Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 26

A few unpleasant selection surprises again this week; although, at least, not too many new injury disasters to add to our FPL troubles.

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: Jake O'Brien's sending-off was at least pretty clear-cut: one of the few big decisions in this gameweek that no-one can have much of an argument with.

Red cards not awarded: Kenny Tete appeared to have had a surreptitious tug on Semenyo's braids in the penalty area, but after some rumination, VAR felt that the TV pictures didn't give a decisive view of the incident (I bet there were some camera-angles that did; and they just didn't get around to accessing them). Phil Foden was also rather lucky to get away with a clumsy challenge on Bassey, planting his studs in the back of the defender's Achilles as he ran away from him - amazing that wasn't at least given a serious look by VAR.

Brobbey was wrestled to the ground in the penalty area by Konate; he went down 'easily', but he was clearly being held - I don't know how VAR can not give these! Ekitike was even more fortunate to go unpunished when he caught hold of Roefs's chin to pull him off-balance as he was trying to clear the ball: it was only a very brief contact, and possibly 'accidental' - but it was again a very clear and incontrovertible foul; and, as contact with the face, it might well have been considered worthy of a red card.

Penalties awarded: Both penalties in the Chelsea v Leeds game were uncontentious.

Rayan's lunge did not appear to make any contact with Branthwaite, yet a penalty was awarded - and VAR didn't seem to pay the incident any further attention.

Penalties not awarded: 

Tight/dubious offsides: Joe Willock's apparent opener against Spurs was eventually ruled out by VAR; yet again, the SAOT graphic was severely unhelpful, unconvincing - appearing to show that the last Spurs defender's shoulder was indeed at least marginally nearer to the byline than any part of Willock's body. A strange one. Casemiro also had a goal chalked off for a very tight offside; to the naked eye - and to the player himself - he had looked narrowly 'off'; but the SAOT picture again confused rather than clarified the call.

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed:  Palace have a fair case that the ball bounced up on to Ugochukwu's arm at the beginning of the move that led to Burnley's second goal (and we didn't hear that VAR was even looking at that?).

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries: Calvert-Lewin was a late omission on Tuesday, owning to an illness.

Both Pep and Marco Silva made a raft of substitutions just shy of the hour. And Haaland was withdrawn at half-time after suffering a heavy challenge.

Matty Cash was a last-minute omission, owing to a knee problem.

Eddie Howe left Hall, Wissa, and Tonali on the bench at Spurs.

Near misses: Wirtz had a stinging 25-yard drive well palmed away by Roefs, and shortly afterwards hit a 15-yard cross-shot against the foot of the post.

Big misses/big saves: Cole Palmer unbelievably sky-ed a late effort over the bar from a few yards out - when presented with an open-goal by Caicedo's low cross from the right.

Kadioglu cracked a long-range effort against the cross-bar in the first-half against Villa (Martinez got fingertips to it, but not enough for it to have counted as a 'save' - although it probably did!)

Harry Wilson fluffed Fulham's best chance of the match (twice!) in the first-half at The Etihad - an opportunity he would surely have converted any other time in the last couple of months. Fulham also had a dangerous goal-mouth scramble in the closing seconds of the game, but couldn't find a way to prod home the consolation goal that would have wrecked everyone's 'clean sheet' points for City...

Ekitike had a free header near the end, but couldn't get his effort on target. Moments later, a Salah half-volley went just inches wide of the far post.

Martin Dubravka pulled off a superb save from an Ismaila Sarr volley in the final moments, to save the points for Burnley.

José Sá pulled off an important double-save late on against Forest to secure the draw - and make him (so far...) the gameweek's top-scoring keeper. In the first-half, Forest had enjoyed a 6-on-1 break, but Hudson-Odoi's cross found new-boy Lorenzo Lucca, who somehow spooned his effort over the top. At the death, Wolves had a 4-on-1 break, but this time Mateus Mané fired his shot tamely straight at the keeper.

Wan-Bissaka made a great goal-line block with his knee to preserve West Ham's lead.

Outstanding goals: 

Outstanding performances: 

Big mistakes: An awful mix-up between Sanchez, Acheampong, and Gusto gifted Leeds an equaliser they didn't really deserve.

Bad luck: Lerma's own-goal was wretchedly unfortunate - Henderson's parry  pinging into him from no distance, and being deflected into the net off his heel: one of the most improbable - and least culpable - o.g.'s I've ever seen.

FPL weirdness: Surely Haaland should have had an assist for City's first goal? It looked to me as if he won the header cleanly, even if it subsequently got a bit of a deflection off the nearest defender on the way through to Semenyo to poke it home. 

And Van Dijk should not have been awarded Liverpool's late winner: the final decisive touch clearly came off the back of Diarra's head. (Maybe there's still time to reappraise that one? It really makes a huge difference in FPL land!! It's probably a case of a decision prejudiced by sentiment: with the assist currently awarded to Salah's corner, Super Mo has moved level with Steven Gerrard as Liverpool's second highest provider of assists [he'll never catch Kenny Dalglish...].)

There was another similar aberration at Villa Park, with Mings unaccountably being credited with an 'assist' on Hinshelwood's unfortunate late own-goal - though he clearly didn't get any contact on the ball, and the assist should properly have been given to Leon Bailey taking the corner.

There's also something very weird with the counting of 'saves' this week, with many keepers only being credited with 1 or 2, despite having fairly 'busy' games; Henderson and Dubravka seem to have been particularly hard done-by, with an official total of just 1 each - despite clearly getting at least a few more than that even in the brief TV highlights.

Unexpected results: Chelsea really should have won comfortably against a Leeds side who were well below their recent best - but somehow they didn't.

The normally robust Everton defence wouldn't usually be expected to give away two such soft goals as they did against Bournemouth on Tuesday.

Liverpool really didn't deserve that win over Sunderland. Nor did Villa against Brighton.

Burnley put up a very spirited performance at Palace, but no-one would really have expected them to pull out a win here - especially after going 2-0 down! This was the most topsy-turvy result in a pretty wild gameweek.

Few people would have bet on either Forest or Wolves to keep a clean sheet - even against each other.

Although Manchester United were well below their recent levels, West Ham's clinging on to a draw against them was unexpected, and only just barely deserved.

The FPL 'Team of the Week' is another odd one, though not as crazy as most this season have been: José Sá is one of the few goalkeepers to have managed a clean sheet, which will have been an unexpected bonus for the many FPL managers who got him in just for this double gameweek; and the defence (currently; it will doubtless mostly be replaced by doubling Arsenal players eventually...) does at least include four fairly popular players (albeit ones who haven't consistently been producing at the highest level): Semenyo and Palmer, though, are the only attacking players that anyone owns. Thus, it's so far looking like another fairly miserable gameweek average; only 40 points, at the moment.  

Liverpool were very, very fortunate to come out on top in a game where Sunderland mostly matched them pretty well; and they probably should have both conceded a penalty and had Ektike sent off - so, that rankles as a particularly unjust result in this batch of games. In fact, 6 of the first 9 games didn't really pan out according to expectation or desert. And there have been an usually large number of at least slightly dubious decisions, and non-appearances by popular players. I think this is actually one of the worst, weirdest gameweeks we've had in a long while, and even with two games left to play, it's already looking like at least an 8 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.

However, since everyone surely has 3 Arsenal players this week, almost everyone is making one of them captain, a fair few have 1 or 2 picks from Wolves as well, and many are playing a bonus chip to boot,... we''re still barely half-way through this gameweek. We'll have to wait another week to find out how bad things really are.