Dilemmas of the Week - GW 37 (25/26)

Not too many new injuries again this week, it seems, so...., hopefully, this can be another brief one.

I am trying to streamline these weekly round-ups a bit from last year, restricting myself for the most part to just the injuries etc. affecting players that are likely to have a major significance in FPL; and also, of course, only to new injuries - I figure everyone should be aware of players who've already been ruled out for some time!  

[For some years, I have found the 'Injuries & Bans' summary on Fantasy Football Scout the most reliable resource for this kind of information; although this site, Premier League Injuries, is a very good alternative (often a little quicker to update, I think - though it did go through a bit of a glitchy period for a while last year).  Go check these out for more comprehensive coverage. 

I see the Fantasy Premier League site has added an improved 'Player Availability' page this year (though hidden under 'The Scout' tab?!). That also seems to be reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date, but god knows how it's supposed to be 'organised' - maybe by 'date of injury'? Obviously, arranging it by club and alphabetical order would be more sensible; but the denizens of FPL Towers seem to have a deep aversion to the sensible.]

I've recently discovered this additional resource, the weekly Predicted Lineups from Fantasy Football Edits. My longtime standby for this sort of news, Fantasy Footall Scout, does usually provide some explanatory commentary on its predictions, even including reminders of the key injury concerns, and sometimes also some discussion of possible alternate selections; so, if you like a bit more detail with your 'probable lineups' for the week, that could still be the preferable roundup to look at. But because FPL Edits is so stripped-down, it's rather more straightforwardly accessible, easier to scan through quickly; and I think it's also perhaps a tad more reliable with its expected formations and lineups, and a little quicker to update.

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 37?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

There's still no word on the nature of the injury that forced Riccardo Calafiori to come off against West Ham last Sunday, but it seems he's still a doubt for this week. The knee injury that caused Ben White's early withdrawal in that game is at least serious enough to rule him out for the little that remains of the season.

Kaoru Mitoma pulled a hamstring when playing Wolves last Saturday, and will miss the remainder of the season.

Hannibal Mejbri was withdrawn against Villa last week, but apparently it was just cramp or fatigue rather than anything too serious, and he is possibly/probably in contention to play this week.

Pascal Struijk made an appearance against Spurs last week, but was forced off by the hip problem that's been bothering himn for a couple of weeks.

Manuel Ugarte supposedly missed selection last week because of a back issue - but does anyone really expect to see him playing in the Premier League again?

Joelinton is said to be a 'slight doubt' for Newcastle because of a thigh problem - but given how much he's suffered with muscle injuries in the past, I would imagine that means he's definitely out of action this week.

Do we have any players who are dropped, or not looking likely to get the starts we hoped for?

Bournemouth's Ryan Christie is out for the season, after picking up a three-match-ban red card for a bad foul on Timothy Castagne last week. Joachim Andersen also picked up a red card and a three-match ban for his crunching challenge on Adrien Truffert in the same match. Dan Ballard is in the middle of a three-match-ban for 'violent conduct' (a hair-pull), so we won't be seeing him again this season either.

Harvey Elliott is ineligible to play for Aston Villa against his parent club Liverpool on Friday night - although, since we haven't really seen anything of him all season, that's an irrelevant technicality. Facundo Buonanotte is similarly barred from representing Leeds against Brighton, though he too has hardly featured lately for his loan club.

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

I have to say, Liverpool are looking really ragged to me, and I don't think I'd be taking a chance on any of their players for a tough last two fixtures - even the always excellent Dominik Szoboszlai or the just-back-from-injury Alexander Isak. I don't have much faith in a De Zerbi renaissance at Spurs either, and I suspect they'll probably struggle, and almost certainly drop points against both Chelsea and Everton. Although Chelsea are looking fairly awful too....

The big problem this week is the FA Cup Final happening before the end of the league programme. With City and Chelsea contesting that on Saturday afternoon, their GW37 league games against Bournemouth and Spurs are delayed until Tuesday evening. Given that the Cup game is always likely to be especially emotionally draining, even if it's a fairly straightforward game, and could be physically too, if it goes to extra time and penalties, it's probably better - if possible - relying much on City or Chelsea players on Tuesday. Some of them might well not play at all; and those who start might not be at their best, and might only get short minutes. A lot of FPL managers already got burned by Pep's rotations of Doku, Cherki, Reijnders, and even Haaland in last week's would-be 'Double Gameweek'; something similar is sadly likely this time. But.... at this stage of the season, with chips and Free Transfers probably all used up, folks won't really enjoy the option of moving out City/Chelsea players; alas, if they have too many of them, they could well end up fielding a short FPL team this week, or at least having a few 1-point returns. It is a cruel game.

Did anyone play so well, you have to consider bringing them in immediately?

I liked the look of Junior Kroupi, Josh King, and Kevin Schade last week,.... and everyone at Everton recently! But not enough to make any of them priority acquisitions. At this stage of the season, you really just have to save your transfers in case you get hit with a sudden avalanche of injuries in the final week!

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!

A little bit of Zen (94)

"Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective."

Saul Bellow

Things always seem worse than they are. And they often appear to be worse for us than they are for others. But even on the rare occasions when that's true, things are almost never as bad as they might be.

There is a comfort to be found in perspective.

So, what does MAKE THE DIFFERENCE in FPL?

Last month, I made the rather bold assertion that... it doesn't matter all that much which players you pick in FPL. And I promised to soon go into more detail about what I believe does make the most difference to your outcomes in the game (but I was thwarted in that resolution by the sudden loss of my computer and Internet access!). Finally, I am trying to address that topic.

Now, of course, as I acknowledged in that earlier post, it does matter to some extent who you pick; just... not nearly as much as we'd all like to hope. Some FPL managers make a lot of really bad picks, and of course they don't deserve to prosper (although sometimes they do; there's too little justice in the game). But my key point there had been that there is usually quite a broad spread of potential good picks; and within that field of sensible, promising selections, most players will perform just about as well as each other - certainly over the full season, or a big chunk of it; but also surprisingly often over even a fairly short run of games. I have sometimes run multiple teams, with radically different tactics and selections - but they ended up with nearly identical final points totals. I regularly compare myself against a number of long-time managers that I consider to be shrewd and consistent; there are rarely more than 100 points between us at season's end, sometimes a lot less - even though we've made some wildly different picks. Yes, most years, there are a few players (maybe just one; maybe none...) who are performing so consistently above the general range of everyone else that they become genuine must-haves. But most managers recognise that Haaland or Palmer or Saka or whoever is an 'essential' (at least, for now; that status rarely lasts a whole season). There's almost always room for plenty of debate around who are the 'best of the rest' that you should have in the squad. And amongst these better players, there are usually many potential selections of almost exactly equal value.

So, unless you ignore this pool of solid talent, and wilfully make a lot of bad picks, most of your player selections aren't actually going to have a huge impact on your final points total or your rank - at least, as compared to other good FPL managers.

So, what does..... make the difference in our game?

I believe the main factors determining FPL outcomes are as follows:

1) Getting off to a flying start. The opening of the season is one big lottery. There are so many unknowns - players have switched clubs, some managers have changed, tactics may shift dramatically in the new season, revisions to PGMOL guidelines may have a huge impact (vastly fewer penalties over the last two years, while goalmouth wrestling at set-pieces is now routinely tolerated....; though that might change next year), and the pre-season friendlies don't usually give us any reliable guide as to what anyone's form or fitness or confidence is going to be like going into actual competitive games - that we are essentially betting blind. 

If you are lucky enough to correctly guess nearly all of the players who are going to make the hottest start to the season, you don't just get nice scores in the opening few gameweeks, you can get a huge momentum continuing through the first third or so of the season. People who've been less lucky, and have picked a lot of players who are unexpectedly dropped or strangely struggling for form, will have to use multiple transfers - perhaps even take a few 'hits' - over the opening weeks to put things right; they may even be forced into using their first Wildcard early - thereby missing out on the considerable advantage that it can give you if you are able to use it later in the first half of the season for a tactical rebuild at a key moment. 

While it is not impossible to make up for a poor start, it is very, very difficult: it can take until the mid-point of the season, or even longer. And it is possible, all too possible, to suffer such a bad start that you will never get back into the top 1 million.

 

2)  Being lucky with your captaincy picks.  While we do occasionally get a player who has such a long run of consistently high returns (not every week, but often enough to make him worth repeatedly betting on with the armband) that you can make them your default captaincy choice, even then you can't really expect them to give you a strong return more than about 1 week in 3 on average (and, even when they do, they often won't in fact be your highest points producer of the week!), And even when it might be reasonable to keep picking one outstanding player most of the time, it's never a good idea to make someone an invariable choice. Even last year, when Salah had such an improbable, record-smashing season, his returns tailed off a bit over the last few months. 

You should usually expect to have at least 4 or 5 of your players in any given gameweek who have an elevated chance of returning a really good FPL score; picking 'the right one' is next-to-impossible - you'll be wrong more often than you're right. You can't realistically expect to get a nice return from your captaincy more than once in every 3-4 gameweeks; and that will only actually be your best score of the week about half as often.

Unless.... you're very, very lucky. If your 'success rate' with the captaincy shifts upwards from a normal (actually, good) 30% to more like 50%, that can make a big difference to your eventual points tally. [An 'average' captaincy return is 4-5 points, a 'poor' one 2 or less, a 'good one' 8-10 points. So, every 10% that your captaincy success rate improves is probably worth an extra 15-20 points.]  You do tend to find that the global champion each year has been distinguished by an extraordinarily high return from his captaincy picks.

3)  Not being too heavily hit by injuries.  There can be an enormous variance in the impact of injuries on an FPL manager over a season; and this can make a huge difference to your rank (just ask Spurs!).  My record worst, a few seasons ago, was 55 injuries in a season (and that's discounting minor knocks and illnesses that only rendered someone 'doubtful' for a week or so; that's significant problems that made someone likely to be unavailable for an extended or indefinite period, and required their immediate replacement in the squad).  I reckon my 'usual' number has been in the 30-40 range - which is probably rather above the general average.

Think about it: if you have that many injuries, you have to use almost all of your Free Transfers - and probably some 'hits' too, far more than you'd like! - just on replacing injury absentees. You have almost no scope for making elective transfers to improve your squad on the basis of changing form or fixture-difficulty. You are hamstrung, disastrously limited in how you can approach the game. An injury to a major player doesn't just rob you of the points you hoped to get from them in the coming gameweek(s), it shackles your tactical options too.

And, of course, last-minute injuries, which you aren't able to replace and leave you with an unexpected hole in your squad, can have an even more negative impact.

4)  Lucking into the players who can give you a few huge scores (perhaps just the one).  I began by saying that the majority of players from the constantly varying pool of 'sensible choices' don't generally provide much differentiation in their points returns. But a few do - over a very short run of games, really by pure fluke. And if you can be lucky enough to be on a few of these at just the right time (most of these are players who don't provide long-term value, so you don't want to be owning them before they hit their sudden 'vein of form' - or for too long afterwards), it will make a huge difference to your end-season total. 

This is one of the most frustrating aspects of FPL, because, most of the time, there is no indication of where these sudden bursts of form come from: a player who's done nothing all season, perhaps even a player who hasn't been getting regular starts, sometimes produces a great game - and a nice FPL points haul - out of nowhere. 

In general, FPL veterans counsel against 'chasing last week's points', rushing in to buy a player who's just produced one big haul. And that is mostly sound advice: most of the time, this doesn't pay off. But occasionally.... it does: the player with no established form all season will produce another good return (maybe not in the very next game, but fairly soon), and perhaps even a third. It is a torturous conundrum as to whether to bring in a player who's had 2 or 3 decent returns in a short space of time: is this really emerging form, or just a flash-in-the-pan that's already over??  [Phil Foden produced an especially goading example of this just before Christmas. He appeared to be out of favour with Pep again this year, hadn't been getting regular starts; and, when he was playing, was mostly being deployed in a rather deeper role where he was having zero attacking impact. And then, in a period of extreme fixture congestion, where there was a midweek league game as well as crucial final matches in the Champions League group stage, he suddenly played 4 successive games within the space of a fortnight (though he didn't start them all!), and produced a double-digit haul in each of them. No-one had ever done that 4 times back-to-back before; and he couldn't even really have been expected to play in all 4 of those games, when they came in such quick succession. And there really had been no reason to fancy bringing him just before the start of that sequence. If you had, you were very lucky. If you didn't have him before the streak started, you might reasonably have thought the first haul was a one-off freak. And when he did it a second time, you might reasonably have thought that he couldn't possibly do it three times in a row - and probably would get rested in the next game anyway. And once you'd missed out on 3 successive hauls, you know you've missed the party and there's no point coming in for him now - even if he might get one or two more decent returns in the coming month. Last December, I wrote at length about how we make selection decisions like this, and the timing of them - with particular reference to this Phil Foden example. That was FPL at its cruellest and most taunting.]

5)  Getting a good return from your chips.  The chips are another huge randomizing element in the game of FPL. Certainly, you can make 'smarter' or 'dumber' choices about when to play them; but there is no guarantee that the 'smarter' choices will be rewarded (or that the 'dumber' ones won't sometimes unjustly work out well!). To get a really good return from your Bench Boost, you need to have all 15 squad members starting, and producing a decent haul; and there is absolutely no way to predict when that might happen - it almost never does. [The optimum return from the Bench Boost chip is probably slightly higher than it is for the Triple Captain, but the chances of that transpiring are far lower.]  As noted above in the point on the weekly captaincy selection, over the season you can't be confident that even your best player is going to return a good haul in more than 1-in-3 or 1-in-4 games, and you can never know for sure when those games are going to be. There is usually a rather higher chance of identifying the games in which a really good haul is most likely for them; but even in those (player bang in form, his team is bang in form, opponents are in woeful defensive form), it's never better than a 50/50 as to whether he'll give you a double-digit return or a blank. And the Free Hit, at least the 2nd one, is usually more about getting yourself out of trouble (most often, in a big Blank Gameweek) than producing a positive lift in a regular gameweek.

Every gameweek in FPL is a collection of bets. When you play a chip, you're making even more bets, or increasing your stakes. This expands the range of possible outcomes and generates a high variance in FPL points returns. Some people get very lucky with these returns, some get very unlucky. And this makes a big difference overall.

FPL is all about making predictions. And you can never be confident in the outcome of a prediction. You can never know that your initial squad is going to be near-perfect for the start of the season, you can never know that your captain (or your Triple Captain!) is going to produce a good haul, you can never know if a player is about to get injured, you can never know if a player you've just transferred in is about to produce a really huge return, you can never know if you're going to going to get a good - or any worthwhile - return from playing your Bench Boost or Free Hit.

'Skill' makes some difference in our game: smart FPL managers will - almost always - do much better than dumb, naive, inexperienced ones. But amongst the smarter managers, the only difference, really, is luck. The 'margins' in the game are to be found in these most random and unpredictable elements of it.

Happy thoughts

Here are a couple of videos I've particularly enjoyed in the last week or so....

I have occasionally found James Allcott a bit irritatingly full of himself (although I may be biased by an element of jealousy of his youthful good looks...), and his content is often a little self-indulgently over-long. But he seems a likeable chap, and he usually has some worthwhile things to say. I especially liked this recent shorter piece from him in celebration of Rayan Cherki.

And long-time favourite of mine, The Purist Football, is now posting rather more regularly, and on some shorter, more specfic topics. His latest is this rather fun appreciation of the thrilling tactics of humble NEC Nijmegen (currently on track for European football next year, as they sit in 4th place in the Eredivisie - actually just ahead of Ajax, who are having a difficult season). They seem to have become the embodiment of an 'Attack, attack, attack!' mentality - and we must hope that more teams around the Continent start to emulate this.

Never give up!

 

Last year, I watched a documentary about the early years of the American Space Program which included the following very striking line on the unique mentality they looked for in their astronauts - most of whom were admitted into the selection trials on the basis of their experience as military and/or civilian test pilots. I found the observation rather inspiring. I wish I could remember who said it; no-one very famous, not one of the astronauts, I think, but one of the engineers who'd worked closely with them.

Any ordinary pilot will reach a point where he accepts the situation is hopeless. You know, the plane's 10 seconds from hitting the ground and he'll say, "This is it. We're going down. We're going to die."

A test pilot just thinks to himself, "I still have 10 seconds. What else can I try?"

We should, I believe, seek to apply the same attitude in our approach to playing Fantasy Premier League. However unkind the Fates have been to us this season, however far out of reach our original goals may have slipped,... there are still things we can fight for, new challenges we can seek to overcome week by week.

We might not always 'succeed', but we can always TRY.

Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 36

Despite the added stress of the semi-finals of the European compeitions this week, there haven't been many new injury concerns. [I would probably have been ruing the sudden exclusion of Noah Okafor and Alex Jimenez, but they weren't all that widely owned by the FPL masses....]

These weekly 'summaries' have been getting a bit too involved - and excessively time-consuming for me! - so I've been aiming to keep them briefer recently. I made just about zero progress on that resolution for the first few weeks, but.... now I've hit upon a new 'format', which might help: a tabulation of the major types of 'lucky' incidents. 

I will try to resist any extended commentary (although I probably will still indulge in a few diatribes about any particularly egregious penalty or handball incidents).

Red cards awarded: 

Red cards not awarded:  Matheus Nunes was slightly fortunate not to be penalised for the cheeky little shove in the back that sent Kevin Schade sprawling on the edge of the box - not quite a penalty, but a 'denial of a goalscoring opportunity', since he'd broken clean through. There wasn't much contact, but it clearly threw the player off-balance and brought him down.

It is baffling that Sunderland's Ecuadorian midfielder Nilson Angulo escaped a sending-off. He made a deliberate motion with his elbow towards Bruno Fernandes's face as he ran past him, and although - mercifully - the actual contact was fairly slight, the premeditatedness of it made it a clearcut instance of 'violent conduct'. VAR's opinion that it wasn't 'violent enough' was utterly daft.

Igor Jesus also looked a bit lucky to get away with only a yellow card for blatantly and unnecessarily shoulder-barging Lewis Hall in the face.

Destiny Udogie should have been sent off for 'denial of a scoring opportunity' foul on Calvert-Lewin as well.

Penalties awarded: 

Penalties not awarded:  Joao Pedro was very unlucky not to receive a penalty when Frimpong's clumsy challenge clearly brought him down in the box. Presumably it was deemed an 'accidental coming-together' - but we see that kind of clash interpreted as a penalty foul at least 9 times out of every 10. The Brazilian sprang straight back to his feet, seeing an opportunity to continue the attack; unfortunately, it is probably this 'honesty' in his play that led to the penalty decision not being given. (Well, that and the fact that Chelsea are now hardly ever given penalties, this season or last.)

There was another big shout against Matheus Nunes in the second-half when Schade again appeared to have gone down in the box after a little push. TV pictures didn't show any clear contact from the defender, and the German winger might have just tripped over his own feet. But it was one of those where, if the referee had initially given the penalty, VAR would not have found grounds to suggest a possible error.

Kyle Walker clearly trod on Emi Buendia's heel (causing his boot to fall off), but.... this was somehow an 'accidental coming-together' according to VAR. Not the worst decision of the season, but probably the worst justification of a bad decision we've yet seen.

Spurs amazingly dodged a bullet on Monday night when Udogie was let off from bundling over Calvert-Lewin on the edge of the six-yard box (which would have been a 'denial of a goalscoring opportunity' sending-off as well) because the Leeds striker had been wrongly flagged offside.

Tight/dubious offsides: The call against Marc Cucurella breaking down the left early in the second-half at Anfield looked correct, but pretty tight - and it was unfortunate for Cole Palmer, who could have done with the confidence-boost of an open-play goal (10 weeks and counting....).

Ollie Watkins' first-half effort had looked well offside to the naked eye, but... the SAOT graphic deemed him to have been only too far ahead by about 6 inches, the length of the instep of his leading foot. Moreover, there was an issue as to whether the last defender or the ball should have been the decisive 'line' for judging this incident, but the SAOT did not show the ball. I suddenly realise: I don't think it ever does - this is another major problem with the system!

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed: The big talking point of the week - and the season - is of course the eventual overturning of West Ham's last-gasp equaliser against Arsenal on Sunday. There was a foul on Raya, but.... he was looking for it (he stood next to Pablo and leaned into his outstretched arm, before theatrically falling over - rather than stepping back a little and then taking a running jump over the blocking West Ham player towards the incoming ball, as a keeper should), and it was not very apparent in real time (it's hard to see how this meets the supposed 'clear & obvious' threshold for VAR intervention, when no-one at the stadium had much idea what was going on and it took the back-room team 4 or 5 minutes to render their decision), and the 'most consequential incident' rule officials are apparently now following is obviously unsatisfactory (arbitrarily disregarding at least four instances of egregious wrestling by Arsenal defenders because.... impeding the keeper is more important??). This may have been technically the 'right decision' under our currently crazy, impractical Laws of the Game; but it was deeply, deeply unsatisfying to all lovers of the game - it felt unjust. I, for one, would far rather tolerate the occasional 'wrong' decision, if that's the price of trusting the on-pitch official most of the time, and/or for imposing a sensible time-limit on VAR deliberations. And 'right' or 'wrong', we simply don't want the title - or relegation - to be determined by a bunch of men peering at a TV monitor in a PortaCabin somewhere.....  Things have got to change. [I had some more to say on this a week later, on how I think PGMOL should address this problem.]

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries: Florian Wirtz was a last-minute absentee for Liverpool on Saturday, because of a stomach bug; that gave the popular youngster Rio Ngumoha a rare start (and led to more vilification for Arne Slot when he subbed him off after little more than an hour, when he looked the best player on the park - although he was apparently starting to suffer from cramp). Casemiro was a late drop-out for United, having apparently picked up a training-ground knock; Mount deputised for him, and Joshua Zirkzee got a surprise start up-front because Sesko had still not recovered from a heavy whack on the shin he suffered last week. The recently superb Khusanov was a surprise omission for City, supposedly another victim of a previously unannounced knock in training late in the week; Nico Gonzalez was surprisingly dropped in favour of Tijjani Reijnders. Dango Ouattara was also a somewhat unexpected omission for City's opponents, Brentford. And Pep incurred the wrath and dismay of FPL enthusiasts yet again by substituting Cherki (the most transffered-in player this week - always a curse!) and Reijnders seconds shy of the hour mark.

The seemingly perpetually unlucky Ben White had to hobble off after just 26 minutes, after hurting his knee in a collision with Summerville. Morgan Gibbs-White was unable to play after suffering a facial injury in Thursday's Europa League semi-final - the gash in the middle of his forehead too deep, still at too much risk of opening up again.

The notorious 'Pep Roulette' reached a new nadir on Wednesday night, when the barely fit-again Josko Gvardiol was brought in for Nico O'Reilly, the recently outstanding Rayan Cherki only got on for the last 10 minutes (but almost immediately set up a goal for Savinho, and almost repeated the exploit a few minutes later), Haaland and Doku were 'rested' completely, and Rayan Ait-Nouri was tried out in a central midfield role (which, while they may be consoling themselves that they were being spared for Saturday's FA Cup Final, should cause grave alarms for the agents of Nico Gonzalez and Tijjani Reijnders...).

Near misses:  Szoboszlai crashed a shot against the foot of the near-post, and Van Dijk saw a powerful header thud off the top of the crossbar (he claimed to have been impeded by a shirt tug, but there was no clear view of that on the TV pictures). Junior Kroupi smashed an effort against the crossbar in the first-half at Craven Cottage, and in the dying minutes Josh King saw his powerful shot bounce down off the underside of the bar but not quite cross the line. Yerson Mosquera nearly salvaged some pride for Wolves when his header skimmed the top of the bar (that would have pulled them back to 2-1 - although they never really looked like they had a chance of getting into the game). Sunderland's Lutsharel Geertruida also saw a long-range effort crash against the foot of the post late on against United.

On Sunday, Adam Wharton nearly nicked a late win for Palace when he smashed a 25-yard drive against the outside of the left post. And Will Osula whipped a lovely 25-yard free-kick against the crossbar.

Big misses/big saves: Jordan Pickford yet again pulled off the save of the weekend, somehow flinging a leg out to block a ferocious shot from Ismaila Sarr that came at him with an obstructed view, through the legs of a defender.

David Raya had to get across his goal very smartly to palm away Castellanos's diving header from 16-yards out, and later spread himself well to stop Mateus Fernandes prodding the ball past him when put clean through.

Antonin Kinsky pulled off a great reaction stop on his goal-line at the foot of the post from Rodon's weak but well directed downward header - to prevent Spurs going behind in the opening minutes (a setback which, given their current jittery nerves, would surely have proven fatal to them). He added another great stop in the second-half, tipping Longstaff's fierce near-post drive on to the woodwork.

Gvardiol's towering header appeared bound for the top left corner, but Dean Henderson somehow clawed it away from behind him - keeping the scoreline somewhat respectable (if Arsenal win the title by a single goal, David Raya will be sending him a Gift Card...).

Outstanding goals: Ryan Gravenberch started the weekend with a 'Doku special' (his first goal in four-and-a-half months). Rayan claimed the points for Bournemouth by pinging one into the bottom corner from nearly 25 yards out. And Jeremy Doku himself got the crucial breakthrough goal against Brentford with a right-foot curler that was uncannily near-identical to his last-gasp point-saver against Everton on Monday night.

Elliot Anderson produced a great late equaliser for Forest to finally put them safe from relegation, lashing home from a very acute angle.

Mathys Tel finished very sweetly from the edge of the box to put Spurs in the lead on Monday night - but they were once again perhaps guilty of excessive and premature elation, celebrating as if they'd won the match in only the 50th minute,... and once more coming undone before the end.

Outstanding performances: 

Big mistakes: 

Bad luck/good luck: Enzo Fernandez's free-kick was clearly intended as a low cross, but deceived everyone and sneaked into the far bottom corner of the goal. Wesley Fofana had a whiff at the ball as it passed him, and came so close to helping it on its way that he probably could have claimed the goal if he'd insisted that he thought he made contact - but he unselfishly admitted that he didn't.

FPL weirdness:  Antoine Semenyo was very unlucky not to be awarded an assist for Haaland's goal; the ball ricocheted off a couple of other players on its way through to the centre-forward, but this season we've usually seen such non-conclusive interventions disregarded. The thinking may have been that, in addition to the mutlple deflections, Haaland himself had muffed his initial effort and had to improvise a second attempt to bundle the goal messily across the line - and perhaps this was a 'new phase of play'. But we don't usually see players regarded as 'assisting' themselves, and here the chance was clearly created by Semenyo's surge to the byline. Ah, apparently they're claiming it was a 'save' from Kelleher that was deemed to have initiated a new 'phase of play'; but it wasn't a 'save' - it was a miscontrol by Haaland, not an attempted shot, and the ball didn't have enough power behind it to have reached the goal; and Kelleher didn't know anything about it, the ball simply rebounded off his shin, returning to Haaland within about a tenth of a second.

Unexpected results:  Liverpool again looked fairly dreadful, and were lucky to hang on to even a point at home. Fulham were dominating a slightly out-of-sorts Bournemouth, even before Ryan Christie's sending-off, and would have won comfortably - with some more incisive finishing. A very sub-par Manchester United were lucky to hang on to a point against a perky Sunderland - although the home side should have been reduced to 10 men in the closing minutes. Nobody was expecting Burnley to - deservedly - claim a point against high-flying Villa. Palace, with nothing to play for in the league, and naturally a bit weary after a European semi-final a few days ago, put up an unexpectedly robust resistance to bang in-form Everton, coming from behind twice and nearly stealing all 3 points. And a somewhat misfiring Arsenal were very, very, very lucky to get past West Ham (with a big helping hand from VAR!).

The FPL 'Team of the Week', for once, ends up being not too wildly unexpected, with almost everyone (at least in the preliminary line-up. at the end of the weekend) - except the United pair, Lammens and Mazraoui - being among the top 60 or so most popular selections. (It just serves to underline how very weird it is that we've rarely had more than 3 or 4 of the 'Team of the Week' players among the most selected in almost every other gameweek this season!) Ultimately, with two fairly comfortable wins for City, no fewer than 7 City players crashed the selection - although Pep (who obviously hates FPL!!) 'rested' all 4 of the most popular picks, Haaland, Cherki, Doku, and O'Reilly, for the midweek match against Palace!

The global average climbed to 65 points, one of the highest of the season - although that was with the extra game for City, and an awful lot of leftover bonus chips in play. With a few unexpected absences from key players, 3 or 4 red cards missed (Angulo's foul on Fernandes a really blatant and unarguable instance; but Udogie's surviving a 'DOGSO' offence on Monday being even more consequential, as having a potentially huge impact on the relegation battle), 3 or 4 really badly missed penalty awards, much battering of the woodwork (even more than usual; and we've seen an awful lot of such agonisingly near-misses this season!), and that insane last-minute VAR drama at West Ham, this week is looking like a 9 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.

Dilemmas of the Week - GW 36 (25/26)

Yes, I'm finally back - after a TWO-WEEK hiatus caused by a computer meltdown...

And not too many new injuries this week, it seems, so...., hopefully, this can be a brief one.

I am trying to streamline these weekly round-ups a bit from last year, restricting myself for the most part to just the injuries etc. affecting players that are likely to have a major significance in FPL; and also, of course, only to new injuries - I figure everyone should be aware of players who've already been ruled out for some time!  

[For some years, I have found the 'Injuries & Bans' summary on Fantasy Football Scout the most reliable resource for this kind of information; although this site, Premier League Injuries, is a very good alternative (often a little quicker to update, I think - though it did go through a bit of a glitchy period for a while last year).  Go check these out for more comprehensive coverage. 

I see the Fantasy Premier League site has added an improved 'Player Availability' page this year (though hidden under 'The Scout' tab?!). That also seems to be reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date, but god knows how it's supposed to be 'organised' - maybe by 'date of injury'? Obviously, arranging it by club and alphabetical order would be more sensible; but the denizens of FPL Towers seem to have a deep aversion to the sensible.]

I've recently discovered this additional resource, the weekly Predicted Lineups from Fantasy Football Edits. My longtime standby for this sort of news, Fantasy Footall Scout, does usually provide some explanatory commentary on its predictions, even including reminders of the key injury concerns, and sometimes also some discussion of possible alternate selections; so, if you like a bit more detail with your 'probable lineups' for the week, that could still be the preferable roundup to look at. But because FPL Edits is so stripped-down, it's rather more straightforwardly accessible, easier to scan through quickly; and I think it's also perhaps a tad more reliable with its expected formations and lineups, and a little quicker to update.

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 36?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

Ollie Watkins suffered a nasty gash on the head in Villa's Europa League win over Forest, but was not considered 'concussed' and was able to complete the whole game - so, it seems likely he'll be able to play again against Burnley on Sunday.

Mats Wieffer is a doubtful starter after he had to come off early on against Newcastle last week with an ankle injury.

Alejandro Garnacho and Pedro Neto missed last week's game against Forest with training knocks, and remain unlikely to be able to start this week. Goalkeeper Robert Sanchez suffered a head injury in that Forest game, and has been ruled out of this weekend's match at Anfield.

Oliver Glasner has highlighted Adam Wharton, Yeremy Pino, Ismaila Sarr, Tyrick Mitchell, and Jean-Philippe Mateta as players who are struggling with knocks and/or fatigue after their Conference League semi-final win on Thursday - so, none of those seem to be options for the Double Gameweek, as almost certain to get short minutes, or perhaps sit out one of the two fixtures entirely.

Leeds's Noah Okafor, a recent FPL phenomenon with 3 double-digit hauls in the last 4 games and an ownership that had surged to nearly 350,000, has pulled a calf-muscle and will struggle to be available again for the last game of the season.

Alexander Isak missed last week's game against Manchester United with a minor groin strain, but has returned to training, so might play some part against Chelsea.

Benjamin Sesko had to come off against United last week after taking a heavy blow to the shin; there appears to be no further word on whether that's gong to keep him out of action for a while.

Newcastle's Lewis Miley cracked a fibula in training this week, and will be out for the rest of the season.

Morgan Gibbs-White may also be a doubt to appear against Newcastle, after suffering a massive gash on the forehead in the Europa League tie against Villa on Thursday night. As with Ollie Watkins's injury, though, it is not deemed to have caused any concussion, so he might perhaps be OK to play this weekend with a heavy bandage or patch.

Jose Sa missed last week's game with an ankle problem, though Rob Edwards is hopeful he might be fit again this week. If not, Dan Bentley should deputise again.

Do we have any players who are dropped, or not looking likely to get the starts we hoped for?

Sunderland's Dan Ballard misses the rest of the season for tugging the hair of Tolu Arukodare last week, a 'violent conduct' offence (Sundlerland's appeal that the tug was 'accidental' was quickly rejected).

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

The big news of the week is that Bournemouth full-back Alex Jimenez was suspended by the club this Friday upon news that the police are investigating allegations that he had been flirting online with a 16-year-old girl. (I don't think that's actually illegal...? But there may be an issue that she was still only 15 when he began these conversations.) Even if he's ultimately exonerated, he's likely to miss the rest of this season and a good chunk of next. (Although he's returned 3 hauls in the last 9 games, he is - strangely - only owned by about 30,000 managers in FPL; so, this news won't have that much of an impact.)

Did anyone play so well, you have to consider bringing them in immediately?

Well, I haven't been able to watch very much football over the past few weeks, so I have limited insight into this, but...  

Rayan Cherki and Jeremy Doku have been absolutely superb of late; but surely should have made their way into people's FPL squads already! However, if they haven't, this week's Double Gameweek for City, with matches against Brentford and Palace (not the easiest, especially when they're so deperately playing catch-up in the title race), may prompt a lot of people to consider bringing them in now. They really ought to be the week's top captaincy picks; indeed, there's a case for dropping the recently points-shy Semenyo, and perhaps even Haaland to make room for the pair of them.

West Ham have been starting to look very impressive since the start of March (well, apart from last week's drubbing by Brentford...), with Castellanos and Mavropanos, in particular, and the perennially solid Jarrod Bowen looking very tempting picks - especially for anyone wishing for an upset for Arsenal this weekend to keep the title race alive. People getting excited over the spectacular return of Bukayo Saka against Fulham last week are, I think, dangerously overlooking the fact that he was withdrawn at the end of the first-half (and got similarly short minutes in the Champions League semis against Atletico). Given that Arsenal should be able to win their last three league games with a youth team, and that they've got by without Saka for a third of this season, I imagine it's quite likely he'll continue to be wrapped in cotton-wool (i.e., very short minutes) until the big PSG game in Budapest.

Crystal Palace, of course, also have a Double Gameweek this week; but Everton and City are daunting opponents; and their final two games of the season, against Brentford and Arsenal, possibly even worse. As I noted above in the injury round-up, they have a lot of tiredness and injury issues which are likely to lead to heavy rotations for their most important players. And, with nothing to play for in the league any more, keeping those players in good shape for the Europa Conference League Final at the end of the season is surely going to be the top priority.  So, I definitely can't see it being worth using transfers to bring in any additional Palace players, just for the possibility of them playing a second fixture. Indeed, I might even be inclined to offload a Palace player I already had - this DGW is really not likely to be worth much, if anything, for them.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!

Home, sweet 'home'...

 

After a month or so on the road, I have arrived back in Cambodia (Siem Reap, for now).

I have spent most of the last quarter-century in East Asia, and nearly a dozen years now in South-East Asia. For the last six years I have been mainly based in the Lao P.D.R., which has many points of appeal; and I've spent a fair bit of time in Vietnam and Thailand, for which I also have a considerable fondness. But somehow,... Cambodia chimes with me that bit more than any of its neighbours. Arriving back here after a spell away - even stepping off a bus or a plane into the noise and stink and tumult of Phnom Penh - always feels strangely reassuring, comforting to me,... like a big warm hug for the soul.

And so it does again. I've been having a bit of a stressful time over the past year or two; and especially in the last few months. But now, back in Cambodia, everything suddenly feels all right again. (It isn't. But it feels like it, for now - and I'll take that.)

A beer so good they named the country after it...

The beer's pretty good too.

And.... WE'RE BACK!

 

My laptop suddenly died on me. Very suddenly - no warning signs of any distress in its operations: working just fine in the afternoon, then utterly unresponsive in the evening. 

The worst possible timing too! I'd just started a period of travelling in southern Lao: an area I'm not so familiar with, and where I'd be shifting locations frequently, with little opportunity to look around for possible assistance with computer ailments; small towns, with not much English spoken, and not much prospect of there being any decent computer shops anyway. The day before the catastrophe, I'd still been in the capital, Vientiane, which I know my way around very well, and where it should have been relatively straightforward to get a repair done - and/or buy a new laptop. (I almost invariably have a second as a back-up, but I'd just sold my older one, and hadn't yet had time to think about getting a replacement. It is particularly vexing that the defunct one is less than a year old, and has hardly been used. With careful management, I am usually able to squeeze at least 7 or 8 years of useful life out of these babies; I've never had one quit on me like this after such a short time.)

Hence, I have been cut off from my blog here for nearly three weeks. My weekly 'Zen' bons mots are mostly prepared some weeks or even months ahead, and a few other shorter posts are also sometimes 'pre-baked'', but most of my content here is written 'live', in the moment, day by day - and there's been none of that since mid-April. I've missed TWO whole Gameweeks! Sorry.

While losing touch with the title race at such a crucial juncture has been vexing (no TV available to me either in these parts; although I did rather fortuitously catch a full re-run of the epic Everton v City game when I arrived in Siem Reap the other day), the enforced digital detox has been rather refreshing.

Alas, this externally imposed virtue of Internet abstinence seems to have been compensated for by a notable lapse in virtue in other areas of my life. (I blame the weather too: the rains have been late to arrive this year, and the whole region has been sweltering under a 40+ Celsius heatwave for the past several weeks - that does rather militate against trying to do anything very active...)  I have spent a fortnight mostly just sat on terraces overlooking the Mekong, steadily slinging back cold beers and Long Island Iced Teas....

A terrace overlooking the Mekong

Putting my feet up

A prize for anyone who can identify my exact location in these snaps!

 

Now, that idyll of rustic simplicity - a blissful recreation of a pre-industrial, pre-Internet life - is over, and I must return to my habitual grind. I suppose I'll start enjoying it again before long. But at the moment, I am still missing having all day to read a book....

A little bit of Zen (93)

 

“Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.”

Elbert Hubbard

I had never heard of Hubbard until quite recently, but he seems to have been a fascinating chap, quite the Renaissance Man in the America of the late 1800s: he made a successful career in sales & marketing for a soap company in his early life, but then reacted against the industrialisation and consumerism of the modern world to become a maverick journalist, philosopher, anarcho-socialist agitator, and pioneer of the Arts & Crafts Movement. He and his second wife perished in the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915.

Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 34/35

???????

Well, darn it - I was without Internet access (dead laptop, and travelling in some out-of-the-way places where the connectivity might often have been very crappy anyway...) or TV for a couple of weeks or so, and struggled to catch up with the football action I'd missed (mostly brief highlights on Youtube only, rather than any full games or analysis shows) even when I was restored to the delights of 'civilization'.

So, alas, I have missed to cover the EPL eccentricities of Gameweeks 34 and 35 in this 'Luck-o-Meter' series. Galling it is - but these things happen.

A little bit of Zen (92)

 

“We must learn to accept the impermanence of all things, and find peace in the midst of change.”

Kosho Uchiyama

The games we choose to play

 

Over the past few years I've become a big fan of Robert Pantano's thoughtful Youtube channel on philosophy and psychology, Pursuit of Wonder.

One of the things that most disturbs me about a game like Fantasy Premier League is its fiercely addictive qualities, the fact that it is in essence a form of gambling - where we stake our self-esteem on our ability to predict the outcome of unpredictable events better than our fellow FPL managers.

So, I was particularly struck by this latest video of Robert's, in which he starts off from considering the parable of The Gambler from Pascal's Pensées (a man who finds he cannot renounce his vice, even when offered a huge amount of money to do so), and goes on to consider why such obsessive distractions are proliferating in the modern world. The only consolation he can offer at the end of his brief audio-essay is this, a suggestion that these activities may not invariably be all bad, and that we can still maintain some measure of self-awareness and control over our engagement with them:  "It is not winning, it is not losing; it is the hope and uncertainty we experience in the games we choose to play. And so, what seems to matter is this: wisely choosing what games we play, and how we play them. Each of us have a choice in whether we keep playing games or not, and each of us have a choice in what kind of games we play, and the bets we place."

For me, the 'answer' in engaging with FPL is to not care about the results. You can strive for better results (which is mentally improving and spiritually ennobling) without actually letting yourself be bothered whether you achieve them (which is something outside of your control, ever at the mercy of random factors in the external world). 

For me, it must be all about the process, not the outcome; and about measuring my 'success' or 'progress' against my own internal yardstick, not against the greater or lesser 'success' of anyone else.

These thoughts on gambling suddenly reminded me of this excellent Al Pacino speech in D.J. Caruso's 2005 sports gambling picture Two For The Money (a severely underrated film; unfortunately, Pacino's co-star, Matthew McConnaughey was still in his 'career slump', more box-office poison than box-office catnip at this point), in which he dismays a Gamblers Anonymous meeting by confronting the attendees with the uncomfortable fact that most 'problem gamblers' have a more serious underlying issue, a masochistic, self-destructive impulse: they are addicted to losing, not winning - because that intense misery and despair is an insidiously heightened state of being, a rush that's come to dominate their lives.

It does bother me, often, that the almost inevitable, relentless 'failure' involved in FPL might be the dangerous key to its irresisible appeal... It is something I continually try to address, and to skirt away from.

If you like Mr Pantano's style in this video, you should check out his recently published book, The Terrible Paradox of Self-Awareness.

A little bit of Zen (91)

 

"When you find someone else's intelligence offensive, in fact it's your own stupidity that's upsetting you; you're just looking for external targets to vent your frustration and self-loathing against."

GW

I wish commenters in the social-media-sphere were more aware of this. It is dispiriting how many of them will get all snarky and grumpy at people for having the effrontery to use complete sentences or 'big words'...

No time to gather one's thoughts....

 

As if having Gameweeks spill over into the midweek isn't bad enough, this week we have another bloody Friday evening game (god, I hate those: impossible to watch in my timezone...!) to kick-off the next one.

No sooner have City and Bournemouth (and Leeds and Burnley) completed the second instalment of their Double Gameweek 33 on Wednesday night than we're faced with an early start to Gameweek 34 with the Friday match between Sunderland and Nottingham Forest, less than 48 hours later.

A lot of FPL managers will no doubt be tripped up by the quick turnaround, and miss out on making team tweaks for the new gameweek. TRY NOT TO BE ONE OF THEM!!

BEST OF LUCK!!!!!!

Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 33

Few new big injury concerns this week, at least, but the recent hugely long interruption of the Premier League programme is still causing massive uncertainty about form and results. This really doesn't feel like a great week to be hazarding big chips in - but, with the season now so far advanced, we really don't have much choice. Almost everyone is gambling on their Bench Boost this week (or their Triple Captain, or, for a few with somewhat eccentric - um, probably 'bad' - squad selections, even their Free Hit).

These weekly 'summaries' have been getting a bit too involved - and excessively time-consuming for me! - so I've been aiming to keep them briefer recently. I made just about zero progress on that resolution for the first few weeks, but.... now I've hit upon a new 'format', which might help: a tabulation of the major types of 'lucky' incidents. 

I will try to resist any extended commentary (although I probably will still indulge in a few diatribes about any particularly egregious penalty or handball incidents).

Well, at least that was probably the best Sunday we've seen this season. And well up there with the best we've seen in several years....

Red cards awarded: 

Red cards not awarded: Gabriel clearly made a vigorous motion of his head towards Haaland in their second-half contretemps. Yes, a little bit of a 'handbags-at-dawn' incident, no, not really a 'headbutt', but.... it clearly strayed over that line you're not supposed to cross: he should have been sent off for it. (And really, he might well have picked up two yellows over the game anyway for the incessant ripping-the-shirt-off-his-back wrestling he was resorting to with his Viking nemesis.)

Curtis Jones's shove on Dewsbury-Hall looked like a penalty - but he just got away with it because it was a shoulder-to-shoulder kind of contact (though with undue force, and with no chance of reaching the ball...).

Penalties awarded: The late penalty award for Dominic Calvert-Lewin looked very, very soft.

Penalties not awarded: Cole Palmer was barged to the ground by Luke Shaw early on, but Michael Oliver and the VAR team were strangely unimpressed. Chelsea might have had another in the second-half when Casemiro's clumsy, over-extended follow-through caught Cucurella on the instep, just inside the penalty area - playing the ball is not an absolute defence, when you then kick an opponent so unnecessarily. (Chelsea, somehow, just cannot win any penalties??!!)

Gabriel clearly did move his arm deliberately towards a crossed ball early in the first-half at The Etihad - incontrovertible penalty: bizarre that it wasn't at least given a close look-over by VAR. Perhaps they'll say that his arm was 'next to his body'; yes, it was, but that's an argument that's only relevant when the ball is fired at you with little chance to respond; here, he did have a chance to respond - and he responded by leaning towards the ball, and deflecting it with his arm. (And it clearly would have gone in, but for this intervention, because it still hit the inside of the post.)

Tight/dubious offsides: Adam Armstrong produced a neat chipped finish to a breakaway against Leeds, but the SAOT showed him very narrowly offside as he ran through; probably a 'correct' decision, but a very rough one for Wolves. (And one that was hugely consequential for FPL, with so many people now having Darlow and/or one or two Leeds defenders for this Double Gameweek.)

Will Osula was very narrowly 'offside' for the Newcastle's equaliser; but VAR correctly spotted that the ball had been played to him by Evanilson's tackle, rather than a through-ball from Guimaraes.

A great opening goal from Ndiaye against Liverpool was ruled out for a very close offside call against his assister, Jake O'Brien - another one of those where the SAOT picture was still very close, but didn't accord at all to the naked-eye impression that he'd been nowhere near off.

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed: Haaland did have hold of a big handful of Gabriel's shirt as he scored the winner. It was only briefly, probably not consequential, and the Arsenal defender had been holding his shirt just before that (and for a large percentage of the game), so.... it really wouldn't have seemed fair for the goal to be disallowed for that. But technically it is against the rules, we've seen a lot of goals chalked off for this kind of offence,... and surely VAR should at least have had a look, and told us why it was 'OK'.

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries: Alex Iwobi was withdrawn at half-time. after after apparently developing a hamstring problem. Diego Gomez had to come off in the 20th minute after jarring his knee; at least this allowed Kaoru Mitoma - a rather surprising omission from the start - to get a decent outing. Bissouma, Kolo Muani, and Betancur were all withdrawn by De Zerbi well short of the hour. Jose Sa had a back-muscle problem, so back-up Dan Bentley was a surprise starter in goal for Wolves. Anthony Gordon was a surprise absentee for Newcastle, supposedly the victim of a late training injury. Lewis Hall, who had been struggling in the game, was withdrawn at half-time. Joao Pedro was a surprise late omission for Chelsea, complaining of a sore thigh-muscle (a sorry blow for the slightly over 50% of FPL managers who own him in this gameweek; although Chelsea have been so ineffectual lately, you wonder if he would have contributed any decent points anyway, even across two fixtures). Estevao, after a lively start, had to come off after just 15 minutes, after feeling a problem in his hamstring.

Arteta dropped Gyokeres for Havertz and White for Mosquera - but it didn't do him much good.

Slot dropped Kerkez, Frimpong, and Macallister for the derby game at Everton.

Near misses:  Igor Thiago, despite being held down by a Fulham defender, managed to bang a header against the outside of the post. 

Much fancied Danny Welbeck (my best mate is - bizarrely - chancing the Triple Captaincy on him!) appeared to have hit the ball against the post from only a yard out; even more strangely, the linesman then flagged for an offside - even though no Brighton player had been within two yards of being offside at any point in the move! An insanely terrible decision!! Of course, it wouldn't have mattered if a goal had been scored, as VAR should have been easily able to overrule the insanity; but it presumably would have stopped Welbeck from being penalised for a miss under the BPS...  All these small officiating cock-ups can have some FPL consequence.... (To be fair to Danny, it was actually a last-ditch clearance from Van de Ven that cannoned off the post in that incident. So, he will presumably have been denied BPS and 'defcon' credit for that, because of the errant offside flag.) Later, Welbeck stole in behind from a Pascal Gross freekick, but headed tamely straight at the keeper. Just before half-time, Xavi Simons passed the ball against the inside of the far post; if that had gone in, to put the home side 2-0 up, Spurs might have hung on for the win they so desperately needed.

A neat first-half curler from Estevao shaved the outside of the post. Enzo Fernandez also fizzed an effort narrowly wide. Late on, Moises Caicedo mashed a 25-yard drive only an inch or so wide!

Ebere Eze's crisp left-foot shot from 20 yards slamming against the inside of the foot of the post and fizzing across the goal-line will no doubt haunt Arsenal fans for years. It was a fantastic effort; and, if it had gone in, to give the visitors a 2-1 lead,.... probably they would have gone on to win the match and the league title. Not many people are betting on them to pull that off now. Haaland slapped one against the top of the near-post before Eze's scare. And then there was that Arsenal break where Havertz was in alone on Donnarumma but couldn't get past him. We also saw a Gabriel header deflect off Nico O'Reilly's back against the post... And then, late on, Havertz headed just over the bar from a lovely Trossard cross (although I think Donnarumma had it covered). Such a ding-dong of a game! (And, credit where it's due, I had been afraid that the Gunners would just dig in for a draw; but they did go after this game. They were still looking well out-of-sorts in 'competitive edge', though; it seemed that every time City got tackled or misplaced a pass, they were able to win the ball back within seconds....)

Onana had a header hit the middle of the crossbar against Sunderland.

Big misses/big saves: Mikkel Damsgaard stole in behind unmarked against Fulham, but couldn't find the target with his hooked volley. Bernd Leno made a great reaction save from a Dango Ouattara snap-shot in the final minute.

Emi Martinez presumably got credit for his 'big save' in the one-on-one with Diarra - but the Sunderland man had looked miles offside when he began the break, and a flag was never raised?

Dean Henderson had a few uncharacterstically flappy moments on Monday night; but he did pull off one excellent reaction save from a Mavropanos header. And early on, Brennan Johnson had headed over the top when he had the whole goal to aim at.

Outstanding goals: Kaoru Mitoma's exquisite left-foot volley at the far post may well come to be seen as the goal that sent Spurs down (OK, Georginho Rutter's stunning strike in the dying seconds was actually decisive of the result here; but it felt like pyschologically Spurs were always on the back-foot, having conceded the lead to such an astonishing goal just before half-time). Xavi Simons's curler from the edge of the box was pretty special too - but perhaps Spurs's celebrations of that goal were excessive, premature, as they still couldn't hang on for the win. And James Justin's bicycle-kick against Wolves was probably the most improbable goal/goalscorer of this - or any - week! But perhaps Rayan Cherki's impetuous dribble through the Arsenal defence will be remembered as the most significant goal of the season, because it was the one that unseated Arsenal's title dreams (at least for a while).

Outstanding performances: 

Big mistakes: There will be few huger mistakes all season than Donnarumma's gifting Arsenal an equaliser within seconds of Cherki having secured the crucial advantage in the potentially 'title-deciding' match. His first touch was heavy, and even then he didn't appreciate how closely Havertz was pressing him and was slow to get rid of the ball,.... and even then, he was a bit unlucky that his attempted clearance pinged off the German's lunging toe and went just inside the far post. One might really lay the blame here on a bad back-pass from Matheus Nunes, or on Pep for insisting on this playing out from the back even with a keeper who's not very good at it. As it turned out, this blunder was ultimately not all that consequential (apart from all those lost 'clean sheet' points in FPL!!), since Arsenal never really looked in this game even when they had so fortuitously drawn level again.

Bad luck/good luck: 

FPL weirdness: Bruno Fernandes, for once, missed out on bonus points - in fact, didn't come anywhere near getting any - despite providing the assist for the only goal of the game. Something going wrong around here....

Unexpected results: Brentford were well on top against Fulham, but just couldn't put any of their chances away. A much-improved Spurs may feel a little hard done-by that they didn't manage to take all 3 points off Brighton. Chelsea largely dominated against Manchester United, but couldn't take any points from the game. And, yeah, nobody expected Villa v Sunderland to be a 4-3 (and, frankly, Villa didn't really deserve to win it). Liverpool weren't really the better side in the Merseyside derby, but somehow nicked the win. Great hattrick from Morgan Gibbs-White, but... that result flattered Forest.

The FPL 'Team of the Week', which, this season, has rarely included many of the most popular FPL picks,... after Saturday had absolutely none. And it didn't get much better on Sunday (Cherki, Salah, Gibbs-White, Watkins??).

The global average rose from a pitiful 15 points on Saturday (allegedly; that barely seems credible) to a still fairly dismal 39 points by Monday, after the 10 games of the basic gameweek (and that's with a lot of Bench Boosts in play: over 835,000, according to LiveFPL). Not too many outrageously bad decisions so far - well, except that Chelsea should probably have had at least 1, possibly 2 penalties; City too, and maybe Everton. And there have been a fair few line-up surprises, desperately near misses, and slightly surprising results; so, this one is probably looking set to be at least a 5 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'. (And there's still a long way to go, with three extra matches in the Gameweek.)