Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 25

 

Not too many new injury worries or unexpected selection woes this week... What a nice change!!

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.... this time, I'm going to try something new: just 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: Romero's sending-off just before the half-hour at Old Trafford was not obviously unjust, but it was, for me, on the harsher end of things. It was misfortuitous that Casemiro's toe-studs had got stuck in the turf just before the Argentinian caught him on the inside of his ankle and so caused his foot to roll over so painfully; the actual contact was really not that hard. And we have seen many similar incidents in the last year or two dismissed as "having insufficient force to seriously endanger the opponent" or as "being an accidental contact from a natural follow-through". I think the Argentinian was a bit rash to have such a vigorous swish at a ball that was about to not be there any more; but it wasn't a really bad foul.

Red cards not awarded:

Penalties awarded: The handball decision against Jacob Murphy was very harsh: his arm was close to his side, not moving towards the ball - and the shot was fired directly at him from close range. If we accepted that blocking a goal-bound shot should always be a 'strict liability' offence, then fine - but I don't think that's the rule at the moment. If there's supposed to be some 'unnatural position' culpability element in the offence, then this looked like a bad call. A penalty for Newcastle seemed 'fair' on the balance of play (especially as they'd had a very harsh one awarded against them earlier), but Kayode's contact on the back of Guimaraes's leg was light and accidental - there was really nothing in that.

Both of Chelsea's awards were probably correct, but a bit soft: a slight - accidental! - treading on Joao Pedro's toe for the first, and a very, very light push (and only just barely over the line!) in his back for the second.

Penalties not awarded: Cunha suffered a shin-to-shin or knee-to-knee contact from Pape Sarr in the first half that tripped him on the edge of the box: not a bad foul, but very defiinitely a foul - and it looked like the point of contact was probably right over the outer edge of the line. It deserved a full consideration from VAR, which it seemed not to get. 

Two Sunderland players appeared to get wrestled to the ground in the Arsenal penalty area at a set-piece, in the final action of the first-half; it should have been looked at by VAR, but apparently wasn't - as the referee immediately blew the whstle to take the players off the field.

Marmoush surely should have had a penalty after 15 minutes at Anfield: Konate had both hands on him, and put his leg across - the combination of which threw him off balance as he entered the box. The contact was, yes, brief and light; but it was plainly deliberate and illegal, and more than enough to bring the man down. The only question should have been whether the contact had 'started outside the box' (possibly; but the consequential part of it was clearly on or just over the line). Somehow, the VAR team seemed to find this incident unworthy of their consideration.

Tight/dubious offsides: Gabriel Jesus's break from the half-way line (which nearly produced a second goal barely a minute after Zubimendi gave them the lead) was very, very narrowly offside (and yet again, the SAOT graphic was a bit unconvincing - somehow making the margin look three times as big as it had to the naked eye!). This move ended in a penalty award from Sam Barrott when Jesus was nudged off the ball by Ballard while trying to round Roefs. Didn't look like a penalty to me; but VAR never looked at it, because of the prior offside. (I worry that they perhaps wouldn't have looked at it, even if Jesus had been adjudged onside, because they'd become too preoccupied with that issue....)

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries: Udogie had to go off with a knock after just 54 minutes.

Nuno dropped Areola in goal, in favour of Mads Hermansen - a potential blow to over 250,000 Fantasy managers (although most of them, perhaps, will only have the French keeper as a back-up option rather than their preferred starter).

Rosenior rested Reece James in favour of Malo Gusto.

Strand Larsen did indeed start straight away for Palace, replacing Mateta. Van Hecke is apparently struggling with a previously undisclosed hamstring problem, while Minteh and Welbeck were surprisingly left on the bench.

Cherki and Foden were this week's victims of Pep Roulette (and Foden did not look happy about it), as Marmoush and Ait-Nouri surprisingly got starts against Liverpool.

Near misses: Calvert-Lewin smashed a header against the crossbar early on in Friday night's game at Elland Road.

Mbeumo's best chance of the game, a hooked half-volley from Diallo's lay-off, flew a bit too high. Cunha and Simons also had good 20-yard efforts fly just wide in Saturday's opening game.

Janelt scrambled a Wissa effort off the line - and an early two-goal lead for the home side would surely have changed the outcome of the match; indeed, Janelt went down the other end and headed an equaliser shortly afterwards. 

Mateus Mané whacked a 17-yard curler against the post.

Smith Rowe beat Pickford with a 20-yard dipper but saw it slam against the crossbar, while Chukwueze later unleashed an absolute screamer from 25 yards which grazed the top of the bar. In the same game, Jake O'Brien headed a corner against the post.

Big misses/big saves: Fernandes's floated chip found Sesko unmarked in the middle of the box in the final seconds of the game, but he headed softly straight at the keeper.

Kelleher produced the 'Save of the Day' from a fierce cross-shot from Thiaw.

Outstanding goals: A 20-yard pinger from Zubimendi for Arsenal's first: perhaps very slightly mishit, but fizzed low, with a wicked in-swing to beat Roefs and thud in off the foot of the near post.

Strangely, that was the only really striking effort this week. In most recent weeks we've had 3, 4, 5 bangers from outside the area; but none of that this time, despite there being a rather higher number of goals overall (26 so far).

Outstanding performances: Cole Palmer - suddenly recapturing the magic! Only about 12% of FPL managers own him at the moment: they must be very happy (though I suspect an awful lot of those are 'zombie accounts' that bought him at the start of the season, but soon stopped playing the game - rather than people who took a hopeful punt on bringing him back in for the present short run of relatively easy fixtures, before he'd recovered his form...). Although, yes, two of them were - slightly dubious - penalties... And he said afterwards that he still isn't "proper fit".

Big mistakes: NONE, remarkably.

Bad luck: Very unfortunate for Vitalii Mykolenko to have Pickford's save of a Raul effort ricochet off him into the goal! In the same game, Leno was perhaps even more unlucky to have a corner bounce in off his fist as he failed to get around the blocking Everton player.

FPL weirdness: Dalot doing better on the BPS than Fernandes this week seems a trifle odd. And we seem to have a rather low number of players earning 'defensive points' this week (although the top performers on this metric, Garner, Anderson, and Caicedo came through again): only 29, I think (4 of them from West Ham?!).

Unexpected results: Leeds's win over Forest on Friday night was not 'unexpected' in itself, though the ease of it, and the eventual margin of victory were; this was a game where the visiting team strangely failed to turn up.

A hell of a ding-dong between Newcastle and Brentford, with the home side ultimately very unlucky to lose it - as they got punished for Trippier going to sleep in the closing minutes.

The FPL 'Team of the Week' is again superlatively weird - with Palmer and Dalot the only members so far that anybody owns! It was also shaping up to be yet another dismally low gameweek average, but a good haul from Haaland in the final game dragged it up to a respectable 57 points. Both of Chelsea's penalty awards were pretty soft, and the penalties for each side in the thrilling Newcastle v Brentford encounter both looked unjust. There have been a couple of other potential penalties that should have been looked at by VAR, but seemed not to be. Although an uncommonly good weekend for the refereeing, there have been enough other odd events already this weekend to make it this time at least a 5 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.