Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 16

I always think of December as 'Random Month': mounting exhaustion, mostly dreadful weather, and a slew of unpredictable 'rest rotations' lead to some yo-yo-ing form and a lot of unexpected results. At least on this Saturday, the sun shone... (although the second two games kicked off after dark!)... and the results all went as you'd expect. But the relegation favourites, Wolves, Burnley, Leeds, and West Ham, all put up significantly more of a fight this time, while Liverpool and Chelsea suddenly got much better again, and Forest handed out a spanking to Spurs; and the final game on Monday night ended up being a ridiculous biff-bang! And there were again a lot of rotations in the lineups... and a lot of players dropping out of games with muscle strains.

Cole Palmer's back on the scoresheet - with a slick finish from a delightfully weighted through-ball from Gusto - but he says he's still struggling with the groin injury, and, for the second week running, was withdrawn from the action a few minutes shy of the hour; so, despite a handy 6-point haul, I think my warning yesterday that we should wait a while before thinking of bringing him back was warranted. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall became the latest victim of the seasonal injury crisis, having to come off with a thigh strain after just 15 minutes. Chelsea won this one fairly comfortably, although Grealish wasted a couple of good chances in the second-half, and Ndiaye hit a post. Garnacho also squandered a couple of the game's best opportunities, one in either half, and a scorching free-kick from Reece James was well tipped over by Pickford.

Arne Slot seems to have managed to smooth things over with Mo Salah, who looked relaxed and cheerful at Anfield - despite again starting on the bench. And it was somewhat fortuitous that he got the chance to come on after just 25 minutes when fill-in right-back Joe Gomez broke down with a muscular problem (although conspiracy theorists may suspect that this was partly pre-planned, perhaps even to the extent of Gomez faking his injury...?); there being no remaining fit defensive options on his bench, Slot had to shift Szoboszlai to right-back, opening up Salah's favourite spot on the right flank. (It had looked as if they might lose Szoboszlai too, when he turned his ankle badly and seemed to be in a lot of pain; he managed to run it off in this game, but I suspect he'll be limping now, and might be a doubt for next weekend.) Salah had a fairly lively game, and was conspicuously doing his best to be a 'team player' - tracking back a little bit, and looking for teammates to pass the ball to rather than hogging it himself. He even clocked an assist for the perfect inswinging corner which Ekitike - strangely unopposed - headed powerfully home at the far post. Alas, he didn't quite complete the perfect fairytale, as substitute Chiesa unselfishly squared the ball to him after a late breakaway by the pair, but Mo shanked it over the bar! Liverpool were a bit lucky to be able to grab such an early lead, with a dreadful pass out of the corner by Baleba gifting them possession on the edge of box and enabling Ekitike to volley into the roof of the net after just 45 seconds. Liverpool utterly dominated the first half after that, but couldn't carve out any more clearcut chances; and after the break, Brighton came back into the game, with Diego Gomez just failing to convert two of the game's best chances, as well as setting up Gruda for a cross-shot that fizzed just wide of the post. Gomez, though, was probably rather fortunate to stay on the pitch after a chest-high lunge on Wirtz; there wasn't much force in the contact, but it was a wild, wild kick and very high: those get a red 9 times out of 10.

Burnley actually played some decent football going forward, and their attacking numbers, including their final xG, were - somewhat surprisingly - slightly better than Fulham's. Unfortunately, their defending has become absolutely dire, worse even than Leeds's or Wolves's. I have serious doubts as to whether Scott Parker has any idea how to sort this out (he always comes across as pretty clueless in his post-match interviews), and I suspect he'll be the next manager to be sacked; something needs to change soon at Burnley, if they are to have any hope of escaping the drop. Although Fulham will be ruing the couple of dreadful defensive lapses that almost let Burnley back into the game, they produced an excellent attacking performance: Emile Smith Rowe was again superb (apart from one awful back-pass that nearly gave away a goal!) in the central playmaker-and-goal-poacher role, but was again slightly upstaged by Harry Wilson, who bagged a late third goal to add to his assists for the first two.

More selection chaos at Arsenal to challenge the nerves of long-suffering FPL managers! Timber and Saliba, who had both appeared to be still major doubts on Friday, were able to start the game alongside each other in central defence on Saturday evening, while Hincapie was having to fill in at left-back; but Ben White pulled up with a thigh-strain after half an hour, and had to be replaced at right-back by Myles Lewis-Skelly (although, exasperatingly, he was deemed to have only stepped on to the pitch a few seconds after the 30-minute mark, and so gets no clean sheet points - despite playing well over 60 minutes without conceding; the FPL rules can be cruel sometimes!). Odegaard was unexpectedly rested, giving Eze another start. And there was further seasonal woe when Arteta withdrew Eze, Martinelli, and Zubimendi a little shy of the hour, robbing anyone who owned them of a precious 2 additional points. Arsenal survived a big early scare when a solo break by Hwang left the entire Arsenal defence sprinting the length of the field in a vain attempt to catch him (an effort which resulted in White pulling his muscle), but unfortunately his shot from the edge of the box didn't have enough power to trouble David Raya. Apart from that, it was all one-way traffic, but the league leaders just didn't have much of a cutting edge and produced few clear chances - until Wolves began to tire in the last 20 minutes or so. It took a strange slice of luck to get the breakthrough goal, with a Saka corner just eluding Johnstone, striking the inside of the far post, and then cannoning into the goal off the back of the unfortunate keeper's shoulder. But Arteta's men then suffered another huge scare when they conceded an equaliser in the final seconds of regular time. Fate again smiled on them when Yerson Mosquera headed a Saka cross past his own keeper a few minutes later. Wolves are starting to look a lot better defensively (too late to do them any real good; but their goal for the season must now surely be to avoid setting a new lowest-points record), while Arsenal are still not really looking like champions (has their 'winter wobble' begun....?).

The 0=3 scoreline at Selhurst Park didn't fairly reflect the balance of the game at all: Oliver Glasner said afterwards, not unreasonably, that he thought his side's performance had perhaps been even better than in their victory over City in the Cup Final in May; they recorded 16 attempts on goal and had a far higher xG than their visitors - but City converted nearly all of their chances, while the home side couldn't, with Mateta and Ismaila Sarr being notably wasteful a couple of times, while Pino and the excellent Wharton both rattled the woodwork. There is also a strong case that Palace should have been able to pull it back to 1-1 with a penalty, and perhaps even seen Donnarumma sent off. The big keeper had flattened Mateta in the box, and, although he clearly got a hand on the ball, he was also very obviously using his legs to take the player down, to make sure; touching the ball isn't an absolute defence when you wipe an opponent out that cynically. Doku was an unexpected omission in this game, having suffered a leg injury in training late in the week. And Phil Foden, despite having a mostly fairly quiet game (and being gently criticised by Pep afterwards for a below-par performance), came up with yet another goal from distance to extend his absurd scoring streak even further.

Forest's trio of goals were all somewhat freakish: an easy smash-and-grab after Vicario played a hospital pass to Archie Gray on the edge of his area, a 30-yard curler from Hudson-Odoi that was probably a misshit cross, and a 23-yard belter out of nowhere from Ibrahim Sangaré. However, the margin was thoroughly deserved; Spurs were never in the game at all, and might easily have lost by twice as many. One fears that Frank's job will now be very much on the line, and that perhaps even a Christmas sacking may be on the cards. Sangaré was a most improbable candidate for the performance of the week; only around 7,500 FPL managers own him - and I'd guess most of them left him on the bench!

Newcastle yet again looked short of energy and inventiveness after a European game in the week, and were comfortably contained by a combative Sunderland. The game would surely have been doomed to remain goalless but for Woltemade's unfortunate 'Own-Goal of the Season'! However, Brian Brobbey should surely have been sent off for crunching Miley's ankle, when he'd already picked up a booking for dissent - that might have completely changed the course of the game.

Villa, having to start Bizot and Lindelof instead of Martinez and Pau Torres because of injuries, were a little shakier defensively than they have been of late, and West Ham got off to a dream start when Matheus Fernandes nicked the ball off Konsa on the edge of the box and fired past the back-up keeper from a tight angle. The visitors, though, equalised almost immediately when Mavropanos headed a John McGinn cross into his own net. It continued to be a very even, end-to-end sort of game; and West Ham were really desperately unlucky not to have claimed the winner with a neat cross-shot from Bowen which was ruled out for offside: again, no SAOT graphic was offered to justify the call, and to the naked eye it looked as if he could only have been 'off' by the thickness of the shirt over his shoulder - an unjust decision, even if technically a 'correct' one. It's also a bit of a turn-up that Morgan Rogers, who is more of a support player than a goalscorer, and had only notched 3 goals previously this season, here bagged 2, the decisive second being a 25-yard banger.

Brentford absolutely dominated their visitors, Leeds, especially in the first-half, but just weren't able to make it count. They can feel slightly aggrieved that a penalty awarded by the referee for a rather minor bit of holding on Dango Ouattara was subsequently overruled by VAR, apparently for the forward's having been 'offside' by the thickness of his eyebrow. Jordan Henderson was a little fortunate to be credited with a goal, since his effort looked as if it was heading just the wrong side of the post until it deflected off a defender. Plucky Leeds came back very strongly in the last 20 minutes, and nabbed a late equaliser with a Calvert-Lewin header. Big Dom has somehow come into a bit of form again over the last month: he suddenly finds himself on his best scoring run in over 5 years!

And then, damn, the gameweek ends with a crazy humdinger of a goal-fest at Old Trafford: Tavernier and Bruno Fernandes both banging in spanking free-kicks, Semenyo and Cunha both dramatically ending their dry spells. However, it looks rather as though some very dodgy defending may have been as much responsible for the ridiculous 4-4 final score as these occasional moments of individual brilliance. There were a couple of moments of mild controversy: United felt play should have been stopped before Evanilson netted Bournemouth's second equaliser, because Dalot was on the floor with an apparent head injury; Dalot was also involved in an angry confrontation with Semenyo, in which the Ghanaian forward briefly put his hand on the side of the full-back's neck - leading to some speculation about whether such an angrily 'raised hand' might warrant a red card (no; they both got yellows for the contretemps, which seems fair).

The FPL 'Team of the Week' isn't looking quite so crazy as it usually has so far this season - although goals from defenders (again!!) are always a bit of a surprise; and surely almost no-one was backing Sangaré or Hudson-Odoi, or even Gusto for big points. And of the 10 most popular forwards, only Haaland and Ekitike produced anything this week: Thiago, Mateta, Joao Pedro, Gyokeres, Richarlison and Watkins all drew a blank, Welbeck barely got on the field, and Woltemade somehow managed a nul-pointer! Many, many FPL managers were stuck with 1 or 2 of those non-performers in their lineup. The splurge of additional Free Transfers granted us for the approach of AFCON this week has led to some frenzied activity in the transfer market, with probably the majority of stil active managers using all or most of them straight away as a 'mini-Wildcard': that means there's probably more variety between squads than we've seen for a while, and certainly a lot of difference from last week's lineups. This has led to it being a particularly polarizing week: it looks as if a substantial majority are below - perhaps fairly well below - the very modest 'global average' of 50 points, but there's a long, long tail on our distribution curve, with many people getting hauls in the 70s and 80s, and quite a lot breaching the ton. Popular new picks Phil Foden and Harry Wilson rewarded their purchasers very handsomely; the very reasonable alternatives of Rayan Cherki and Emile Smith Rowe, not quite so much; and anyone who'd gone without any of these probably had a fairly miserable gameweek! While anyone who brought in Dominic Calvert-Lewin for Nick Woltemade must be in possession of an uncommonly reliable crystal-ball.....

At least there haven't been too many egregious refereeing howlers; just the one instance of rather questionable leniency towards Diego Gomez when he planted his boot in the side of Florian Wirtz's ribs, Brian Brobbey even more mystifyingly escaping a sending-off for a bad second-yellow foul, a possible penalty for Palace, and an impossibly tight offside against West Ham to deny them a winning goal. On top of that, the large number of goals, a few unexpected rotations, early injuries, and early substitutions make this at least a 5 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.