NMA-11 Cup: Round 4 Results and Round 5 Draw

Round 4 of the NMA F-11 Cup took place during Gameweek 30, where 32 teams battled it out to make the next cut.

This was an unusual week at this time of year where every side played once, meaning there was a large pool of possible players. Some results went as expected, with Manchester City winning comfortably over Southampton, neighbors United overcoming Everton, and Aston Villa easing past Nottingham Forest with another clean sheet.

But Chelsea fell 1-0 at Wolves (OK, perhaps this wasn’t that surprising), Bournemouth picked up a rare away win at free-falling Leicester, Arsenal failed to beat Liverpool, and Crystal Palace came from behind at Leeds to emerge with a 5-1 win. So much for Roy Hodgson coming in and concentrating on the defense!

In Fantrax, three players scored over 30 points. Two from Palace in Michael Olise and Jordan Ayew, who I haven’t noticed in anyone’s team, plus Ivan Toney, who somehow picked up 31.5 points despite a defeat and a missed PK! Toney is the top points scorer for the year in Fantrax, and the threat of suspension for betting infringements doesn’t seem to have affected him at all. Toney only made a few teams, no doubt because of his high price, but as it happens he proved better value at retail than Erling Haaland despite the latter scoring twice. Haaland was of course a very popular pick, especially rewarding those who stuck with him through his blank week. Other popular City players who scored well were Jack Grealish and Kevin De Bruyne.

Among the 32 Fantrax teams remaining in the cup, ten achieved scores over 130 points. Only 26 teams in the entire league managed this, a testament to the concentration of talent among the competitors left in the Cup. Cup scores ranged from 158 points (the top score in the league) all the way down to 82 points. As ever, scoring well did not guarantee progress in this head-to-head competition.

Here are the Round 4 results in full:

The highest scorers this week were previous cup winners 183168 with an impressive 158 points. Returns came from a strong all-round team with 20+ points from the three Manchester City players mentioned above, along with double-digit contributions from Martinez, Pinnock, Watkins and Keane. Trippier’s 5 points was the lowest score. 183168 has been having a relatively quiet campaign this season, but perhaps they are now the team to beat in this competition. Unsurprisingly, they had the biggest winning margin of the round with a 65.5 point victory over Young Lions FA by 158 : 92.5.

There were two other games with winning margins over 50 points, with another previous Blog Cup winner Team MIFFY_FC defeating Team paulys_dreamteam by 142 : 82, and Team Captaingerrard beating Team OGL1 by 136.5 : 85.5.

Three of the ties were very close, finishing within just 2.5 points of each other -- that’s one yellow card or shot on target making the difference:

Kostas Hotspurs defeated Jfdi by 129.5 : 127 - the losers being pretty unfortunate to go out with such a good score. Even closer, and even more unfortunate for the losers was Team Enadiz2015 overcoming Smoke & Mirrors by 132.5 : 131. Smoke & Mirrors gets the week’s award for the unluckiest team of the round, with the highest losing score.

Those games were close, but closest of all was another high quality tie with THKSFIGHT overcoming DISCO ARGYLE by 125 : 124. The winners managed to win despite fielding no-show Allan Saint-Maximin and Kaoru Mitoma who contributed minus 5.5 points.

We’ve already heard of the unluckiest team of the round. The luckiest team, the one who progressed with the lowest winning score, is staff member PPQ, whose paltry 95.5 points was enough to overcome juve, who managed only 84. With this week’s unexpected demise of Team stallexpress, who fell 104.5 : 110.5 to Pigs F.C, this leaves PPQ as the last surviving blog author (at least I think it does - please shout out if I’ve missed someone). He will need to pick his game up to progress much further though — look at the round 5 draw below!

That leaves 16 teams left to fight out Round 5. Round 4 was a bad round for ‘Championship’ teams, with only four of 13 surviving. Six ‘Premier League’ teams are left (those 6 become hot favorites for the competition), along with four from League 1 and one from league 2. Amazingly there is still one ‘non-league’ team in Christian Soldiers, who scored a tidy 136 points to overcome their much higher-ranked opponent OGZ Hall Of Fame by 30 points. They’ve already come through 5 rounds; how much further can they go?

Here is the Round 5 draw:

Round 5 will take place in game week 32 between April 21st and 23rd. This is another blank week, with only 16 teams playing, and no game for Manchester City, Manchester United, Brighton or Chelsea. Those holding Haaland at discount will again have a big decision to make!

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Did your squad participate in Round 44, and if so how did it fare? Are you one of the sixteen players left in Round 5 ? We’d love to hear from you in the comments. Are you still holding on to Haaland (or others) at discount - and do you plan to carry on doing so? Please let us know in the comments.

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