Gameweek 7

It is not yet clear if gameweek 7 will be going ahead as planned or not – I’m sending this anyway as I’m out of play now for the next few days – driving to Tenby this morning to do Iron Man Wales on Sunday to raise awareness of https://theeviedovefoundation.org/ – it’s one of the harder Iron Man events out there and includes a 2.4 mile sea swim, a hilly 112 mile bike ride, and finishing off with a hilly 26 mile run. In total, all going well and assuming I make the cut off times at the end of each discipline,  I’m expecting to be out there for somewhere between 16-17 hours!  If you want to keep in touch with how I am getting on either download the tracker app or message me and I’ll add you to the whats app group, your motivational messages will be needed and appreciated!!

As for the fantasy football, well it’s been another remarkable and ruthless week all rolled up into one – imagine having a £250m budget rather than the measly £100m we get access to, and still managing to get yourself sacked six games into the season – bye bye Thomas Tuchel – we know how tough this football management lark is! We wish you well….

Also this week, not only did we say welcome back to VAR controversies after a quiet start to the season, we also saw some early bids to get on the plane to Qatar as Harry Kane’s back up, with Ivan Toney notching a hat trick (17 points), and Marcus Rashford reminding us that he is actually a decent player (18 points). Sadly Patrick Bamford can probably start planning a trip to the Christmas markets or Lapland following THAT miss v Brentford – if you have not seen it do make time to check it out – unbelievable!

Talking of strikers, Erling Haaland continues to tear up the Premier League – over 70% of you captained him and once again you were rewarded as he notched against Villa – check out this very cool infographic breaking down the first six gameweeks. Surely it’s the case now that you now simply have to have him in your team??  Amazing that this time last year this was exactly the case with Salah – however a year on he’s the most transferred out player with just under 500k teams deeming the Egyptian surplus to requirements, surely a risky move – will they live to regret it??….

In other captain news, it was wonderful to see ‘The Benchwarmers’ loyalty to oooh Thiago Silva finally pay off, having faithfully captained him throughout the season, finally he came good with 16 points, after multiple blank gameweeks, and we also had yet another Triple Captain attempt and fail to dislodge Neil Madrid, with ‘Mocking bird fc’ scoring just 59 points – Harry Kane taking the lead this time round.

We saw another five wildcards played, most notably ‘Finding Timo’ grabbing 60 points, powering them into second place overall, just one point behind ‘Schnizzle’ who remain in top spot with an impressive 404 points, and nudging Hotel? Thiago into third place on 399. Also a special mention for ‘Henman Hillbilly’s’, with an incredible gameweek score of 85 powering a surge into 4th position underpinned by Pope (12), Trippier (8), Rashford (18), Haaland (captain) (18) and Toney (17) – very well done – and you even left 14 points on the bench – that’s almost showing off! 

Champions League started this week too, meaning rotation is really going to come into play – this week’s tip is to remember to think about the order of your subs –  if one of your starting eleven does not get on the pitch, your subs will come on in the order you have placed them, so choose wisely! Oh, and one more tip – looking ahead to gameweek 8, Brighton v Crystal Palace has been postponed – you might want to consider that in your gameweek 7 transfer strategy? As you will recall however, my advice is generally to not take my advice – a strategy I was pleased to see ‘Turners x 11’ adopt this week, following my recommendation to hold onto your Free Hit, they promptly decided this was the week to play their Free Hit! Sadly it was all to no avail with 44 points falling short of the target set by ‘puppyfc’ who remains in pole position for this prize – detail on all the front runners below

Finally I would just like to say a special thank you to Edward Dove, Evies younger brother, who I am sure you will agree is doing a great job of trawling through the league to gather the data for this weekly update – thanks Ted, you are doing a really super job, it is massively appreciated. 

So on we gallop to gameweek 7 –  if you’ve dropped Salah before the match against Wolves you might want to watch that one from behind the sofa!

Good luck everyone, and thanks again from all of us at The Evie Dove Foundation.