Fantrax NMA-11 Cup: Round-3 Results and Round-4 Draw

Round 3

The DGWs keep on coming, and DGW-28 was again both a double and an NMA-11 Cup week, with some monster scores resulting. 64 teams qualified for Round-3, comprising the 20 who fought through from Round 1 (or even earlier for the four surviving ‘non-league’ teams), plus the 44 highest-ranked teams as of GW-20 (the ‘Premier League’ and ‘Championship’ teams).

With so many points around, a wide spread of scores was to be expected, and there were a lot of one-sided results, the most notable being Team stallexpress (aka. Arsenal) thumping ‘non-league’ [TYF] Coolmend (aka. Aldershot Town) 209.5 to 67, a whopping victory margin of 142.5 points! But in another Premier League versus non-league tie, Team minhtruong (Eastleigh) defeated cincyman (Newcastle) by 206 to 169.5. Newcastle is doing well in real life at present (and certainly did this week), but not so in our cup! The other two non-league teams also had contrasting fortunes: Team CathalDonnelly (Weymouth) pulled off another shock, defeating Smoke & Mirrors (Sheffield United) 199.5:179, while Voetbal FC (Hungerford Town) were rather truer to their league position, scoring only 26.5 points in losing to Team redstoglory (Charlton Athletic) who scored 124.5.

That score of 124.5 was only 98th best for the week, and earns Team redstoglory the award for most fortunate team of the round (the lowest winning score). The most unfortunate team of the round was [TyF] Ozdal City (Reading), who scored an impressive 208.5 points (the 13th best score in the league) but came up against THKSFIGHT (Ipswich Town) who scored 228 points.

Other notable victories were for DISCO ARGYLE (Brentford) who beat Team JenJen11 (Liverpool) 193:168.5, [TyF] SAROMAGDEN84 (Burnley) who beat ching (Chelsea) 177.5:168 and Aletico JP (Luton Town) who shocked Shock The Monkey (Man United) 209.5:152.5. That’s three of the highest-ranked teams out already.

There weren’t many very close matches, the narrowest margin seeing Omonoia FC (Bristol City) squeeze past okieS (Nottingham Forest) by 3.5 points, 193:189.5.

Here are the results in full:

Round-4 Draw

The competition is tough now, so if you’ve made it this far, you can expect a challenging opponent. Here is the draw for round 4:

There are some interesting-looking matchups there, but one in particular may generate more comments than most as Team stallexpress (Arsenal) faces Team DavidBrian (Coventry City) in the battle of the bloggers.

Round-4 will take place in blank-laden GW-30, which runs from FRIDAY March 18th to the 20th. The turnaround from GW-29’s last match Thursday to GW-30’s first match Friday is super short, so the barn door will close earlier than usual, at 01:00 GMT Friday (18:00 PDT on Thursday).

Therefore, you should start planning now. Americans who just shifted to daylight savings time should beware of the temporarily narrower time difference to England (and Europe for this week’s fantasy UCL too).

In a change from the recent string of DGWs, this week features only eight teams. So will the cup survivors sacrifice precious discounts going all-in on short-term cup advantage? Or will they carry a zero or two for longer term production in the season’s final eight weeks (which is up to 12 matches for some clubs)? This could decide a few of the ties!

~

Did you take part in Round-3? If so, how did you fare? If you made it into Round-4, let’s hear from you about your chances. And which of you who were eliminated earlier would’a could’a should’a beaten most of this week’s winners? Please log in and share in the comments. I predict that editor Jeff won’t be whining despite his prediction last time round, having somehow managed to win his Round-3 match quite comfortably!

~