Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 38

 

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:  

Penalties awarded: 

Penalties not awarded:  Everton shuld have had a penalty in the dying moments of the first-half, when Bentancur gratuitously barged Tarkowski in the back; VAR 'had a look' and somehow thought nothing of it?! Another astonishingly bad decision - and one that may have sealed West Ham's relegation.

Tight/dubious offsides: Jean-Philippe Mateta looked just offside for his late consolation goal - but apparently wasn't. Ollie Watkins was - belatedly - flagged offside for his second, but was eventually judged to have been played on by Ruben Dias's foot. And Phil Foden's effort was also ruled out - though the SAOT graphic appeared to show him onside (and if he was off, it can only have been by the thickness of the shorts on his bum!! it is ridiculous that the technology is seeking to make judgements on such ridiculously slim, invisible margins).

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed: 

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries: Too many to enumerate! Arsenal - rather to my surprise - changed virtually their entire starting line-up! And Oliver Glasner fielded a back-three that included no centre-backs.... Nuno brought in Walker-Peters to replace Wan-Bissaka at right-back for West Ham. Pep also rotated almost everyone, with only Semenyo and Bernardo Silva surviving from his 'usual' eleven, and Haaland not involved at all. Brighton dropped Baleba and Minteh for Wieffer and Milner, while United brought in Mazraoui, Mount, and Dorgu for Dalot, Casemiro, and Cunha.

Alex Scott was about the only player to be left out this week owing to a late injury problem.

Near misses:  Gabriel Jesus hit an early effort against the post after just 4 minutes; he made amends with a slick finish to put the Gunners ahead 40 minutes later. 

Kevin thundered a free-kick against the woodwork from nearly 30 yards out, but a goal resulted for Fulham anyway as Diop was able to head home the rebound.

Mo Salah whipped a cheeky free-kick - which everyone had been expecting Szoboszlai to take - against the left-hand post early on.

Joao Palhinha headed firmly against the near-post - but the ball rebounded kindly straight back to him, and he was able to prod the ball back towards goal. Yet again, Spurs seemed to be guilty of excessive relief and premature celebration - a lead is not a win, as they were painfully reminded last week; this time they got away with it, just.

The absurdly talented Mateus Mané ended a solo run with a fierce curler that smacked against the far post. Later on, Burnley midfielder Florentino also crashed one against the post, although that looked as if it had been intended as a cross.

Big misses/big saves: Dango Ouattara got a free header on the edge of the six-yard box near the end at Anfield, but put it miles over the bar; that cost Brentford their chance of European football.

Matz Sels had to make a sharp save from one of Kroupi's trademark 18-yard curlers. And Amad Diallo almost claimed a fourth goal for United with a fierce drive from the edge of the box that was well parried by Verbruggen.

Lukas Nmecha set up Dominic Calvert-Lewin nicely in the first-half, but the centre-forward swept his effort straight at Hermansen. In the other relegation decider, Castellanos got through one-on-one in the box with the keeper, but lost his footing just as he was trying to get off the shot (if West Ham were to have survived, I thought he would have to be the man to supply a goal for them; and he did eventually give them their breakthrough with a header from a corner). Callum Wilson wasted a chance to put the Hammers 3-0, taking far too long to get his shot off - although Darlow did make a good save from his eventual effort; shortly afterwards, he made amends with a fine shot from 25 yards out. The most decisive action of the day was probably Kinsky's flying fingertip save from Tyrique George's fierce, dipping shot.

Outstanding goals: Tom Cairney clinched the win for Fulham with a screamer from 25 yards.

Outstanding performances: 

Big mistakes: Cole Palmer finally got back on the scoresheet with a crisp low shot from just outside the box, but Robin Roefs will be disappointed that he couldn't get a stronger hand to it; this was a rare 'mistake' from one of the season's outstanding goalkeepers.

Bad luck/good luck: 

FPL weirdness:  Caoimhin Kelleher apparently notched 7 'saves' against Liverpool (I didn't see that many on 'Match of the Day'), which, in a dull game, was enough for 2 bonus points!!

Unexpected results:  Everton and Leeds, with nothing of their own to fight for, were really quite poor; this was not perhaps entirely unexpected, but it was not what most fans had been hoping for: Spurs and West Ham really should have struggled to win those games.

It was a particularly drab final day this year, with even the teams that 'had something to play for' still being mostly rather lacklustre: only Manchester United and Sunderland finished with a really good performance, and only Forest v Bournemouth produced a really good match. Bruno Fernandes, Ollie Watkins and Jarrod Bowen are the only widely-owned players making the FPL 'Team of the Week', and the global average was a wretchedly low 41 points. Apart from the highly consequential missed penalty award for Everton, and a few extremely close offside calls, there wasn't much in the way of contentious refereeing this week. But the huge number of unpredictable player rotations, and the generally low level of performance must, unfortunately, make this another 6 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.

Had we but world enough and time.....

 

.... we'd all win FPL one day!

I said last week, in my major post on what actually makes the most difference to your FPL season points total, that smart FPL managers should out-perform not-so-smart ones.... most of the time.

But alas, I'm not convinced that is true: at least, not as often as it should be, not over a single season - not in our unitary existence.

The thing is, with such a huge number of manager accounts in the game every year now, you're inevitably going to get a huge number of them that prosper by sheer dumb luck (even among 'zombie accounts' that are rarely or never active!). And because the impact of luck in our game is far greater than that of skill, that unfortunately means that a very large number of those who do so prosper will prosper so extravagantly that they will outperform a lot of the merely skillful managers in the game who haven't had any out-of-the-ordinary luck, and hence that... not all, but a very great many of the folks in the upper reaches of the rankings most years are likely to be not really very good at all, to have reached that eminence mostly or entirely by luck.

It is my belief that the truly smart FPL managers would only be able to convincingly display their superiority over the masses across a very long timeframe.

You do see some evidence of this, with some of the best long-time managers having now produced fairly consistently decent - though rarely or never outstanding - results over 10 or 15 or 20 years. But even for this to happen, for one's 'true average' level of attainment to emerge, for you to prove your ascendance over the majority of other managers in the game (many of whom will have averages buoyed up by one or two extraordinarily lucky seasons...), it will usually take many, many years - maybe, in some cases, too many years, more than one human lifetime.

And for a really smart manager to win the global crown, or even to crack the top 50k or 100k, it might take him or her hundreds or thousands of lifetimes.

I speculate that if some sort of 'multiverse' hypothesis is indeed the case (that there are many parallel realities, perhaps an infinite number, all subtly different - and that hence, across that infinitude, everything that can happen, will happen somewhere), then smart FPL managers are enjoying their just reward somewhere each year. But within a single reality, it might take centuries or millennia before the dice fall that kindly for us.

For most of us, it will never happen - because life is too short.

Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 37

The big hassle this week is the FA Cup Final between Manchester City and Chelsea being scheduled on the penultimate weekend of the season. This means that they can't play their GW37 league games against Bournemouth and Spurs until next Tuesday evening. (I suppose we should at least be grateful that the League didn't decide to declare GW37 a Blank Gameweek for these four teams, and GW38 a Double!)  Having a Friday evening kick-off between Villa and Liverpool was an additional irritation, meaning that we got very very little time on Friday to finalise our team changes. And of course, with City and Chelsea, we have no idea what shape they'll be in for the Tuesday return to league action: elated by success, drained/distracted by celebrations, demoralised by defeat - or perhaps just thoroughly knackered by a tough game (that might have gone to extra time and penalties...). With an especially heightened risk of rotations, it's very dangerous to be relying on players from either of those two clubs this gameweek.

But at least there haven't been too many new injuries this past week!

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:  Kai Havertz should have been dismissed for a horrible foul on Ugochukwu on Monday night. There wasn't enough force in it to be a 'leg-breaker', but he dived in widly from behind and caught the opponent very high on the inside of the shin - that's a red card all day long. It was probably too late in the game to have made any difference to the result; but it would at least have given Arsenal a few more grey hairs during the closing minutes.

Penalties awarded: The early penalty award against Kelleher was extremely harsh: he barely touched Ismaila Sarr, who was already going down; contact, yes, but trivial, not enough to bring the player down.

Spurs might reasonably feel aggrieved that they didn't get a penalty when Cucurella wrestled Van de Ven to the floor while he was waiting for a corner to be delivered. The decision may be technically correct - though it was a very close call as to when the foul was deemed to have been committed, and when the ball was deemed to have entered play - under our current absurd law that 'a foul cannot be committed while the ball is dead'; I was saying last weekend that that needs to change.

Penalties not awarded:  Soucek was lucky to escape an early penalty shout: the ball into the box clearly did hit his hand, and he had plenty of time to see the flight of the ball and get out of the way of it, but actually appeared to move his arm slightly towards the ball. Another utterly baffling decision from the VAR room: there is no consistency on these calls this season. Brennan Johnson should also have had a penalty, for a brief but very obvious tug on the back of his shirt at the edge of the box. [Arteta was dismayed that Arsenal didn't get a penalty on Monday night when Saka went down in the act of shooting from the edge of the six-yard-box - but he clearly kicked the back of the defender's heel, rather than the defender kicking him.]

Tight/dubious offsides: It was a great pity that Semenyo's early effort against Bournemouth was ruled out. He did look 'off' by a shoulder - but it was a lovely through-ball from Haaland(!) and a slick finish from Semenyo (and it might have kept the title race live into the final weekend).

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed: Michael Salisbury made one of the weirdest decisions of the season, even when sent to the pitchside monitor for a second look, somehow ruling that there was nothing wrong with Bryan Mbeumo briefly catching the ball between his upper-arm and chest to bring it under control, in the lead-up to Cunha's goal. Significantly, Cunha didn't celebrate because he knew the goal shouldn't have been able to stand - and briefly looked surprised and embarrassed when it was finally given.

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries: Jeremie Frimpong and Alexander Isak were unexpected omissions from Liverpool's match squad on Friday night, while Salah again only came on near the end. Kevin Schade was dropped to the bench, in favour of Dango Ouattara. Kieran Trippier was reinstated at right-back for a farewell appearance at St James's Park - although that might have been down to an absence of anyone else fit to play in that position rather than any sentiment on Eddie Howe's part. Nuno surprisingly gave a start to Callum Wilson over the recently impressive Taty Castellanos - and that availed him nothing; although he repented and brought the Argentinian on after just 25 minutes, and he did contribute a spectacular late goal. Joao Pedro, supposedly suffering a slight knock, was completely rested on Tuesday night (and Chelsea played one of their best games for ages without him!).

Near misses:  Bryan Mbeumo hit the foot of the near-post at the end of an early breakaway, and in the follow-up Casemiro put an effort inches wide. Ismaila Sarr relished starting as the main striker for Palace, and soon followed up his coolly taken penalty with a fierce near-post drive that smashed against the woodwork. Soon afterwards, his partner Strand Larsen also curled a good effort against the far-post. Jake O'Brien nearly equalised for Everton with a powerful header, but Roefs somehow flung his shoulder at it to deflect it away. In the closing minutes at Old Trafford, a great move ended with Diogo Dalot seeing a cracking cross-shot come back off the far post. Castellanos was nearly a hero for West Ham, almost grabbing a second goal when he smashed a near-post effort past Pope in the closing minutes but saw it hit the angle of post and crossbar. Adam Armstrong had a great chance to snatch a late win for Wolves, but his effort came back off the near-post.

Mathys Tel directed a diving header against the foot of the near-post early in Tuesday night's game at Stamford Bridge: that might be the ultimate what-if that haunts Spurs fans next season!

Big misses/big saves: Karl Darlow made a fine finger-tip save from a long-range effort from Pascal Gross. A little later Joel Veltman's sloppy clearance thudded straight against the chest of his partner Lewis Dunk and rebounded towards the goal, demanding a sharp stop from Bart Verbruggen. 

Leandro Trossard cracked a 20-yard shot against the foot of the post early against Burnley; that might have soothed the Champions-to-be's nerves, in what turned out to be a very tight game. Cole Palmer looked to be getting back to his peak fluency on Tuesday night, and forced Kinsky to make a fingertip save with a delicious curler in the first-half. Soon after his goal, Enzo whipped a cheeky free-kick from a wide position straight at goal and thumped the crossbar. Djordje Petrovic made a sharp stop to his left from Nico O'Reilly: that probably ended City's title hopes, and caused misery to the nearly 20% of FPL managers who own O'Reilly. In the second-half - which Bournemouth increasingly dominated - Rayan's cross/shot from an acute angle on the right deflected off O'Reilly's studs and was going to sneak in at the foot of the near-post until Donnarumma pulled off a brilliant reaction save. David Brooks was presented with an open goal, albeit from the edge of the box, in the closing minutes, but swept his first-time shot tamely straight at the keeper. Shortly afterwards, he had another chance on the breakaway, this time beating Donnarumma but seeing his fierce 20-yard shot slam back off the post.

Outstanding goals: Morgan Rogers and John McGinn were having a little private competition on Friday night to see who could hit the sweetest curler; it will be tough to decide which one should get into the frame for 'Goal of the Month' (although it's a pity that some careless defending improbably let Van Dijk steal in for a couple of headed consolation goals, in what should really have been an absolute drubbing for an increasingly rickety-looking Liverpool...). Luke Shaw produced a very neat finish to give United an early lead - only his 5th goal in 12 seasons at the club! Castellanos gave West Ham fans some scant consolation in a terrible game with his 'Goal of the Season' contender in the 70th minute - lashing home Hermansen's long kick with a first-time half-volley that dipped viciously over Pope from just outside the area. (An assist for a keeper is a rare turn-up in itself!)  Mateus Mané - having already stung Leno's palms with a long-range effort early on - banged in a cracker from the edge of the box to give Wolves a rare lead; though, sadly, they couldn't hang on for all 3 points in their last home game of the season.

Enzo Fernandez whipped one in from at least 30 yards, to dump Spurs right back in the relegation mire - a fantastic strike, but Kinsky probably should have been able to keep it out. In a week of many great curling goals, Kroupi's was one of the sweetest of the lot: one of those where he looked as if he knew it was going in before he even received the ball.

Outstanding performances: 

Big mistakes: Sunderland were gifted a third goal in added-on time when Keane and Coleman both unaccountably opted not to pul the ball behind, and thus let it run through the six-yard box to an unmarked Isidor. Leeds were gifted a last-gasp winner when the usually immaculate Jan Paul van Hecke played a lazy, no-look back-pass straight to Dominic Calvert-Lewin (who then cost his FPL owners a point by taking his shirt off to celebrate!), though Verbruggen was also at fault for rushing out, and Dunk for not dropping back to cover for the error. Many managers with Brighton players were left ruing the sudden evaporation of what had looked like in-the-bag clean-sheet points.

Bad luck/good luck: Ouattara's goal was one of the strangest we've seen this season: Canvot's attempt at a headed clearance struck him in the face at close-range as he ran in behind the defender - and deflected straight into the goal, without him knowing much about it!

FPL weirdness:  Bruno Fernandes was rather generously given a second assist: one of those only-in-FPL ones, not part of his official league tally for the season! Even under the much more generous interpretation of 'assists' being used for the points awards this season, it was rather bizarre to see the Forest defender's attempted clearance interpreted merely as a non-consequential 'deflection'. Antonee Robinson was a surprise penalty-taker for Fulham. (This isn't strictly a weirdness in how FPL is recognising game actions or assigning points - but I couldn't think where else to put it.)

Unexpected results:  Wolves earning a point against Fulham and Sunderland beating Everton were the only mild surprises of this gameweek. Villa's drubbing of Liverpool can't be seen as at all 'unexpected' on recent form; in fact, the only 'surprise' was that they forgot to defend a few times, and allowed Van Dijk to steal in for a couple of soft set-piece goals that the visitors really hadn't earned. Similarly, Bournemouth have been finishing the season strongly, and it was always to be expected that City would be depleted after the demands of the Cup Final a few days before, as well as feeling the pressure of having been chasing in the title race for so long.

With three midweek matches still to play in the gameweek, with some of the top teams involved, the global average was an unbelievably dismal 24 points, and the FPL 'Team of the Week' included only four players - Rogers, Anderson, Watkins, and the incredibly improbable Van Dijk - with any kind of ownership. The average did eventually rise to a respectable 53 points (though largely because there were a lot of bonus chips in play), and the 'Team of the Week' wasn't ultimately one of the more unexpected we've seen this season; although the back-line of Van Dijk, Robinson, and Morata was entirely down to goals-out-of-nowhere rather than overall play! 

With a lot of goals from defenders this week, and an assist from a goalkeeper, an extraordinary amount of woodwork-battering (possibly the most of the season??), 2 clearcut penalties bizarrely not given, a very dubious one awarded against Kelleher, and another 'correctly' but unjustly denied to Spurs on Tuesday, along with Havertz somehow escaping a red card, and Michael Salisbury's unfathomable decision to ignore the Mbeumo handball that should have invalidated United's second goal, this week is another 9 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.

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; we are essentially betting blind with our initial squad selection.

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.

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'.

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.

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. Leeds getting a point at Forest and City labouring so for their win at Burnley were perhaps a little unexpected too. And though Brighton have been looking strong again lately, while Chelsea haven't - probably no-one was expecting quite such a spanking (precipitating Liam Rosenior's ignominious exit).

The FPL 'Team of the Week', which, this season, has rarely included many of the most popular FPL picks,... after Saturday had absolutely none. Eventually, of course, it boasted 4 City players - but also a lot of complete randoms like Leno, Justin, Kadioglu, Gross, Okafor, and suddenly back-in-form Gibbs-White and 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); eventually it reached a vaguely respectable 66 points (pretty poor for a Double Gameweek, and with so many chips in play!). Not too many outrageously bad decisions as far as I saw - well, except that Chelsea should probably have had at least 1, possibly 2 penalties on Saturday; City too, and maybe Everton. Alas, I missed out on the extra midweek games due to an extended computer outage. A fair few line-up surprises, several desperately near misses, and some slightly surprising results probably made this one a 6 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.

Luck-o-Meter 25-26 - Gameweek 32

The hugely long lay-off from regular Premier League football that we've just endured rather throws everything up in the air now. Although we've seen some of the teams in action during the past week in the FA Cup and/or in Europe, we really have no idea what anyone's league form is going to be this week. Arsenal and City haven't played a league game in nearly a month!

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: Brian Brobbey clearly should have received a second yellow for his cheeky shove in the back on Cristian Romero, which sent him stumbling into a dangerous collision with his out-rushing keeper; but, of course, VAR cannot currently comment on decisions about yellow cards, even when they would be de facto reds. This may have been an especially consequential moment in the match, because Romero was hurt in the incident and had to go off (and Kinsky probably should have done, if 'concussion protocols' were being properly applied - as he had taken a very violent knee in the side of the head from his defender).

Penalties awarded: Arsenal's penalty was - under the current ludicrous rules - perhaps 'correctly' awarded, but it was soft, and, in commonsense terms, very, very unjust (and resulted in points for Gabriel for the 'assist', and Gyokeres for the conversion - neither of whom did much else in the game, and did not really deserve any FPL return). Cook's hand may have been 'raised', but often that is a perfectly 'natural position' (you have to move your arms away from your sides and upward in order to twist your torso); and Gabriel fired the ball at him from such close range that he could do absolutely nothing about it. Clearly, the contact was not in any way 'deliberate'; in fact, he was making every effort to get his arm out of the way. I hate to see penalties like this given.

On the initial coverage, we couldn't see any clear foul by Sven Botman for the crucial penalty award in the dying moments at Palace. A behind-the-goal view did eventually reveal a very slight tug of the opponent's shirt; but the referee couldn't see that, and was simply being conned by Lerma's exaggerated dive. This is a curious case where VAR, if only considering the view the referee had had of the incident, or only using a similar TV camera angle, might reasonably have overruled the initial decision; but they were in a position to judge that the ref had in fact made the right call - if for the wrong reason. And actually, I'm still not convinced that there was quite enough in it to justify the award of the spot-kick; that was very rough luck for Newcastle.

Penalties not awarded: Cole Palmer (of all people!) stuck out a leg to block Jeremy Doku and quite clearly made contact with the Belgian's leg, to send him sprawling: an absolutely clearcut penalty - that didn't even seem to get reviewed by VAR?!

Referee Rob Jones initially awarded a penalty to Pape Sarr, after he collided with two Sunderland defenders - but VAR told him to take a second look. The Spurs man did indeed appear to have been already going down before there was any contact; and the contacts, when they came, didn't look culpable to me. So - for once - the general feeling is that VAR made a justified intervention on this occasion. However, it was a tricky incident to unravel; and you can feel a certain sympathy for Spurs fans who feel that they just can't catch a break at the moment.

Tight/dubious offsides: Jaidon Anthony appeared to have grabbed the opening goal for Burnley, but was denied by an SAOT offside call - one of those that was so ridiculously tight, it gave us no confidence in its being correct: as so often recently, Anthony appeared slightly further forward in the computer graphic than he had to the naked eye, but still only his leading arm was 'offside', and so the decision rested entirely on where on the upper arm the decisive line was drawn.... to within a matter of fractions of an inch. In the second-half, Burnley were cruelly denied again, when Bashir Humphreys got in behind to lash home a free-kick floated in from wide on the left; this time, the justificatory SAOT graphic purported to show that half an inch of the edge of the defender's knee was offside (if you were very generous about where you drew the decisive line on the upper arm of the rearmost Brighton defender!!) - but that was just wildly, impossibly wrong: to the naked eye he had looked miles onside, comfortably played on by three or four Brighton defenders. WTF???

Goals wrongly allowed/disallowed: 

Surprise omissions/early substitutions/injuries:  Rob Edwards left Mateus Mané out, in favour of Angel Gomes - a strange decision, which might have contributed to Wolves's lack of threat. Timber still hadn't recovered from the knock that's been troubling him for the past month, and Calafiori was a late - unannounced - addition to the injury roster, so Ben White and Myles Lewis-Skelly (only his second start this season!) were unexpectedly the starting full-backs for Arsenal. Saka and Odegaard were also unfit to take part; and Eze wasn't trusted with a start. Havertz, Madueke, and Martinelli were pulled off barely 8 minutes into the second-half. Emi Martinez felt a calf-strain in the warm-up, so Marco Bizot made an unexpected appearance in the Villa goal on Sunday. Kobbie Mainoo was a surprise omission for United on Monday evening, having apparently suffered a training-ground knock. (The inclusion of the hopelessly out-of-his-depth Ugarte instead may have been decisive in the woeful performance that followed.) Mbeumo and Dalot were also unexpectedly 'rested', in favour of Sesko and Mazraoui.

Near misses:  On Friday night, Angel Gomes cracked a ferocious free-kick against the corner of crossbar and upright, with Hermansen beaten. West Ham immediately broke quickly, and Summerville attempted to shoot past Jose Sa, stranded outside his area, from nearly 40 yards out, but put the effort just wide. Jarrod Bowen also crashed a superb left-foot shot against a post, in a game packed with incident.

Nathan Collins crashed a thunderous header from Schade's cross on to the top of the crossbar - a chance that could have given Brentford a probably narrowly deserved win.

Harry Wilson, breaking forward powerfully in the first-half, went for one of his trademark curlers - had Mamardashvili beaten, but looped the effort on to the roof of the net. That was when the game was still goalless; if he'd managed to get that shot 6" lower, it might have turned the result of the match.

Morgan Rogers's neat shot on the half-turn glanced off the top of the bar, with Sels well beaten.

Jefferson Lerma's running header from Pino's cross hit the bar so hard, it nearly broke it!!

Big misses/big saves: Kelleher made a great double-save in the first-half; but the second one was discounted (presumably) because Beto was flagged as offside. That call looked wrong on the TV playback, but since no goal was scored, the decision would not be reviewed. Yet another example of the ways in which mistakes in the onfield decision-making can impact FPL outcomes - it's not just the big calls like penalties, but often offsides, corners, etc. as well that may turn match results and points returns. Both Pickford and Kelleher had outstanding games in this entertaining mid-table clash - yet both were accorded shockingly low numbers of 'saves' in the official game stats, 3 or 4 lower than I would have expected. Like the 'bonus points' and the new 'defensive points', 'saves' points often seem to produce very erratic, unfair, and baffling results because of the perverse lack of transparency in their calculation. There was a further example on Sunday when Matz Sels made a great block from Ollie Watkins - which was presumably not credited as a 'save' (which would have earned him his 2nd point for 'saves' in the game) because Watkins was bizarrely flagged offside.... although he'd be onside by about a yard!

Alex Jimenez, excellent throughout, saved the match for Bournemouth with a superb last-ditch challenge on Gabriel (of all people!) when he was suddenly put through clear through in the middle of the box with only the keeper to beat in the dying minutes of the game.

Bart Verbruggen made an outstanding block with his legs from Zian Flemming's low cross-shot. Moments later, he fingertipped a similar effort - from rather further out - beyond his far post.

Emile Smith Rowe had an excellent late chance to put Fulham back in the game at Anfield, or at least give them a deserved consolation; but with two-thirds of the goal to aim at, he prodded his effort just wide of the far post.

The great Erling Haaland was found in the box by Doku, in a little bit of space; when he's bang on it, you would have bet on him to convert 9 times out of 10; but this time, he miscontrolled the ball and eventually lashed his effort well off target.

Both Morgan Rogers and Ollie Watkins blazed good chances over the bar in the closing minutes against Forest.

The just-returned Robin Roefs got vital fingertips to a thunderous drive from Pedro Porro, to tip it just over the bar in the closing minutes.

Tanaka almost managed to dribble the ball all the way into the United net, but was denied by a superb sliding challenge from Lisandro Martinez barely a yard out! (Most unfortunate that the Argentinian shortly afterwards got himself - rightly - sent off for having a cheeky tug on Calvert-Lewin's ponytail; though this wasn't really a consequential setback for the home team, since Leeds were already comfortably on top of the game.)

Outstanding goals: Rio Ngumoha's perfect curler from 16 yards out is an early frontrunner for April's 'Goal of the Month'. And it gave Liverpool some momentum in a match where they'd been failing to make much of an impact for the first 35 minutes. Neco Williams's fierce low drive from the edge of the box, flashing just inside the foot of the post, will also be a contender - and was an untypical, unexpected contribution from that player.

Outstanding performances: 

Big mistakes: Moises Caicedo (of all people!) got caught in possession, and gave away the ball cheaply just outside his own box - to gift Doku City's third goal (though it was, of course, a 'hospital pass' from the disaster-on-a-stick Robert Sanchez that put him in an impossible position).

Bad luck/good luck: David Raya (of all people!) nearly gave away an embarassing goal; receiving a hasty back-pass from Gabriel, he sliced his panicked clearance straight at the nearby Evanilson - but it came to the Bournemouth striker just too quickly for him to react, and deflected harmlessly away off the outside of his ankle. But that very nearly made a bad day for Arsenal into an absolutely terrible one.

Igor Thiago was a little lucky with his second goal, happening to get just the lightest of glancing touches off his hip (and only just barely onside??) as he ran across the line Michael Kayode's already goal-bound shot.

Will Osula mistimed his slide to reach Lewis Miley's deft low ball into the six-yard box and ended up with the ball stuck between his thighs as he lay full length on the ground. He did well to recover - letting the ball run clear so that he could awakwardly prod it home with his left foot; but was a very messy goal.

Nordi Mukiele's shot from outside the box needed a massive deflection to get past Kinsky; and indeed, he looked fortunate even to be credited with the goal, as the initial line of the shot was probably off target.

FPL weirdness: The counting of 'saves' for a number of keepers seems to have been massively off this week! (Perhaps it is every week, and I'm somehow just noticing it more this time?)

And Bournemouth full-back Alex Jimenez, who was probably the 'Man of the Match' at The Emirates, somehow failed to make any impression under the obscure 'defensive points' or BPS ratings, and came away with a paltry 2 FPL points from a game in which he was absolutely superb. Ain't no justice. (If there were any 'fairness' in our game's scoring system, he really ought to have got about 10 points for that match-saving last-ditch tackle on Gabriel alone....)

In general, I approve of the considerably more generous approach being taken to 'assists' this year (in recent seasons, we've seen far too many good final balls fail to be rewarded because of an inconsequential touch from a defender), but I feel the new principle was being taken rather too far with Jarrod Bowen's third 'assist' on Friday. Actually, I don't think players should be getting 'assists' just for taking corners anyway (most of the time, these days, there's a complete melee in the penalty area, and the quality of the initial delivery isn't always very relevant to the ultimate outcome of the passage of play), or not at the full rate of 3 points, anyway. But when the corner is cut out at the near-post and half-cleared,... that is a consequential intervention by another player. Just about all other stats compilers - including the FA themselves! - did not categorise this as an 'assist'; only FPL did!

Unexpected results: West Ham - though only playing the weakest team in the league - were almost unrecognisable from earlier in the season, or even just a month or so ago; they somehow came up with their best performance of the season to run out with a thumping Friday night win. Arsenal have been widely expected to start 'choking' with nerves on the title run-in; and Bournemouth were never going to be a pushover; but probably no-one was really expecting the league leaders to be so comprehensively outplayed at home, by a mid-table side who hadn't managed to win a league game in two months! Liverpool may have steadied their nerves with a decent home win against Fulham; but they really weren't good enough to have prevailed with any comfort - the scoreline severely flattered their performance.  Brighton were miles off their game, and really didn't deserve any more than a point against a Burnley side who were well in the match, and were cruelly treated by being denied a pair of goals for non-existent 'offsides'. And Manchester United suffered a major dip in their recent form to allow Leeds to claim a first away win against them since the start of the 1980s!!

The FPL 'Team of the Week' again (as in just about every Gameweek this season!) includes almost no-one that anyone owns so far. Van Dijk was lucky to come away with a clean sheet in a game that Liverpool didn't really dominate; Thiago's been consistently impressive all season (pretty nearly the only player, certainly the only forward, who has been!), and Verbruggen has been a fairly popular recent acquisition because of next week's Double Gameweek - but no-one else in the 'best 11' has any sort of ownership at all; and even those two were displaced from the selection on Sunday.... by only-just-back-from-injury Robin Roefs and Jean-Philippe Mateta! Nobody could reasonably have been expecting even Taty Castellanos, and certainly not Mavropanos or Wieffer (nominally playing as a makeshift right-back) to get even 1 goal, let alone a brace! 

The global average ended up at a modest 46 points. There haven't been that many poor refereeing decisions, at least; although a rather unjust penalty for Arsenal, a very clearcut penalty not given to City, and 2 absolutely baffling offside decisions against poor Burnley were pretty egregious errors. With several goals from unexpected sources, and many more very near misses, as well as some moderately eccentric game outcomes (a bad defeat for Arsenal, an unexpectedly comfortable home win for West Ham, rather undeserved wins for Liverpool and Brighton, very narrow wins for Sunderland and Palace, and a most unexpected win for Leeds...), this one is looking like a 6 out of 10 on the 'Luck-o-Meter'.