NMA-11 Cup: Round 5 Results and Quarterfinals Draw

Round 5 of the NMA F-11 Cup took place during GW-32 where the 16 remaining teams fought to make it to the quarterfinals.

Despite being a blank week with four of the top teams not playing (OK, with Chelsea this year that’s stretching the definition of ‘top’ a little), there were a lot of points to be had. 30 goals were scored and only three teams kept a clean sheet (two of them coming in the Crystal Palace vs Everton stalemate).

Arsenal scored three, perhaps unsurprisingly, but their opponents Southampton also scored three. Arsenal was fairly lucky to come away with even one point after trailing 3-1 with only five minutes regulation left. Improving West Ham put four past Bournemouth without reply, and Newcastle topped that by scoring six against sorry Spurs who did manage a consolation. Liverpool scored three against Forest who managed two in a spirited reply. Leicester’s win over Wolves pushes Everton and Forest into the bottom three, but there are still a lot of teams fighting to avoid the drop.

13 players produced over 20 Fantrax points, top man Jacob Murphy hauling 26 for Newcastle. He wasn’t a popular pick, indeed not that many of the others were either, with Sam Johnstone in goal and Bukayo Saka and Michael Keane featuring in many teams. But there were plenty of other players who payed off well, and many of these were popular picks.

Ten of the 16 Fantrax-11 teams remaining in the cup posted 120 points or more. In the league overall, there were 49 teams who reached this mark, so there’s clearly a lot of quality left in the cup. The highest-scoring team for the week, Team Rockdelux, tallied 168.5 points, but sadly for them they were previously eliminated from the competition.

The week’s second best scorer with 162 points, Team Colecole, is still in the competition though, so congratulations to them. Scores among the 16 teams varied wildly though, down to as few as 28 points from one team, who clearly wasn’t watching the fixtures, riding six players from the Manchester teams who didn’t even play this week.

Here are the Round 5 results in full:

As noted above, Team ColeCole was the highest scorer here, comfortably winning by 50 points over Team buitre 162 : 112. Assets included Sam Johnstone, Micheal Keane and Bukayo Sako, already noted as being among the week’s top producers, and added the inspired choice up front of dirt-cheap Diogo Jota. These four players alone returned 96 points!

Two other matchups had even larger winning margins, with Paphos Toffees beating Pigs F.C by 78.5 points (133 : 54.5) and GREEK SUNSEEKER strolled past the 5-man Kostas Hotspurs by a margin of 112 points, 140 : 28. I say 5-man team, but of the 5 players who did play, they also included Hugo Lloris who burned negative 10.5 points thanks to Tottenhams’ 6-1 defeat.

There were no very close ties this round, with the closest winning margin being 5 points in a rather low-quality tie between Premier League Team Enadiz2015 who scored only 99 points and were remarkably beaten by non-league Christian Soldiers who mustered 104 points. James Maddison’s no-show and a disappointing forward line of Jesus, Son and Watkins accounted for Team Enadiz2015’s low score, while the winners were able to keep Haaland @7 and also Enzo Fernandez @1 yet still come out on top. The winners have now won 6 ties, having entered in the qualifying round. Can they continue? They are officially the round’s most fortunate team with the lowest winning score, so will need to improve.

The most unfortunate team of the round, with the highest losing score, was Team Captaingerrard who put up a very respectable 143 points but fell to Team msneezie31 who made 151. The last surviving blog author PPQ was also unfortunate to go out with 138 points, although with no great surprise against serial winners 183168 who landed 149 points despite keeping Haaland @7. 183168 is ominously rising up the league and still look the team to beat here.

Of the eight remaining teams, only two are left from the Premier League, with three from the Championship, two from League 1 and the one non-league side already mentioned.

Here is the Quarterfinals draw:

Round-6 will take place in GW-34, which thanks to the midweek games is only a few days away, April 29th to May 4th. This will be a double week for six teams, including Man City, Man United, Brighton and Liverpool. Will those who held onto Haaland at discount be able to make the most of this?

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Did your squad participate in Round 5, and if so how did it fare? Are you one of the eight players left in he quarterfinals? We’d love to hear from you in the comments. Will you be going all-in for the double week, or are single-gamers going to tempt you? Please let us know in the comments.

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