EPL GW-28: How Did You Do?

GW-28 is done and dusted, so let’s pull out the retrospectroscope to look at how our squads performed. Ken M & editor Jeff played out in real time during our Live Chat. I’ll add the first postmortem.

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FPL

GW-28 was not good to me. Raheem Sterling was not even in Manchester City’s squad, and Ilkay Gundogan never saw the pitch. Their bench cover, Tomas Soucek and Vladimir Coufal, registered only appearance points. Patrick Bamford was good for just one point before he limped off in the first half. Bruno Fernandes, Raphinha and Robert Sánchez mustered only three points each (Bruno’s doubling to six), while Ollie Watkins notched a helper to return five. My best performers were my defenders, Andrew Robertson, Rüben Dias, and Ben Chilwell, who all kept clean sheets.

As you’ll see here, the result will be 42 points points after the auto-subs come in. I don’t know where I’ll rank once the system updates tonight, but I bet it will be lower than I am right now (red arrows).

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NMA-11

My performance here wasn’t awesome either. [ Editor’s note: “wasn’t awesome” is a euphemism for “was abysmal”. ]

Let’s start with Ilkay Gundgan and Kevin De Bruyne. I had high hopes for them to go nuts against a Fulham side that is struggling to stay up, but instead I was twice-bitten by Pep roulette: As I mentioned in FPL above, neither even played.

Next we have Ricardo Pereira. He was subbed off at halftime against Sheffield United, having done nothing more than conceding a foul. He ended on a painful -1, missing out on the clean sheet as well as all the offensive fireworks from the 5-0 demolition of the Blades.

That brings us to Gareth Bale. The Welshman registered six attacking returns in the four games prior to the North London derby, but yesterday he did literally nothing before subbing off in the 57th minute (well, he did touch the ball, and in real-time had one accurate cross, but after revisions he is Sir Not-Appearing).

Sergio Reguilon played a full shift but was shown yellow in the 1-2 loss to Arsenal, so he finished on a measly three. And his teammate Harry Kane — usually so prolific in this fixture — was held to a mere five, upgraded to six overnight.

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s a total of eight points from six players! To end up with anything near a typical weekly score, then, I’d have needed massive returns from my remaining five players. I didn’t get them. Although Ederson, Diego Llorente, Bruno Fernandes, and Mason Mount all put up double digits, nobody shot out the lights. The final result was a disappointing 62 points, placing me 96th for the week and 51st overall. Yuck, I did even worse than editor Jeff’s 70.5 that lost to Ken M. Double-yuck!

[ Editor’s note: It seriously sucks to have your article edited by someone who just lost to Ken M in the NMA Blog Cup. ]

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NMA-17

It was much the same story here, since my 17-man team contained many of the same benighted players who were also in my 11-man team.

Those unique to this team were Liam Cooper, Lucas Digne, John Stones, Daniel James, Bertrand Traore, Marcus Rashford, Raphinha, and David De Gea.

Cooper and De Gea were DnPs; Cooper through illness and De Gea for personal reasons. Bertrand Traore collided with an advertising billboard and was hauled off injured after just 20 minutes. Daniel James and Marcus Rashford played full shifts but didn’t do much besides collect yellow cards. Lucas Digne also played 90 minutes but mustered only six points.

It wasn’t all bleak. Young Mason Greenwood put up eight points, a respectable return on an investment of less than $3. Phantom king Raphinha did what he does, returning yet another double-digit haul without a goal or an assist. But my best performer was John Stones, who piled a goal on top of a clean sheet to finish on 16.5.

But again, this wasn’t enough to offset my deadbeats, so I finished on 82.5 — a fair-to-middling score that places me 70th for the week, and 42nd overall.

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I’m happy to put blankety-blank-blank GW-28 in the rear-view mirror and look ahead towards blank-week 29. With only ten game-weeks remaining, and needing to gain massive ground against the competition, I plan to make sweeping changes to my Fantrax sides, hanging on to very few discounts. We have until midnight Pacific (07:00 GMT) to grab “barn-door” prices.

In FPL I’ve got two free transfers that should get me to nine active players in GW-29. I could take hits to get more, but at this point I don’t think I will do that for any one-week play.

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Was GW-28 as unkind to you as it was for me? Who were your duds? Who were your stars? Did you climb higher in the rankings than you were, or did you drop? What is your early strategy for mini GW-29? Please take our poll, and then share your results and plans in the comments.

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