NMA Blog Cup 2022: Round 3 Results

Fortunately for the cup competition, GW-7 was the cancelled week, so with GW-8 we went straight back into the cup, with the 90 qualifying teams fighting to be in the top 65 in order to progress to round four. There were only seven matches this week, so those fantasy teams not being actively managed were likely to suffer, although simply picking playing players isn’t enough, you also need them to score some points!

The week was actually quite high-scoring, with 82 teams overall scoring 100 points or more, with a top score for the week of 156.5 (which we will come back to later!). I expect there are many managers out there who scored around 100 points or less who have convinced themselves that they’re failed to make the cut-off for this round, who I think will be pleasantly surprised to find that the cut-off is lower than they expected. Remember that there are now more teams in the league who’ve been knocked out than there are teams remaining!

Ony one player scored over 30 points this week, and up to half-time, you’d have been kicking yourself for picking him. Fortunately for the few who did, Son Heung-Min’s second-half hat-trick performance earned him 35 points.

Six players scored between 20 and 40 points, including three who were in almost no teams - Rodrigo Bentancur from Spurs with 27.5, bargain-basement priced Asmir Begovic who deputized for the injured Jordan Pickford to the tune of 23.5 points, and Philip Billing from Bournemouth who defied the unappealing matchup at Newcastle to the tune of 22 points. The others, who did make it into some teams, were James Maddison who defied a poor matchup at Spurs for 24 points, the expensive but highly productive James Tarkowski who continued his impressive scoring run with 21.5 points, and Newcastle’s new forward Alexander Isak who ran up 20.5 points at his low price of around $5.30.

As ever, keepers were boom or bust, with Nick Pope disappointing with only 2.5 points at home to Bournemouth, and the still popular Dean Henderson only returning one point. On the other hand, Ederson returned 16 points, Hugo Lloris 15.5 (despite conceding a goal) - the same amount as Emiliano Martinez (who didn’t) and Aaron Ramsdale who racked-up 15 points.

Here are the results in full:

So, a score of 87.5 points was enough to make it through to the next round - despite 87.5 being 104th overall in the league this week. In other words, there were 40 teams who are already eliminated who bettered that score this week.

I’m obviously delighted to highlight the top score this week which was 156.5 points scored by The Motley Crewe, which is my own team. I have to remind myself that this counts for nothing, since all 65 qualifiers have an equal chance in the next round. It was a very pleasing week for me though, with ten players scoring in double-digits, and only James Ward-Prowse disappointing with 4.5 points. I was so close to going with James Maddinson instead of him, and did consider trying to get Son in too, although that seemed too much of a gamble (I really did not seriously consider the fact that the opposition was Leicester).

For the second round running, the second-best team of the round was Team KenM, who similarly had excellent scoring players throughout (but not Son either), and also James Ward-Prowse. Ken is on a bit of a roll, up to 11th place in the league, so we should all take note of his tips!

Among the most consistent cup teams over the three rounds is current league leader ching, who has been 29th, 14th and 7th in the three rounds, ominously improving as the competition goes on. Also showing good cup form is Jfdi who has finished 22nd, 23rd and 17th, although their overall league position is well below this in 47th. Perhaps someone who is prioritizing the cup?

Several more high-ranked teams have fallen this round, with both Vicenza Calcio and Wednesday23 not only dropping out of the cup, but out of the league top-ten.

With the international break now on us, there’s a pause in the schedule, so the next cup week is GW-10 which takes place between October 8th and 10th. At present all 20 teams are due to play once, but keep an eye out because things have not been going to plan recently! I’ve just noticed that there is no early game either, so unless that changes, we should see line-ups for the four games that are due to kick-off at 3.00pm: Manchester City v Southampton, Bournemouth v Leicester, Chelsea v Wolves and Newcastle v Brentford. That could be a very busy half hour or so!

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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. Please let us know in the comments!

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