Fantrax EPL NMA-11 Cup: Semifinals Results and Final Preview

The season is reaching its climax, and the Fantrax NMA-11 Cup is just the same. The semifinals took place in GW-36, and the final will take place in GW-38, the last week of the season!

It was a double week for quite a few teams, and there were some huge scores. Many of the top scorers were picked by the semifinalists, so lets have a look at how things panned out for them.

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183168 vs DISCO ARGYLE

The first match-up pitted league leading 183168 (aka. Man City, who have been in that position since before GW-20) against DISCO ARGYLE (aka. Brentford), who qualified in 12th position, and are currently sitting 16th, so they have been pretty consistent.

The teams shared only four players in E.Mendy, KDB, Eriksen and Nketiah. These were all decent scorers, accounting for 108.5 points.

Up front, DISCO ARGYLE had the edge, with Diaz outscoring Richarlison, and the disappointing Salah outscoring the even more disappointing Mahrez, who managed only 12 minutes over the two games and failed to earn any points. So that’s a 5 point advantage to DISCO ARGYLE.

In midfield there was a big difference, with Son and Saka accumulating 47 points for 183168, while Kulusevski and Lotus-Cheek managed only 8. A 39 point advantage for 183168.

The teams went a completely different way in defense, with DISCO ARGYLE spending big on Chelsea defenders, who were relatively disappointing over the two games, especially Azpilicueta who was negative over the 97 minutes he played. The three Chelsea defenders returned 19.5 points, a disappointing return on $28.35 invested. 183168, on the other hand, went for a mix of budget Everton and Leicester defenders who paid off handsomely, largely thanks to the 24 points from Mykolenko. The three together earned 35.5 from an outlay of only $9.68.

So largely thanks to Son and Mykolenko, 183168 ran out a comfortable winner:

183168 208.5 : 158.5 DISCO ARGYLE

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Team DavidBrian vs The Motley Crewe

The other semifinal pit fellow blog author David’s “Team DavidBrian” (aka. Coventry City) against my own “The Motley Crewe” (aka. Southampton). David’s team qualified in 30th position in week 20, but has now moved up to 19th, while my team qualified 14th and is currently sitting 3rd. So both teams have been improving through the competition. I wasn’t feeling confident going into the tie, since my selections have been a bit meh for the past two rounds, and I knew I needed to do better to survive.

Our teams shared five players: the high-scoring Pickford, KDB and Nketiah, the consistent and bargain-priced Eriksen, and the extremely expensive but massively disappointing Salah. Those five accounted for a very handy 130 points between them. Our other six players had very different fortunes.

Up front David went for Richarlison for a decent 17.5 points, but my Kane pick paid off handsomely with 34.5 points, mostly won against Arsenal.

In midfield, David had Kulusevski for a meager 2, while I had Gordon and Son for a huge 58 points.

It didn’t get any better for David in defense, with his 4-man selection of Alonso, James, Kamara and Mina totaling only 16.5 points — Kamara’s red card in the first game was a real body-blow there. On the other hand, and similar to the first semifinal, my three budget picks of Boly, Justin and Mykolenkoearned 44 points from an outlay of only $7. 83.

So basically every difference between our teams went in my favor, and the resulting scoreline was:

Team DavidBrian 166 : 266.5 The Motley Crewe

Sometimes the fantasy gods really are with you, and despite including Salah at great expense, my 266.5 was the #1 top score in the league for the week.

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So the final, in week 38, will be:

183168 vs The Motley Crewe

That’s 1st in the league against 3rd, or Man City vs Southampton according to the GW-20 qualifying positions. Will 183168 complete a league and cup double? They are only 17.5 points ahead of second place EPL GALACTICO’S (and 73 points ahead of my team) — with two game-weeks to play (three games for most of our players). They are also last year’s league and Blog cup winners, so everything points to yet more success for them.

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Did you make it to the semifinals? If you did, we’d love to hear from you in the comments — You should be proud of yourself! If you are the owner of 183168 we would love to have some insight from you — We could all learn a lot from you! 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.

Special note: Our final occurs in GW-38, which as every year has all twenty EPL teams kicking off at the exact same time, which means that ALL TWENTY LINEUPS WILL BE CONFIRMED before our Fantrax deadline. It’ll be both a special deadline and our last chat, so tune in to NMA for the GW-38 Pre-Deadline Chat for those lineups and some end-of-season camaraderie!

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