to see it so close at the top. We lost a bit of pace in the overall standings – our top score of 204 putting us in the top 186k out of 9.6m teams – however still pretty strong.

Top gameweek went to Darwin’s Win Theory –  85 points was all the more impressive considering Saint-Maximin and his 13 points were sat firmly on the bench!  A great week powering you up the league into the top ten – excellent work!

As predicted a number of you threw away those well laid plans you’d worked on through the summer – a huge eleven teams went for broke and played their wildcard! Also four of you had a bash at the £125 Triple Captain prize, but once again none of you could land a punch on Neil Madrid who continues to be front runner with 94 points. Nemos Wonky Fins, Turners x 11, puppyfc, and Burrells Bunch, scored 67, 53, 73 and 47 points respectively – Jesus and Salah were your captains of choice – it must have been particularly frustrating for those of you that punted on the Arsenal man as he assisted the assist, had one taken off his toes by Odergaard, and fell foul of VAR – such are the fine margins in FPL! Time for you guys to focus on the remaining £875 range of prizes available!

Another trend this week was the number of points we left on the bench, with a number of us benching Trippier, Andreas, and Perisic in particular. In total there were five teams that left over 20 points on the bench, with a special mention for R’s EZ Dub with an agonising 29 points in reserve! Console yourselves with the narrative that your squad is strong and it will pay dividends in the coming weeks! Don’t forget the bench boost chip too – no-one played it this week – however there is a school of thought that says play it early, then once it’s gone you are free to laser focus on your starting eleven.

We also got an early contender for match of the season, with Newcastle & Man City playing out a thrilling 3-3 draw – particularly satisfying for Almiron as he got to stuff Grealish’s words back down his throat, double celebrations for him pre and post the VAR decision to rule the goal onside! This was a useful reminder that you should always be careful what you say about another player in your league – you never know when it will come back to bite you – on that note, I think I’ll give Redmen a break this week and simply say well done and congratulations on your eighteen (18) points this gameweek. Well played Redmen 🙂

That just leaves me to share some heartwarming news that we received confirmation from the Charity Commission this morning that The Evie Dove Foundation now has official charity status – that means we can now complete our bank account application and press on with our mission, we’ll be in touch soon to convert those pledges into payment. Everyone on this email chain has already made a pledge (thank you), however we do still have some teams that are yet to pledge – they have until 23:59 on Wednesday 31st August to do so, as I have said before, they are all very welcome but without a pledge will be playing just for fun, so if you do know any of them please do give them a nudge – full list at the bottom of this email.

Have a great Gameweek 4 everyone, and thanks again from all of us at The Evie Dove Foundation