NMA Blog Cup 2022: Round 4 Results

The Blog Cup is already moving towards the later stages, so GW-10 saw the 64 remaining teams competing to get into the top 48. Those 48 teams will compete in the quarter finals, so there are only three rounds to go before we know the first fantasy cup champion of the season!

There were plenty of points to be had in GW-10, with Newcastle scoring five and Man City scoring four (and for once not leaving it all to Haaland). Clean sheets were harder to come by. Only three were recorded, by Man City, Chelsea and Tottenham.

The two top-scoring players for the week were both Man City players (Cancelo and Foden), and only 6 players scored over 20 points, with Cancelo’s 28 being the top for the week (incidentally, this is first week that it hasn’t been a forward topping the weekly scores). A lot of heavily-picked players scored well though, and 42 teams in the F-11 league scored 125 points or more. But many of those teams had already been eliminated from the cup in earlier rounds, so the 48-placed cut-off point is lower than might be expected.

Here are the results in full:

The score needed to progress to the quarterfinals was 107.5, even though that was only the 71st-best score of the week overall. There will be a few very relieved managers I am sure. And the thing about the cup is that previous performance is no guarantee of success; everyone starts the next round on equal terms.

Because this week’s top-scoring team, Team wengc1980, (with a really impressive 163.5 points) had already being eliminated from the cup, I am obviously extremely pleased that my own team The Motley Crewe once again topped the cup standings, this time jointly with Paphos Toffees on 152.5 points. I am hoping I’ve not peaked too early! Unsurprisingly, our teams shared a lot of successful players in Cancelo, Foden, Trippier, De Bruyne and Haaland.

Most of the top-placed teams in the league overall are still in the competition, showing how consistent they’ve been, although we did lose the current 5th-placed Smoke & Mirrors who fell 4.5 points short of qualification, and will no doubt be regretting picking Reece James and Leandro Trossard who combined for minus 0.5 points. We also say goodbye to Team KenM who in true boom or bust fashion followed up his two second-placed results in the previous rounds with a 61st-best this time. Things will be a lot quieter in the quarter finals, although I’m sure we’ll still hear Ken’s voice heckling us from the peanut gallery.

The quarter finals take place in week 12, which is a midweek round taking place very soon after round 11. It starts on Tuesday 18 October, so we’re already less than a week away from it. To further complicate our quarterfinal, GW-12 is a blank week for Man City and Arsenal! Will you sit on big discounts for their players and take zeros? One person who will be pleased about this is Stall, whose Team stallexpress sits in 8th place overall, despite not having had Haaland in his team for most of the season!

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How did you do? Are you safely through? If not, then which players let you down? If you already crashed out of the competition in an earlier round, would you have done better this time around — Perhaps you can claim the ‘I would have passed if I hadn’t lost already’ ribbon.

And how are you going to deal with the blanks for Manchester City and Arsenal in the next round? Can you afford zeros in a cup week? Please let us know in the comments!

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