Luck-o-Meter (35)

The rate of injuries has slowed somewhat in recent weeks (everyone's injured already??), but a greater incidence of fatigue, nerves, perhaps occasional complacency or dipping in motivation, and a preoccupation, for some, with the final rounds of the European competitions, mean that already over the past few gameweeks we've seen more and more bizarre swings in form and unexpected results. The tail-end of the season becomes even more of a lottery than usual. Eccentric coaching decisions and incompetent refereeing may add even more to these uncertainties.... Will they this week? Let's see.

The tight turnaround this week (a Friday evening kick-off for City v Wolves no doubt catching many FPL managers by surprise - especially as having the last match of Gameweek 34, Forest v Brentford, put back to Thursday evening meant that there was a gap of less than 24 hours between the two gameweeks) may have provided the first cruel blows of Fortune for some.....

And indeed, the new gameweek got off to a strange and exasperating start, with in-form visitors Wolves being largely dominant at the Etihad, yet somehow not managing to make any of their chances pay (the highly fancied FPL picks Cunha and Ait-Nouri both hit the post!). This led to the rare (almost unique - I can't recall seeing it before!) phenomenon of the Wolves players getting far higher average ratings on the BBC match report than the City ones, despite having lost the match; in fact, 6 Wolves players were rated higher than any City players (except match-winner, Kevin DeBruyne)! And not only did City nick a winner somewhat against the run of play, and improbably cling on to a clean sheet - but Josko Gvardiol, who really did nothing all game, apart from one important block from an Ait-Nouri effort in the second half, somehow hoovered up the maximum bonus points. Ain't no justice!  More FPL woe in that Cunha and Marmoush, two of the highest-owned forwards after Isak, both unexpectedly drew a blank here; and that the recently excellent Strand Larsen was a very late withdrawal, with a groin muscle problem that might keep him out for a few weeks. Also, Rayan Ait-Nouri was very lucky to escape a red card for raking his studs down Bernardo Silva's shin late in the game; he probably benefitted from the overturning of Evanilson's red card a couple of days ago on the basis that his foul, though horrendous, had been 'accidental' - this looked the same kind of thing: a very nasty impact, but clumsy rather than malevolent. Though I'm not sure that presumed intention should be any part of assessing the severity of incidents like this...

Marshall Munetsi's penalty shout was a feeble claim: it looked as though he'd merely slipped over in the six-yard box as Gvardiol very lightly laid a hand on his upper arm for a moment. Nevertheless, Gvardiol was taking a big chance in trying to touch an attacking player who was slipping in behind him, and we do still sometimes see such tenuous 'infractions' penalised - it was one of those where, if the referee had initially seen it as a foul, VAR might have been hesitant to query that. And if a penalty had been given there, Gvardiol would have, in an instant, lost his clean-sheet bonus.... and all or most of his extra bonus points. On such slender margins in officiating do tens of FPL points - and the outcomes of games - often swing....

Villa prevailed narrowly over Fulham at home, although both teams looked pretty mediocre and lacked any cutting edge. Robinson was a little lucky to avoid conceding a penalty early on for needlessly barging Watkins in the back; it wasn't a very heavy contact, but it was illegal. Ruling out Sessegnon's goal for a faint touch on the hand as the ball came down for his half-volley looked fair enough. Unai Emery alienated a lot of FPL fans by making a pair of substitutions just about on the stroke of the hour - leading to the bizarre and vexing inconsistency that John McGinn received full appearance points while poor Marco Asensio got only a solitary point, despite their departure from the pitch being mere seconds apart!

Arsenal faltered again, failing to capitalise on a comfortable dominance in the first half, and then being caught out by - oh, the irony! - a couple of Bournemouth set-pieces in the second half. Semenyo took his long throw-in for Huijsen's equaliser from the wrong place - a curious new example of poor refereeing potentially having swung the course of the game. There was just a slight whiff of controversy about Bournemouth's winner, since it was impossible to see on the VAR pictures (whose resolution seems to be getting worse by the week?!) what part of Evanilson's body the ball had been deflected over the line by.

Everton are still misfiring too; likewise should have made more of their first-half chances. Long-range pingers from McNeil and Enciso were really the only bright spots in a fairly dull game. Everton fans are a bit disgruntled by the fact that Hirst's equaliser came after Patterson had been laid out at the other end of the field with an apparent facial injury.

Leicester won comfortably against Southampton, and really should have won by more: El Khannouss blazed a couple of excellent chances wide, and Vardy had a good penalty shout waved away.

Brentford were up to their old tricks again, dominating the game and scoring for fun,... but failing to shut out even a very poor opponent. They really need a better keeper: there was nothing to be done about Garnacho's 20-yard screamer, but the other two they conceded here were very much Flekken's fault (and I don't like the way he started whingeing at his defenders after letting Diallo's third through his legs....). One wonders if something's broken with the new Semi-Automated Offside decision technology, as we haven't often been seeing the justificatory computer graphic renderings which are supposed to determine the calls now; in this game we had a very long delay to verify Wissa's goal... in which no-one had been anywhere near to offside - bizarre! With United so utterly woeiful, it's becoming harder and harder to see how Amorim can keep his job this summer. But at least it was nice to see returns to the field after long injury abences from Mount, Diallo, Shaw, Henry, and Thiago in this game.

It was nice to see VAR actually doing its job well at Brighton, twice correctly overruling the award of a penalty to Newcastle, and then eventually stepping in to direct the referee to take a second look at an obvious handball in the wall defending a free-kick from 20 yards - but Craig Pawson really wasn't having a good day, to have got all three of these wrong the first time. Moreover, as with the Ben Johnson incident last week, his eventual decision to show a yellow card to Willock in the second incident was extremely harsh: Van Hecke managed to pull out of his rash challenge at the last minute, but it was reasonable for the attacker to go to ground in an attempt to avoid an anticipated - and potentially devastating - contact; going down like that is not necessarily 'diving'. Mats Wieffer should definitely have been sent off for a dangerous challenge on Tonali, and on that one VAR failed to intervene; I suppose they're not supposed to adjudicate on yellow card decisions, even for a second yellow (although, obviously, they should have jurisdiction over all potential sendings-off; that's just an absurd oversight in the protocols); but this challenge clearly met the threshold for at least consideration as a straight red card, so they surely could have suggested a second look to Pawson - which would then have given him the option to award a second yellow rather than a straight red, once he'd seen the foul more clearly. But for me, it was every way a straight red. I'm not sure if Newcastle fans can take encouragement from this game or not: they did dominate, and created large numbers of chances - but weren't at all clinical with them, which is why they needed the fortuitous late penalty to salvage a point. I don't think I'd be backing any of their players except Isak for the run-in; and even he might be becoming questionable.

For me, West Ham v Spurs - rather than the much-derided Leicester v Southampton match-up - was the weekend's 'El Crapico': two absolutely awful teams who would have been relegated this year... if promoted Championship sides were able to compete at the higher level any more. Spurs will hide behind the excuse of putting out a 'B team' ahead of their Europa League semi-final second-leg game on Thursday; but to be honest, at the moment their 'first team' isn't any better (one of the few consolations of their dismal season is that they've been able to give so much experience to promising youngsters like Spence, Bergvall, Gray, Moore, Tel, and Odobert). Without an uncharacteristic error (actually, a treble or quadruple error!) from Max Kilman gifting them an early lead, Spurs didn't look likely to get on the scoresheet; without the always lively Jarrod Bowen, neither would West Ham.

We might have expected Liverpool to have a bit of a drop-off in performance after securing the title a month before the end of the season, and perhaps to give a few squad players a run-out; and there have been signs of improvement at Chelsea over the past couple of weeks; but such a comprehensive win by the Blues surely took everyone by surprise. Van Dijk had a rare stinker, slipping more than once and racking up several mistakes and then scoring at his own end (by lashing a panicky clearance into his defensive colleague Quansah),.... before redeeming himself ever so slightly with a late headed goal to put the home side back under a bit of pressure in the closing minutes. Alisson also looked uncharacteristically jittery at times, and was very lucky to avoid a sending-off for cleaning out Madueke outside his area (saved by a late offside flag - although it might still have been judged 'serious foul play'). Jackson's injury-time penalty was a bit soft, but overall Chelsea were well worth their margin of victory - with Lavia and Cucurella particularly impressive, and Palmer absolutely back to his imperious best (as usual, he smashed one effort against the inside of a post, and had a few excellent potential assists spurned by his teammates; with slightly better luck, he could have had a 15 or 20-point haul here).

The final game on Monday night between Palace and Forest looked quite entertaining, with a lot of open, end-to-end football - but both sides misfiring rather in front of goal. No obvious controversies in the match; although Palace's penalty award against Sels looked a bit soft (and it was at first ignored by the ref; and I'm not sure there was a clear enough 'error' for VAR to insist on a second look). And Murillo became yet another defender to unexpectedly wind up on the scoresheet.

A lot of unexpected results this week, with Ipswich battling to a draw at Everton, Wolves being very unlucky not to beat City, Bournemouth stealing a win from a very lacklustre Arsenal, Newcastle labouring to a draw at Brighton, and Chelsea spanking the newly-crowned champions..., while City, Villa, and Leicester were, rather improbably, the only teams to manage to keep a clean sheet. With most of the big names blanking this time (only Palmer, Isak, Mbeumo, Wissa and Bowen produced returns among the highest-owned players), the 'Team of the Week' on Monday was full of left-field improbables; only Gvardiol, DeBruyne and Isak have any significant ownership. Of course, there were a fair few selection surprises and late injury withdrawals too; and some more exasperating eccentricities in the bonus points allocations. And it's ended up another very low-scoring gameweek: most 'good scores' are only in the 40s and 50s this time, and only a handful of outliers have managed much better than 60 points. There have been, I think, 4 or 5 really bad bits of officiating, with Craig Pawson failing to send off Mats Wieffer being the most egregious; but that's actually much better than we've seen in most weeks so far this season. Overall, I'd say this is barely a 5 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter', and really for wayward form and surprising results, rather than the refereeing.

DON'T FORGET The Boycott.  Most people will have played the dratted 'Assistant Manager' chip by now; but if you haven't.... it's not too late to refuse to do so! I took the high road by quitting playing the game for the rest of the season when it was introduced in GW23. [I worry that, if people don't protest vociferously about it, the new chip may become a permanent feature of the game - and it will completely ruin it.]  If you didn't feel able to join me in such an emphatic gesture, I hope you at least thought about refusing to use the Assistant Manager chip (and still might refuse, if you've kept it till the last few gameweeks of the season).

Please also criticise and complain about it online as much as possible. And raise objections to it with any football or media figures you know how to contact, and - if possible - try to find a way to protest about it directly to the FPL hierarchy (and let me know how, if you manage that!).

#QuitFPLinGW23         #DownWithTheNewChip