THIS is why you shouldn't TripleCap in December!

 

As I warned a couple of weeks ago, December is a very bad time to play your Triple Captain chip.

Fixture congestion and miserable weather (and perhaps even the distraction of the looming holidays: footballers too need to plan for family gatherings, and get their Christmas shopping done!) tend to reduce performance levels and increase the risk of unexpected, upset results.

And sure enough, here we are at the start of the GW16 weekend, with players like Salah and Saka the most favoured captaincy picks for the week, playing at home and facing much weaker opposition..... and both players produce not very much, both sides are surprisingly held to a draw. I now rather fear that Palmer will have a rare stinker today, and Chelsea will somehow get turned over by Brentford....

In addition to all the factors I listed in that earlier post which can make results at this time of year more unpredictable, we also have to endure the impact of poor officiating (does this get worse in December too? perhaps referees are also preoccupied with thoughts of their Christmas shopping??). Bukayo Saka (my captain choice this week!) was not only denied a goal and an assist by some excellent work between the sticks from Pickford, but, near the end of the game, was robbed of the chance to convert a penalty by possibly the worst refereeing/VAR decision of the entire season so far. The only small consolation I can cling to is that this injustice would have pained me even more if I'd had my Triple Captain chip riding on him....

This is a Season of Craziness, my friends. Hang on to your bonus chips until the New Year....

Dilemmas of the Week - GW16

Throughout this hectic December, the main uncertainties are likely to surround 'rest rotations' - and the sudden realisation of 'totting up' suspensions -  rather than injuries. Although, with the final round of European games for this year taking place in midweek, I suppose there are bound to be a few knocks and niggles complicating the picture. Fingers crossed for no major disasters (or last-minute postponements)!

It's still early morning in the UK as I put this together. I'll add updates as necessary if any major news breaks on Friday or Saturday.

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 16?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

Leon Bailey went off with some kind of hamstring strain in the match against Southampton last weekend; although described as a 'mild' injury, it seems it might keep him out of the reckoning for the rest of the month. And now Ollie Watkins has hobbled off with a knock in Tuesday night's game in Leipzig; he's a pretty resilient guy, and I suspect he'll be OK for Saturday - but this is probably the biggest FPL worry of the week, with around 24% of managers still owning him (despite his and Villa's iffy form for most of this season?!). Some, though, are no doubt getting excited about the possibility of a start for Jhon Duran in his place.

Of Brighton's numerous 'walking wounded', only Joel Veltman yet seems close to being able to feature this weekend; and it might be doubtful he'll immediately replace Tariq Lamptey, who was outstanding last week.

Marcos Senesi has just had surgery on his thigh injury, and is now likely to miss most of the rest of the season. (Good news, at least, for early adopters of his promising understudy, Dean Huijsen, one of my new 'Picks of the Week'!)  Marcus Tavernier also picked up a hamstring problem in Monday night's game against Wolves, and could be out for weeks at least. (This probably makes more room in the starting line-up for recently back-from-injury Dango Ouattara, and will perhaps allow more creative space to Kluivert and Semenyo to earn FPL points.)

Callum Wilson has reportedly picked up yet another hamstring injury in training this week, and could be out for a couple of months or so. (Presumably no-one owned him anyway; but the news could slightly enhance Alexander Isak's perceived value, by reducing his risk of rotation or 'managed minutes'.) Joe Willock also dropped out of last week's squad to face Brentford with a hamstring problem, but said to be 'minor' - and he might be available again this week.

Disasters mount for under-pressure Ange Postecoglou: his central defensive pairing of Cristian Romero and Micky Van de Ven, both rushed back perhaps a little over-hastily from lengthy injury absences last week, both broke down with new hamstring problems in last week's game, and both now seem likely to be out until at least sometime in January.

Michail Antonio seems likely to miss the rest of the season after suffering a broken leg and other injuries in crashing his Ferrari a week ago. (It is at least fortuitous for West Ham that Niclas Füllkrug has finally got himself fit at the same time.)

José Sá's unexpected absence last week was apparently only due to a minor shoulder problem picked up in training, and he could be back between the sticks for Wolves this weekend. Pablo Sarabia might also be able to take part again, after missing a couple of weeks with a calf problem.

Do we have any players who are dropped, or not looking likely to get the starts we hoped for?

Alexis Macallister, Yves Bissouma, Calvin Bassey, Emerson, Joao Gomes, Boubakary Soumaré, and Pedro Neto all miss this gameweek after clocking up their fifth bookings (which is going it some for Neto, given he's only registered 7 starts this season). And Southampton's Jack Stephens is starting a 4-game ban for a 'violent conduct' sending-off last week. Rico Lewis, of course, is also stuck with a 1-match ban for his ridiculous sending-off, because you can't appeal against double-yellow cases.

Alex Moreno, only on loan at Forest, is ineligible to play against his parent club Villa this week (although he hasn't been getting regular starts anyway, so this is probably of just about zero FPL relevance).

In better news, Alisson is now back in goal for Liverpool, and looked pretty much straight back to his imperious best in Tuesday's Champions League game at Girona. I just about never see a goalkeeper change as an urgent priority, though; and I'd probably wait a week or two, just to make sure he doesn't break down again - muscle problems like this have a habit of recurring. [His return is an unwelcome, though hardly unexpected, development for those who've been relying on Caoimhin Kelleher for the past two months.]

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

There's obviously something amiss between James Maddison and his manager, and I wouldn't be taking any chances on him - even in what is generally perceived to be the 'easiest' fixture in the calendar (I would argue that Wolves and West Ham currently look even weaker than Southampton); remarkably, some 7.6% of FPL managers still would.

And I would be tempted to say... the whole of the Manchester City team! (If anyone still had any of them anyway....)  However, I expect they'll rouse themselves to best efforts against their cross-town rivals, United; and they have a long run of pretty soft-looking fixtures from here. But damn - Foden is strangely out-of-sorts (and maybe out of favour with Pep?), DeBruyne is trying to play through a hernia problem, Ederson is unfathomably dropped, Gundogan looks hopelessly off the pace, Lewis is suspended this week, Walker's pace and stamina are failing him, and Stones and Ake and Akanji all seem likely to be missing again, while Gvardiol is starting to look desperately weary from constantly having to cover for everyone else. So, their prospects this week don't look that great.

And Wolves, alas, are on the 'highway to hell', and I find it impossible to fancy their prospects even against fellow-strugglers Ipswich (surely a last chance game for poor Gary O'Neill??). After this, they don't have another likely winnable game until the end of February. Cunha appears to have put his scoring boots into storage already anyway; and, as I predicted two months ago, Ait-Nouri is now mostly being held in a more defensive role and so rarely threatening attacking contributions even in games where they have been briefly able to get on top. Thus, I wouldn't be keeping these two any longer - or any other Wolves players, obviously.

Did anyone play so well, you have to consider bringing them in immediately?

Well, Minteh and Lamptey both came up with cracking goals for Brighton last week, but they're both 'minutes risks', uncertain starters. Sancho also looked very lively for Chelsea, but again isn't likely to be an invariable starter when Neto and Madueke are also competing for inclusion on the flanks.

I think the whole of the Bournemouth defence - even including Kepa in goal - are starting to look very promising, and they have a good run of fixtures through the rest of December. (Kepa might perhaps gain additional value if he gets recalled from his loan in January to replace the very unconvincing Robert Sanchez; but I suspect his bridges are well burned at Chelsea.)

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!

A little bit of Zen (20)

 

"Intelligence is not making no mistakes, but quickly seeing how to make them good." 

Bertolt Brecht

Picks of the Week (3)

DISCLAIMER: I always refuse to identify myself as any sort of FPL 'guru' or 'mentor' or 'expert'. And I have previously on this blog expressed my reluctance to share many details of my own selections, or to make very specific player recommendations.

However, in addition to occasionally critiquing common 'sheep picks' of the moment (not all necessarily outright bad, but ridiculously over-popular selections), I thought I would start occasionally trying to highlight one or two players who seem not yet to be very widely owned but are starting to look very tempting prospects.

I will generally try to come up with at least 2 options per week - so that it doesn't look like I'm making a sole recommendation. And these suggestions are intended to be simply 'worth thinking about', not at all 'must-haves'   (And some weeks, I'll have nothing.....)

First up for Gameweek 16, we have.... Enzo Fernandez. Yes, I know, I am in danger of coming a little late to the party on this one, of making a fairly obvious and popular recommendation. Enzo started getting among the goals against Leicester three weeks ago, and his ownership has swelled by well over 400,000 since then - fully half of that increase just in the last few days! - boosting his price by 200k (though, at present, it's still only the very modest 5-million he started the season at - so, still a bit of a bargain!). Heck, he's looking set to be one of the most transferred-in players this week.... which might seem to make him a candidate for one of my 'Sheep Picks'. Why is he not?  Because people are right to be buying him in such huge numbers!  Suddenly he's got a regular start in the team again, and Maresca's found a way of fitting him in that gives him the freedom to get forward more and contribute in the attacking third alongside Palmer. And he's absolutely thriving on it: 3 goals and 2 assists in just 4 games; and his BPS numbers are through the roof - 150 in just those 4 games! In the space of just a few weeks, he has become clearly, unarguably, by far the most the most attractive pick in the budget midfielder category (in fact, he's been playing so well, he would probably still be one of the most attractive midfield picks even if he cost 8 or 9 million).

Why, then, have I been a little slow to acquire him? (And why do I still have slight reservations about doing so...?)  Well, there's a practical difficulty for many of us in fitting him into our squad. Palmer, of course, is indispensable at the moment; Jackson has shown much the best form of the higher-priced forwards this season; and Marc Cucurella has been in absolutely outstanding form over the last 5 matches; and some people like Sanchez (who's actually worked out quite well because of the kind fixture run, even though just about everybody now expects him to get axed next month) or Colwill (a bizarre choice, but a semi-popular one). So, we may already have our quota of Chelsea players, and be uncertain whether we want to sacrifice one of them; however good Enzo looks in isolation, he might still not be one of the three most valuable assets from Chelsea. (This is a problem with choosing players from Arsenal as well; for me, the decisive argument against Raya - great goalkeeper, but won't bring you as much of an edge over other goalkeepers as Timber and Gabriel or Saliba do over other defenders, or Saka and perhaps Odegaard do over other midfielders.) Also... I'm a little bit concerned that accommodating him with a regular starting place involves the 'convenient fiction' of starting Caicedo at right-back; and I think the Ecuadorian's distaste for this role - and/or the strong claims of Gusto and Reece James (well, if he ever gets fit again...) in that position - may mean that this is not a long-term or invariable formation. But we'll cross that bridge... if it gets built; for now, I'm joining 'the sheep' and rushing in for Enzo.

[Well, this recommendation proved a little disappointing at first. Enzo picked up an assist against Brentford in the first match after I published this, and a clean-sheet point in the following game against Everton. But he - and Chelsea - have been much more subdued over Gameweeks 16-18. As I'd feared, he hasn't been able to continue to play in such a free and advanced role - mainly because the absence of Romeo Lavia with an injury is requiring him to sit a bit deeper and help out Caicedo in the middle of the park. At least he's been continuing to start every game, and play the full 90 minutes; but no sign of any further goals - or any bonus points - in the last few games.]

No, I'm not just getting a rush of blood to the head because Bournemouth's teen prodigy Dean Huijsen scored a header in the midweek game against Spurs last week. He was bloody good at the defensive end of things too: absolutely outstanding, in fact - barely allowed Solanke a kick all game, won 'Man of the Match' in the BBC's online poll, and had the home fans singing his name at the final whistle. And again looked very, very solid in Sunday's game against Ipswich. With the Argentinian stalwart Marcos Senesi likely to be sidelined for several weeks with a serious thigh injury, the youngster is looking set for a good run of starts. I'm not suggesting anyone should immediately install him as one of their three preferred starting defenders; but his price has fallen to 4.3 million (from a rather ungenerous opening level of 4.5 at the start of the season, when, I suppose, it was imagined that perhaps he might be getting a regular start immediately; though I can't understand why anyone could have thought that when Senesi and Zabarnyi were so outstanding last season), which makes him a tempting budget pick for the rarely used fourth or fifth defender slots - particularly as Bournemouth now have a pretty kind fixture run through until mid-January.

[Young Huijsen has been one of the biggest successes in this series of recommendations so far. He didn't quite make an immediate hit, blanking in the turgid 1-1 draw against West Ham in GW16, but got a huge 14-poinr haul in the next game against Manchester United, scoring a header, keeping a clean sheet, and raking in maximum bonus points. As Bournemouth's defensive form steadily improved, he kept another clean sheet and again picked up maximum bonus points in the Boxing Day game against Palace - though he did also get booked in that one.]

And finally, as a slightly more left-field third suggestion this week, I propose Nottingham Forest's Jota Silva. The 25-year-old Portuguese attacking midfielder suddenly seems to have displaced Anthony Elanga in the pecking-order at the club, and has looked absolutely on fire in his three consecutive starts over the last couple of weeks (I find myself surprised that he hasn't yet registered a goal or an assist: he looks very, very likely to soon). Like Fernandez and Huijsen, his absence from the first team caused his opening price to drop a little; and at just 5.9 million, he's looking a very attractive prospect to me at the moment. Forest's little fixture-difficulty blip is pretty much behind them too: with the form they're in, they don't have to fear Brentford or Spurs; and while the New Year game against Liverpool is bound to be tough, at least it's at home - and they've already done them once this season! Apart from that, they don't really face anyone terribly formidable until City in mid-February. (Time to get back in on Sels and their defenders, I fancy... And, if you also have Wood up front - and why would you not? - that could again mean that your club quota is fully occupied. But if you do have space for one more Forest player, I think Silva is worth consideration.)

[Oh dear! Well, Jota Silva was more of a 'one to watch' than a strong recommendation. He had seemed to have become a nailed starter in the Forest lineup; but as soon as I mentioned him here, he lost his place to the resurgent Anthony Elanga. He's still getting regular minutes off the bench, and still looking pretty sharp - but he's obviously not an FPL prospect unless he gets a regular start again.]

Moving deadlines - needed or not?

 

In the wake of this weekend's late postponement of the first scheduled kick-off of the Gameweek, a few managers on the online forums were advocating for the FPL deadline to have been moved.... ostensibly to allow people a little more time to panic (sorry, I meant 'think'....) about how to address this unforeseen calamity.

Would this actually have been a reasonable or useful (or practical) idea?  Or a fair one?

I think not. Probably not reasonable or practical because - unless the FPL website has been set up with a straightforward back-end interface that allows fairly un-techie staff to easily implement a deadline change (which I doubt) - that kind of thing could involve quite a bit of programming... which probably wouldn't be easy to get done safely and accurately within just an hour or two, especially on a weekend (when I imagine only a skeleton staff are on duty at FPL Towers...?).

Probably not even that useful to anyone, since, as I've noted previously in the last few days, there's really not much that you can do about an 'Act of God' disaster like this; making multiple short-term transfers, or throwing your Free Hit at the problem, is only going to be counter-productive. If you happened to be on top of the weather news (and the likelihood of a postponement was heavily predicted over the preceding 24 hours), you had ample time to take whatever panicky and inappropriate 'remedial' action you fancied before the original deadline anyway; and if you weren't, a few extra hours of potential faffing time probably wouldn't have made much difference to you.

And a change certainly would not have been FAIR, I don't think - for two reasons:

1) Such a modification of the rules could only have been implemented for a postponement of the first match of the gameweek, not for any of the later ones. (And with a major storm like that slowly rolling across the country, and some gameweeks being extended over three or four days, it is quite possible that some matches may get postponed only after the gameweek deadline has passed; it happened a number of times during the Covid pandemic. Such an eventuality is really rough on any FPL managers with a lot of players affected by the post-deadline postponement; managers adversely affected by a postponement of the opening game already enjoy a slight advantage in that respect - why should it be made any greater?

2)  Far more importantly, in my view, the gameweek deadlines are set and advertised weeks in advance, and should remain fixed, for the sake of clarity and straightforwardness in the application of the game rules: everyone expects the deadlines to come into force at the originally advertised times, no matter what. 

Some people choose to finalise their teams for the week some way ahead of the deadline, and indeed may not conveniently be able to leave it until just a few hours beforehand. (When the first kick-off is at Saturday lunchtime, the deadline is in the middle of the night for managers in the Americas and Oceania!) Unexpected, last-minute changes to the gameweek deadline would disadvantage those in adverse timezones, and those with spotty Internet access who are not readily able to keep abreast of EPL news - or UK news more generally, or any news - hour by hour. And that accounts for a very substantial proportion of those playing the game (including myself): the USA, Malaysia, Australia, and Indonesia are some of the countries where the game is most popular, outside of the UK. It is unfair to FPL managers in countries like those to implement rule changes (which is what moving the deadline would be) at times when they can't readily be aware of and respond to them.  [The same argument would apply to another rule change often argued for on the forums, allowing manual substitutions to be made throughout the gameweek - as is usually the case with international tournament versions of the game, where the 'game days' for each round of matches are usually spread over two or three or four days. I find it a clunky and unnecessary over-refinement of the gameplay.... and very, very difficult to make use of from a timezone 8 or 10 or 12 hours distant from where the matches are being played.]

Moving a deadline unexpectedly - particularly 'late in the day', quite shortly before the original deadline - would unfairly disadvantage anyone who'd already made their squad changes for the week (perhaps shortly before the deadline change is announced, or as it's being announced... or even after its announcement, but still before the original deadline, because many people will have remained unaware of the change). We all plan for when the deadline is originally advertised to be; and if we choose to finalise our teams before that, we shouldn't be retroactively penalised for that decision by a late 'rule change'.

Perhaps a stronger case could be made for such a late change to the deadline, if - and only if - there were clearly defined circumstances for implementing such a change automatically (not just leaving it to the discretion of whoever's on the FPL Crisis Desk at the weekend.... and blindly trusting to the tech team to be able to put it into effect at short notice); and this provision is well-publicised to all participants. But even then, I think it's unnecessary (not actually that helpful to anyone), and unfair (it confers a privilege - albeit one that is probably not actually very valuable - on managers in or close to the UK, who are constantly on their phones....).  And at the moment, this is not the case: there is no established provision or precedent for automatically shifting a gameweek deadline in circumstances like this.

Therefore, I contend, the deadline should be treated as sacrosanct, and not moved for anything.

Deadline brinksmanship - DON'T try to cut it too close!

I mentioned the other day in my short post on the consequences of the Merseyside derby postponement this weekend that many managers who'd lost more than 1 or 2 players in that fixture scrambled to try to plug the gaps just before the weekly deadline. And it was this flurry of late transfer activity which enabled so many of us to start the Gameweek on a short-lived high, as our rank surged upwards on the number-of-transfers tiebreak rule.

I did subsequently see a few complaints on online FPL forums about managers being unable to complete their desired transfers, espcially if they were attempting to do so via Wildcard or Free Hit chips, because the FPL website seemed to freeze up or crash on them, not letting them confirm or save their changes.

Now, this is not a problem that I've encountered myself for a few years - because I just don't take chances with the deadline any more. In my early years playing the game, though, (and in my first few times playing the sister games for the World Cup or the European Championship) I ran into such bothersome glitches a lot.

And it's not really surprising - with a game of this magnitude (typically well over 10 million user accounts each season nowadays). However good the overal server capacity for the game is, it's bound to get a bit overstretched if a significant proportion of the game's players are all trying to make changes to their accounts at the same time - and, in extreme cases, that may lead to the user-interface becoming slow, glitchy, unreliable.... or perhaps even to it breaking down altogether. And  I suspect this problem is likely to be exacerbated by any local shortcomings you may be suffering with the Internet architecture; if your connection to the Web is already a little bit slow or unstable, then the chances of your connection to the FPL servers breaking down are going to be even higher during times of peak demand on them.

And of course, the FPL site traffic tends to be highest just before the deadline for team changes each gameweek. So, if you try leaving your team changes until the very last minute.... you are always running the risk of having a 'technical issue' prevent you from completing them. I really don't think it's SAFE to leave your team changes to the last half-hour before the deadline. And I don't usually even try to do them any later than 1 hour before.

And yet many managers persist in this crazy brinksmanship - kidding themselves that there may be late, late 'team leaks' that might give a better clue to a manager's selections for the upcoming game.... perhaps a rumour that this or that player is a late dropout because he woke up with a cold or stubbed his toe in the shower...

Frankly, I can't remember the last time a piece of news like that broke (that was actually reliable or useful). And if it doesn't emerge until the last couple of hours before the first kick-off, there's really not much you can do about it anyway - unless, like FPL's vapid anonymous pundit 'The Scout', you are prepared to use  unlimited transfers to optimise your squad each week, regardless of the cost in points. This is why it's IMPORTANT to always have a proper bench: so that 1 or 2 - or perhaps even 3! - last-minute dropouts from your starting eleven can be readily replaced. 

And if you lose even more than that, because of some strange circumstance.... well, that's just a disaster there's really no way to deal with; you just have to suck it up. As I counselled in regard to this weekend's postponement, if you did lose a lot of Merseyside players, and you had no decent back-up on your bench, it was probably better to just accept your ill fortune for this one gameweek... rather than resorting to a bunch of transfers, possibly at a cost of valuable points, and then face the prospect of wanting to undo most of those transfers the very next week, and having to spend even more points to do so. [Some people apparently thought their Free Hit might be the answer to their troubles on this. But that is a topic for another time, I think. In brief, it was impossible to be missing more than 5 or 6 players as a result of this lost fixture; there will be at least one gameweek later in the season when we will all, almost certainly, lose at least 1.5x to 2x that many players; and that is when you will NEED your Free Hit. Playing it now might have saved you some points this weekend; but it will cost you far more further down the line - when you no longer have it available when a far more needful occasion for it arises.]

A flying start! HOW did that happen?

 

As this weekend started with the postponement of the first scheduled game, Everton v Liverpool, some of us found ourselves comforted by the sight of a forest of 'green arrows' next to our league positions... before a ball had even been kicked.

How could this be??

Well, it's a curious quirk of the FPL rules. The principal tie-breaker for rank order where managers have the same points is the number of transfers they've made (regular transfers only; not those made with a Wildcard or Free Hit, or in pre-season). And while points deductions are not made for any 'hits' they've chosen to take (i.e. spending 4 points for an additional transfer, over and above any Free Transfers they have available) until the end of the Gameweek, the transfers themselves are recorded immediately.

Thus, every time you make a transfer, your rank goes down. But, on the upside, every time those tied with you on points make more transfers than you, your rank goes up! Nice.

And since so many people lost multiple players in that cancelled Merseyside derby and were scrambling to fill gaps just before the Gameweek deadline, those of us who were able to sit tight with the squad we had... enjoyed a sudden surge in rank.

This was the only small consolation for me in an otherwise utterly horrible week....

Luck-o-Meter (15)

Well, of course, we kicked off our Gameweek 15.... without a kick-off! One of the most extreme examples of 'luck' intervening to mess with our hoped-for FPL outcomes! And believe it or not, at the start of the season, when I was listing the main sources of luck in FPL results, I did mention 'Acts of God':

I was able to celebrate Storm Darragh's wiping out of the opening Merseyside derby, because I only lost Mo Salah from my starting lineup. Many people found themselves without 3, 4, 5, even 6 players - immediate disaster for them. (Some reached in panic for their 'Free Hit' chip! And apparently the last-minute rush of attempted transfer activity crashed the FPL servers, freezing screens before changes could be implemented for some - and many managers were left doubly vexed and frustrated over the turn of events. However, I suspect most of them will ultimately be better off without having made changes. If you were fairly happy with your squad before the postponement, you shouldn't waste transfers on short-term changes. [It quite often happens that a team you're doubled or trebled up on will have an unexpectedly awful game and none of their players return anything... or all your star men are unexpectedly 'rested' on the same weekend... That kind of thing hurts bad; but you just have to suck it up. A last-minute postponement is the same kind of pain. Using a bunch of transfers to try to deal with it is like self-medicating with alcohol: it won't really make things much better now, and it will leave you with a terrible hangover the day after.]

We have to expect a lot of 'rest rotations' at this time of year, but... Ollie Watkins seemed one of the least likely players to be dropped to the bench this weekend; and that will have been a hard blow for the nearly 24% of Fantasy managers who still own him, despite his and Villa's subdued form over the past month (there was a big inrush for him this week, in anticipation of this 'easy' Southampton fixture!). Southampton largely avoided their usual catastrophic defensive errors here - the only major one, from goalkeeper Lumley, they survived by the skin of their teeth - and, in fact, Villa seemed to be making more sloppy passes. And oh, mirabile dictu, no contentious decisions here. (Not much of anything, really: a very drab game.)

The Brentford v Newcastle game was full of surprises - first, and most painful of which for me (because I recently bought him), was that the almost-never-rested Anthony Gordon got rested (and he didn't make much of an impact when he eventually came on as a sub). Newcastle, perhaps emotionally and physically depleted by their defiant heroics against Liverpool in midweek, were incredibly flat; in fact, this was probably their worst performance of the entire season - with Nick Pope having a particularly bad day at the office, and Lewis Hall (another recent purchase of mine!) having an absolute stinker. One should expect some wild swings of form during the crowded holiday fixture schedule, but even so, it is unusual that one team can suddenly be so much worse than expected, while their opponents produce their best game of the season, as Brentford did here! Moreover, there are certain patterns which, although one can't necessarily determine their causative roots, seem so reliable that they come to mould our expectations (not unreasonably). One such is that the Brentford forwards tend to take it in turns with the goals, and rarely does more than one of them score in the same game; but here, Mbeumo (suddenly back from a five-game mini-slump), Wissa, and Schade (who was only on as a substitute) all scored; and a bloody defender, Nathan Collins, too! A big tremor on the Luck-o-Meter in this one, for all sorts of reasons!  (And I have to admit, Mark Flekken is growing on me slightly of late; well, I think he's slowly getting better. And his scrambling recovery to tip the ball off Isak's toe as he set himself to fire the ball into an empty net was really a top piece of goalkeeping. I still don't think he's anywhere near the best goalkeeper in the EPL; but I wouldn't rank him dead last any more...)

At least there weren't any problems with the refereeing in this game... Well, except for that incident where Dan Burn made a heroic last-ditch block to prevent a late fifth goal after Mbeumo dispossessed a hapless Pope 35 yards out (I was more alarmed by the keeper's complete lack of pace to even try and recover, rather than his initial clumsiness on the ball): Burn clearly attempted to steer the ball away from the goal and back towards his approaching keeper - and did so successfully; Pope immediately picked the ball up and looked to bowl it out to another defender. If the Pau Torres touch to Martinez last weekend was deemed a 'back-pass', why was this not? As I observed then, there's just no consistency about how this rule is applied. [Another bugbear of mine is how careless goalkeepers are now allowed to be in handling the ball near the edge of the box, particularly when about to launch a kick forward: there are examples every week of the ball plainly having strayed outside the lines of the penalty area in a keeper's hands, but referees never do anything about it. There was one particularly egregious example a few weeks back - can't remember who it was now; Vicario, maybe? - where a keeper fell on the ball on the edge of the area, and it briefly rolled a good foot outside the box while he still had his hands on it - but the ref turned a blind eye.]

City floundering against a lower-half side is no longer surprising; it will surely continue to happen unless they can find some sort of Rodri fill-in in January (and replacements too for Walker and Gundogan, who clearly no longer have the legs to play in this League). The only big surprise here was that Rico Lewis finally got a goal (although he has threatened a few times this season; and has 'previous' against Palace); and then got himself sent off! The second booking looked incredibly harsh (Chalobah's boot arriving at the point of contact slightly after Lewis's, and scraping the studs over Lewis's instep - if anything, a foul the other way). The major problem here is with the VAR protocols: sendings-off are so important that they clearly should review all instances, not just 'straight red' situations.

Manchester United fans will no doubt protest that their result was unjust, as they managed to dominate the possession (three-to-one!) and 'expected goals' numbers. But, although they managed to move the ball around a little better than Forest, especially in the first half, Forest had a clear edge in competitiveness, and always felt more 'in control' of the game to me. It was a fair old humdinger, though, with a number of near-misses - notably a crisp volley by Murillo just wide of the near post from a corner, and Martinez's athletic volley over the bar in the closing minutes, as well as Bruno's free-kick effort fingertipped on to the face of the crossbar by Sels, and Jota Silva's powerful early header crashing against the woodwork. One might also consider it... unusual that Andre Onana, who should by rights be one of the best 3 or 4 goalkeepers in the Premier League, had one of those days where he looked like he belonged in Division Two. And he should really have been booked for his ridiculous faffing around with the placing of the ball for the free-kick in the dying minutes (WHY was he time-wasting anyway, when it was his team chasing the equaliser??). Apart from that, though, it seemed to be a pretty well-refereed game, with no controversial decisions.

Sunday, alas, was one of the worst days for VAR that I can remember for a while. Well, there have been an awful lot of them this season, but this one was certainly up there. Kulusevski should clearly have been sent off against Chelsea for blatantly throwing his elbow into the side of Lavia's head, a really nasty foul - somehow completely missed by the officials. (Spurs fans will whinge that perhaps Caicedo should have been sent off a little earlier for kicking Sarr on the shin, but that looked to me like an accidental foll0w-through, as he stumbled forwards slightly off balance; there was little force behind the contact. It should certainly have received a yellow card, and didn't; but it was nowhere near a red.)  Yet another goal was ridiculously disallowed for a non-existent foul on a goalkeeper, and yet again VAR shirked its responsibility (an injustice that will cut particularly deep for relegation-strugglers Ipswich). And then there were some utterly unfathomable offside calls in the Fulham v Arsenal game.  [Grinds teeth in frustration]

Fulham have become a bit of a bogey team for Arsenal, and Marco Silva again did a very good tactical job of smothering their threat here. And even Arteta - for once - took a harsh decision against his side with uncomplaining good grace. Fulham indeed had done enough to deserve a point - although Raul converting their only chance of the game so well was a bit unexpected; especially after a six-game spell when he has not merely not scored but never looked likely to! - and I suppose the dubious offside calls cancel each other out, since I felt Saliba was fairly clearly, if narrowly, offside, while Martinelli almost certainly wasn't (but either way, it was one of those that was too close for any decision on it to be sensibly made) - although the second one rankles with me as it denied Saka any points in the game, and I'd given him my captain's armband after Salah disappeared from the roster. 

My gripe about these decisions, though, is with the VAR process. On live coverage, they seem to have started occasionally showing us a camera view inside the VAR room (is this new? I haven't noticed it before); however, this is vexingly unrevealing, since it is without any audio, and the view is facing away from the monitor screens, so we have no idea what they're looking at. It actually adds to our confusion and anxiety, rather than dispelling it!  Both these decisions took an inordinately long time; and in both cases, a decision appeared to have been reached before the 'lines' were superimposed on the still frame to indicate how it was supposed to have been reached (are the pictures shared at the ground and with TV stations the same as those the VAR officials are seeing??  surely, they ought to be; but we just don't know). Even worse, the still frames being shared on TV were not the most appropriate ones: in the first case the action appeared to have been stopped a bit before Havertz headed back across the face of the goal, so Saliba was not at his furthest point forward (and he still looked offside by an inch or so; but when the ball was actually headed, it looked to me more like a foot); for the second, it just wasn't the best angle to make the call, too far ahead of the defensive line (a better view later appeared, to retroactively justify the decision; but even in that one, Martinelli, way over on the far side, looked just onside). There was again a timing issue with that second decision, as Martinelli checked back for a fraction of a second while the nearest defender was still retreating, and just as the ball was being played to him - so a difference of a 10th or a 20th of a second would have made a substantial difference to the players' relative positions, and it was not clear that the action had been frozen at the appropriate moment. In any case, another Arsenal player almost in line was blocking a clear view of where those two players' feet were, so really I don't see how any decision was possible. In fact, it looked very much as if the call may have been made not against Martinelli, but against another Arsenal forward (Trossard, I suppose?), between the Fulham centre-back and right-back, who was clearly a foot or so offside - but also very clearly not interfering with play. These two decisions may not have been 'wrong' (though they both looked it to me); but it was not clear on what basis they had been made - and that lack of clarity in the process is completely unacceptable.

Ipswich really only have themselves to blame: more atrocious defending from them allowing Bournemouth to nick the game at the death. But they will feel hard done-by - rightly so - at being denied a goal for Delap putting a hand on Kepa's arm at a corner. The amount of indulgence being shown towards goalkeepers by referees has reached an utterly ridiculous level. (And once more, VAR appear to have taken a look, and said: "Well, that was a ridiculous call. But we can't call out a colleague as ridiculous, so... let's just pretend we saw nothing wrong with it.")

Brighton dominated most of the game at Leicester, but couldn't make it count - ultimately needing a couple of worldies from Lamptey and Minteh (and a fantastic fingertip save by Hermansen from Estupinan's fierce drive early on), after the more usual outlets of Mitoma, Ferguson, and Joao Pedro had all spurned chances; and then sitting back to defend the two-goal lead for the last 10 minutes.... and not being able to do so??  Bizarre game on the footballing front; but at least there didn't appear to be any refereeing cock-ups in this one.

The Spurs v Chelsea game got off to a weird start, with the hosts being gifted a couple of goals inside the first 10 minutes or so as a result of - the otherwise excellent! - Cucurella twice giving possession away by falling over (his complaint about the studs on his boots probably just a scapegoat excuse??). The endlessly flakey Sanchez looked somewhat at fault in goal on both of them too. For the first, he appeared to be trying to come out for the cross (which was obviously going to be cleared by his defender, if the Spurs forward at the near post didn't reach it first), rather than staying on his line to guard his near post; it was as if he hadn't even seen Solanke running in on the ball. And the second, while a crisp shot through a defender's legs, nestled right inside the near post, didn't have that much power in it, and Sanchez got across to it comfortably enough but somehow didn't get his hand on it. For me, that is a keeper that has got to go (and I'm not alone: the 'Match of the Day' pundits on the BBC seem to have been saying the same every weekend for the past month or more). A thrilling end-to-end game, with a fair few near-misses, a 'Goal of the Month' contender from Sancho, 2 penalties (both completely uncontentious, for once), Jackson's finishing - mostly immaculate so far this season - suddenly letting him down again (and so denying Palmer perhaps 2 or 3 more assists!!), and the rare sight of Son Heung-Min fluffing an easy one-on-one... And Cole Palmer (much as I love him...) was extremely fortunate to be awarded an 'assist' for his pass across the box to Enzo, since it took a huge deflection off a Spurs defender, and most of the time even the smallest intervening touch will rob a player of credit for setting up a goal (I worry that this decision may yet get revised, possibly harming his bonus points tally as well... God, I hope not: he's the only player who returned for me this week!). This match alone was probably worth a couple of points on my Luck-o-Meter scale!

Monday night's West Ham v Wolves clash was really a 'Save Your Manager's Job' match; and I had thought that perhaps Wolves would be a little more motivated on Gary O'Neill's behalf than West Ham would be for the drab and uninspiring Lopategui. But not as it turned out: despite a thumping half-volley equaliser from Matt Doherty (yet another goal from a defender?!), West Ham looked to be absolutely dominant in this one; and if Mohammed Kudus was aware of the offside law, they might easily have scored 4 or 5. And there was another selection 'surprise' here, with O'Neill suddenly switching back to Sam Johnstone in goal, in place of Jose Sa (it didn't do him any good; but it will have pissed off the 2% of managers who still owned Sa). Swapping your keeper is usually a sign of ultimate desperation; isn't that right, Pep?

Alas, it looks as though - yet again - O'Neill can feel rightly aggrieved at the refereeing decisions in this game: the corner from which Soucek headed his opener should have been a goal-kick (although that's no excuse for the awful defending, as four Wolves players formed a gaggle near the edge of the six-yard box to watch the lanky Czech eagerly waiting for his free header to arrive, and doing absolutely nothing to try to prevent it); Emerson ran into the back of Guedes on the edge of the box, but VAR declared, rather dubiously, that the contact had started 'outside the area'; and then in the closing minutes, Mavropanos stamped on Bellegarde's foot - clearly inside the box this time, and clearly a foul, but once more both the referee and the VAR team unaccountably looked the other way. While these accumulating small injustices will rankle with Wolves fans, and probably have had some impact on their standing in the table, it doesn't alter the fact that their performances this season have been abysmal - and O'Neill really needs to go now (probably should have gone a month back). But so does Lopategui: he's doing an even worse job, with a much stronger group of players.

Losing an entire game from the schedule - especially 'at the last minute' (only around 2 hours before the deadline; which, for a Saturday luncthtime kick-off, is still the middle of the night for anyone playing the game in the Americas!) - is probably worth 4 or 5 points on the Luck-o-Meter straight away.

Losing Mo Salah, the most potent player in the game at the moment, to that postponement, and then having so many other leading players either rested (especially Watkins and Gordon, both quite high owned), or dropped (Maddison!) amped up the unpredictability of the weekend even further. There were some moderately surprising performances and results too, with Southampton holding Villa to the narrowest of victories, Leicester, Fulham, and Palace managing draws against the much more fancied Brighton, Arsenal and Manchester City, and Brentford/Newcastle, Man Utd/Forest, and Spurs/Chelsea producing multi-goal ding-dongs!!

And among the 'usual suspects', only Cole Palmer had a big week this time - and that essentially down to the 2 silly penalties Spurs gave him (his first 2 of the season???). The 'Team of the Week' is really a bit of a joke, with almost no-one that any sensible manager would (any longer) own: Emi Martinez and Ezri Konsa are very poor picks for the long-haul, almost never keep clean sheets (but did this week!); Saliba is, of course, a great player - but usually only third choice from the Arsenal defence after Gabriel and Timber (and he looked to me well offside for his goal, though VAR somehow erred in his favour!); Tariq Lamptey and Tim Hughes are irregular starters, Ouattara only just back from injury; Mbeumo, Bowen, Raul, and Vardy were all making surprise returns to form after a scoring drought (5 games without a goal for Mbeumo and Bowen, 6 for Raul, and - before last week - 4 for Vardy); and Morgan Gibbs-White hadn't produced anything since his solitary goal of the season in the second game against hopeless Southampton. So, that right there, that combination of the usually reliable players (Saka, Jackson, Joao Pedro, Isak, Watkins...), as well as many of the recently popular 'Sheep Picks' (Cunha, Ait-Nouri, Iwobi, Porro, Kerkez...) all producing little or nothing... while so many players we should have given up on by now came good again out of nowhere... that on its own is probably worth at least 4 points on the Luck-o-Meter scale.

And then, on top of all the wild swings of fortune in the selections and performances, we had some spectacularly bad decisions marring the gameweek too: Lewis being wrongly sent off, Kulusevski being wrongly allowed to remain on the field, Ipswich being denied a perfectly good goal, Wolves being denied 1 or 2 penalties, and a few offsides so close that the VAR determinations on them were severely unconvincing. Ugh - just a horrible, horrible Gameweek. I only hesitate to give it a maximum score of 10 because I fear there will almost certainly be at least one week this season that manages to be spectactularly worse still, but.... it's definitely a strong 9 out of 10 on the Luck-o-Meter.

Thank you, 'Darragh'!

 

At about 9am this morning, UK time,  the weekend's opening fixture - Everton v. Liverpool - was postponed due to extreme weather warnings issued about the imminent impact of 'Storm Darragh' on the west coast of England, Wales, and Scotland.

I couldn't think of a famous Darragh to help us celebrate this splendid news, and a Google search turned up only about half a dozen or so Gaelic footballers and rugby players with this forename.... and this 20th century American landscape artist, Darragh Park. [His painting above is called 'Untitled' - I may use it again at the end of the year, in a retrospective post on Manchester City's season.]

I find myself in buoyant spirits about this meteorological newsflash.... first, for the unworthy but delicious schadenfreude of being able to scoff at all the FPL managers who happen to be loaded up on Liverpool and/or Everton players (Pickford a semi-popular goalkeeper pick all season; McNeil still in a lot of squads, after a hot start to the year, despite a recent injury and lull in form; Mykolenko newly in demand again after a big haul against Wolves this midweek...). Their Gameweek is wrecked before it starts! In fact, if they rush to make a bunch of paid transfers to try to fix the holes, the rest of us will start with a forest of 'green arrows' indicating a rank rise at their expense - a nice psychological lift for those of us who only have Salah, even if the rest of the Gameweek takes a nosedive from there....

This, by the way, is the main reason why I always advise that people should resist doubling up on too many teams, and try to avoid trebling up on any...  It leaves you way too vulnerable to the occasional 'Act of God' disaster like this (or... just the whole team having a bad day at the office one week!).

Perhaps even more exhilarating, though, is the realisation that this means Mo Salah is going to get an additional Double Gameweek in a few months' time, to catch up this missed fixture. [Only two regular Double Gameweeks are expected this season, both relatively 'small', and right at the back end of the season. And, of course, we don't yet know which teams will be involved: it is quite possible that Super-Mo may not be playing in either of them.... and perhaps not any other of our most fancied Triple Captain picks either.]

Better yet, it looks as if the likeliest gaps in the fixture schedule are in Gameweeks 28 or 33 - when Liverpool are already due to face Southampton and Leicester. The prospect of Mo Salah facing TWO of the weakest teams in the League in quick succession is mouthwatering indeed; it looks very much like a prime opportunity to exploit the Triple Captain chip. [I haven't really looked into this myself yet, but I see the online prognosticators are now identifying GW25 in mid-February as perhaps the most likely - or most desirable, anyway, because earliest - opportunity to make up this fixture. That's possibly even better for a Salah double-fixture, as Liverpool are already facing Wolves at Anfield that week (with Wolves nearing the end of a long run of 'unwinnable' games, and likely to have morale at the bottom of the ocean).]

Of course, we must rein in our excitement. Those Gameweeks are both far off in March. Salah might have lost form or got injured by then (or perhaps even departed for Saudi in the winter transfer window.... heaven forbid!). And who knows, perhaps Leicester or Southampton might have got much better by then. (Well, Leicester might have...)

Still, it is something to look forward to, a little bright spark of HOPE to warm us on a dark, blustery winter's day.  At the very least, it allows us to enjoy a smug giggle back at all the people who giggled smugly at us when they got a decent haul from playing their Triple Captain on Haaland or Salah or Palmer early in the season.

Dilemmas of the Week - GW15

 

Once again in this hectic December, the main uncertainties are likely to surround 'rest rotations' - and the sudden realisation of 'totting up' suspensions -  rather than injuries. And with such negligible turnaround between Gameweeks 14 and 15, I fear we're unlikely to get much, if any, definitive news on the weekend's likely lineups until very close to the deadline on Saturday.

However, I'll do my best to sum up what we know so far (still only mid-morning on Friday, UK time).

So, what are the conundrums we face ahead of Gameweek 15?

Does anybody need to be moved out because of injury?

Gabriel missed the midweek game against Manchester United with his ongoing knee niggle, but the Arsenal rumour-mill seems optimistic that he'll manage to be OK again for Sunday's visit to Fulham. Even if he doesn't, it doesn't yet seem worth having a punt on Kiwior!

Ben Davies and Marcos Senesi apparently both picked up serious muscle injuries in last night's game, and look likely to be out for weeks. Particularly bad news for Spurs, who now have Dragusin as their only mainline centre-back still available; I imagine this means that Porro will drop into central defence, and someone will have to improvise as a right-back. It may be a little less of a catastrophe for Bournemouth, as teen star Dean Huijsen, 'Man of the Match' last night, looks like he could deputise very capably for a few weeks.

Luke Shaw has reportedly suffered yet another muscle injury early this week in training, and is set to be unavailable again for a while.

And Nathan Ake had to go off against Forest at the weekend with what looked like a hamstring problem; hopefully, not too serious, but... it probably means that Gvardiol will continue to be worked into the ground while there is no decent cover for him on the left of the defence. Manuel Akanji, pulled at half time in that game, is also now a 'doubt' - although Pep hasn't deigned to say why (he might just have looked at the dugout 'in a funny way'....).

Kieran Trippier and Phil Foden were both surprise omissions from the midweek squads, supposedly with 'illness' - and are likely to be absent again this weekend (even if well again, they probably won't have trained much).

It now seems Alisson and Conor Bradley are likely to remain out until after Christmas; but Diogo Jota might be close to a comeback...  But there's still no timeline on Konate's recovery.

Thomas Frank thinks Christian Norgaard should be OK again to play against Newcastle. And a raft of Brighton players - Hinshelwood, Kadioglu, March, Veltman, Webster - are said to be 'close' to a return at last (although maybe not this weekend 'close').

Do we have any players who are dropped, or not looking likely to get the starts we hoped for?

Alexis Macallister is the only new player to reach five yellow cards and so be forced to miss this weekend.

Facundo Buonanotte and Reiss Nelson, as loanees, are ineligible to face their parent clubs, Brighton and Arsenal, this week.

I was on the brink of nominating Amad Diallo as one of my 'Picks of the Week', but then he got dropped in midweek. Ruben Roulette is very much a thing... at least for the time being. It's not clear if he's just trying to give everyone in his slightly bloated squad a fair shake, or if he just can't find any combination of players who really work with his preferred system. Either way, I wouldn't go near any United players with a bargepole... probably until after the 'winter break', by which time the new coach might have settled on a preferred lineup.

Robert Sanchez's omission on Wednesday was ostensibly just another rest, and give-back-up-squad-members-some-minutes decision by Maresca; but Sanchez has been increasingly called out by the punditry in recent weeks as a conspicuously weak link in the Chelsea set-up... and Filip Jorgensen did put in a very good performance deputising for him. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Sanchez 'rested' some more, if not dropped completely over the next month.  And if Jorgensen isn't considered an adequate replacement, I should think it's a near-certainty that they'll try to bring in a new keeper in January (or recall Kepa from loan, perhaps?) - so, if you have Sanchez (he is currently the third most selected keeper, with an ownership of around 13%), it could be time to consider dropping him.

Did anyone give other cause to consider dropping them?

We can usually forgive a goalkeeper one off game (maybe even two or three), but Bart Verbruggen will have sorely tested his manager's patience with his dreadful performance against Fulham last night; and Jason Steele is a very capable back-up option.

Did anyone play so well, you have to consider bringing them in immediately?

Night-time games often throw people off their stride a bit; and there were so many changes from normal optimal team lineups in this Gameweek that I don't think any of the results or performances are to be relied on much as a guide to form going forward, for either teams or individuals. 

Alex Iwobi obviously caught the eye with his double strike against Brighton. But we've always known how good he can be; he just hasn't been showing it very often for Fulham so far this season - and this one good game wasn't enough to suggest that that is going to drastically change now.

Mateta and Eze seem to be nearly back to their best... but Palace don't have fixtures to get excited about over the next month or so, and are likely to remain deep in the relegation zone until well into next year.  

I'm more excited about Bournemouth's young defender Dean Huijsen, as a short- to medium-term budget pick.  He looks to have a maturity beyond his years (pretty much kept Dom Solanke in his pocket all game) - and may be about to get an extended run in the side, with an apparently quite serious injury to regular centre-back Senesi last night.

BEST OF LUCK, EVERYONE!

A little bit of Zen (19)

 

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."

Haruki Murakami

Luck-o-Meter (14)

Ipswich were strangely flat, in what was really looking like a 'must-win' home game for them (well, they're already at the point where all of their games against other bottom-half teams are must-win); but they did have a few close-calls, including one effort bundled against the post in the closing seconds. Palace seem to be finally getting their game together in defence, and are starting to produce an attacking threat again with Eze and Mateta returning to something like their best form. In a tight and unspectacular game, a draw would probably have been a fairer result, but - at least as far as we could see on brief highlights - there were no officiating injustices in this one.

Vardy's opening goal against West Ham suffered a bizarrely poor initial call by the linesman: the Leicester striker had checked back onside and the retreating defender had stretched his rear leg way out, meaning that when Vardy began his run again as the ball was played through, he was well onside - easy to see with the naked eye; at least VAR put that one right. After that, it was one-way traffic for a while the other way, with Hermansen registering a remakable 7 saves across the game (although Fabianski's tip-over of Ndidi's powerful header was probably the best save of the game) and Coady blocking one effort on the line.... But the Ipswich keeper got very lucky when Soucek's close-range header was ruled out for the mildest of 'backing in' on him. West Ham seem to feel generally aggrieved that they came away with nothing from a game where they generated a huge number of attempts on goal; but the bottom line is, their finishing was terrible. And their defending was terrible too; on the highlights, anyway, this really didn't feel like a game they dominated or controlled, even if they did have the great majority of possession - because Leicester kept looking likely to mount a breakaway, and looked likely to pick up a goal every time they did.

While Arsenal were glad to see Partey make a quick return from injury, they were without Gabriel and Calafiori, having to rely on Kiwior and Zinchenko instead; but it didn't seem to do them too much harm. But in a tight game, it was their threat from corners that proved decisive - with two goals from defenders: one from never-scored-before Timber (yes, he was one of my recommendations last week; but I'll never try to take credit for a defender scoring a goal - you buy them for their clean sheets and assists potential) and one off Saliba's bum (still, they all count...). Anyone who's backed Manchester United players in hopes of an immediate 'Amorim Bounce' is left ruing not so much the lacklustre overall performance as the extreme number of rotations; I can see wanting to ration minutes in this super-busy phase of the season, and wanting to give everyone a try-out, but making so many changes for such an important game - and leaving the two players who were most impressive at the weekend, Diallo and Zirkzee, out of the starting lineup - seemed a tad self-destructive. Onana, in particular, seems a bit discombulated by the constant switches in his back-three, and was not at all his usual commanding self at set-pieces. So, some selection surprises and two unusual goalscorers here, but - thank heavens - no refereeing controversies.

Are Villa back? Well, maybe. The midfield looked a lot more solid with Kamara returned to hold things together, and Rogers pushing forward into much more advanced positions than usual (if he could maintain a strike-rate of a goal in every 4 or 5 games, he might yet prove me 'wrong' about him - though, note, I always said I thought he might be capable of producing a decent FPL tally, I just didn't feel he was showing much likelihood of it so far this season; and I still don't feel he's the most promising of the sub-6-million midfield picks). It was a weak-ish penalty from Watkins, and Flekken, after getting a good hand on it, really should have kept it out. It was also a rather soft call in the first place; and, even more troublingly, VAR only seemed to show one view of the incident; from behind the goal-line, looking towards the advancing players - so just you couldn't see Pinnock's alleged contact on Watkins's trailing heel. VAR should not be participating in any decisions of this nature if they haven't got a definitive TV view available to them; and, in this case, it appeared that they did not.

In the big relegation match-up at Goodison, Everton - perhaps slightly surprisingly? probably not, really - came out comfortably on top. Apart from one decent effort from Cunha early on, well saved by Pickford, Wolves were rarely in the game. And they gifted Everton a dream start by misaligning their defensive wall to allow Ashley Young a soft opener direct from a free-kick. Mykolenko notched his first assist of the season; Mangala, with a screamer from the edge of the box, was also a most unexpected goalscorer (in only his sixth start of the season); and poor Craig Dawson managed to put in 2 own-goals (when was the last time that happened?). Everton could easily have won even more emphatically - with Tarkowski's headed goal beng ruled out for an alleged 'subjective offside' by a teammate (these decisions almost always seem contentious at best, downright unjust at worst; but here it was merely baffling, as the VAR replays shown on the Beeb did not feature any Everton players anywhere near an offside position, so there did not appear to be any 'subjective' issue to resolve!), and later the referee again (as at Ipswich) over-protecting the keeper in denying an effort by Ndiaye after Sa play-acted that he'd been flattened by a mundane 50-50 contact with Calvert-Lewin (I'd like to see goalkeepers starting to get booked for 'simulation' once in a while; I really saw nothing in this at all). This unexpectedly robust home performance has probably saved Sean Dyche's job for at least another week or two; while the - frankly, expectedly - dismal showing from Wolves has probably sealed Gary O'Neill's fate. Although Julen Lopategui and Russell Martin must surely also be strong contenders for a sacking before Christmas.

Are City back?? Well, certainly well on the way - with Dias, Doku, and Grealish all playing a full part again, and, most of all, the great Kevin DeBruyne (although apparently he's still struggling a little bit with a hernia?), this was something like the City of old; 3 stunning goals.... and a couple of near-misses from Gvardiol. However, they needed a superb stop by Ortega from Gibbs-White and the very rare phenomenon of Chris Wood failing to convert a one-on-one to keep them on track, and secure a clean sheet that didn't feel quite deserved..

Newcastle v Liverpool was an old-school thriller! Liverpool's defence inevitably looks much less invulnerable with Quansah and Gomez (who always looks to me like an accident-waiting-to-happen, especially when he's in the central areas; and last night, those 'accidents' happened at least twice!). And here, even Van Dijk was somewhat below his usual imperious best, and the so far immaculate Kelleher made a bizarre error of judgement to allow Newcastle a late equaliser. Liverpool also needed an awful lot of help from the officials, with Van Dijk clearly deserving a sending-off for barging Gordon in the face (a wanton piece of off-the-ball thuggery, most untypical for him; the sheer gratuitousness of it, and the fact that when such a big man puts most of his considerable weight behind a shoulder into the cheekbone, it can do a lot of damage - well, for me, that certainly makes it a straight-red incident, and deserving of an extended ban too); Isak had a pretty clear penalty turned down when Quansah tripped him on the edge of the box; and then, as a final insult, referee Andy Madley blew the whistle for the end of the game when Newcastle had Liverpool outnumbered on a quick counter-attack; it has long been a convention - if not perhaps clearly formulated in the rules - that you don't time the game to the second when a team clearly has a goal-scoring chance imminent, but let it continue a short while to allow the current move to play out. Whatever's happened to that??  Gosh, there were loads of near-misses in this one too, with Macallister, Gordon, and Salah all smashing the woodwork. This one game, alas, probably gets the old Luck-o-Meter well into the upper half of its scale....

Southampton predictablly got steamrollered by Chelsea, who were not noticeably weakened by their multiiple changes to the line-up - although some FPL managers will no doubt be much aggrieved by the 'rest' given to Jackson and Sanchez (I wonder if Jorgensen's promotion in goal might prove permanent; it is one I have been lobbying for since the start of the season, and Sanchez has increasingly looked like the weak link in the side over the past month or two); Palmer not having many chances (the only major one well saved by Lumley) was also a bit of a disappointment, but at least he got to bundle one home just before he was taken off with 12 minutes left. Southampton's Stephens suffered an inevitable red card for a minor tug on Curcurella's flamboyant hair (not nearly so egregious as Cristian Romero's assault on the same player's frizzy locks a couple of years ago, which bizarrely went unpunished!).

Brighton, I thought, looked a little unlucky to get beaten, and certainly to get beaten 3-1. They had some good chances, but somehow weren't quite as clinical in the final third as they usually are, and Leno produced a few smart saves when he needed to; while Iwobi, who hasn't done an awful lot so far this season, suddenly came up with a couple of firecrackers (and was probably angling to try and claim the middle one, where his mere presence in the six-yard box so discombobulated the opposition at a corner-kick that two of the defenders contrived to deflect the ball into their own net - a goal so freakish that, on its own, it counts as quite a high incidence of 'luck'!!), At the other end, by contrast, Verbruggen had an absolute stinker, giving away the lead with a diabolical pass straight to Iwobi at the edge of the box, then failing to do anything to try to part the ruck of players in front of him at the near post when Fulham went ahead again with the multiple ricochet corner (I really feel that a goalkeeper has to at least make a show of trying to come to claim those, making players afraid to stand in his path - even if that means laying out one or two of his own players with a well-aimed elbow!), and for the third, Iwobi's neat little curler, yes, he was a bit unsighted on it - but he was nevertheless, surely, just a little bit too far over towards his near post and just a little bit slow to react. (I had a feeling I was probably going to jinx the poor devil when I made him a supplementary 'Pick of the Week' last week....)

Spurs also seemed a bit unfortunate not to get something in the game, although Bournemouth did have more and better attacks, and only another solid performance from Forster between the sticks kept down the margin of defeat. [Again, the micro-highlights available on Youtube did not reveal any questionable refereeing in these two matches, and I haven't yet seen anything in early match reports. But I bet there was something....]

So, there were quite a few cracking goals, and cracking saves this week; and a fair few less expected goalscorers - Khannouss, Fullkrug, Young, Mangala, Disasi, Aribo, Madueke, Sancho, Timber, Saliba, Cash, Iwobi, Baleba, Huijsen (!!),,,, yep, way more than usual! The 'Team of the Week' finds itself lined up in the preposterous 4-5-1 formation - with Watkins as centre-forward! - and probably only Salah and Saliba (and maybe Watkins...?) are the only members with ownership above a few percent; heck above 1 percent! And good heavens, even points-anti-magnet Dom Calvert-Lewin somehow managed to get himself credited for an assist this week! These random goal heroes exacerbated the effects of all the unpredictable rest rotations, leaving many FPL managers struggling to put out a full eleven, even if they had a decent bench to call upon. And I have found it conspicuous how many of the leading teams for the week that I've looked at are.... actually really bad. for any other week. That's how it goes sometimes; it can be really galling, but we must learn to let it go.

So, the randomness of the play - and the team selections! - in this Gameweek would get it well above half-way on the 'Luck' scale already; but then the large number of dodgy decisions (a few goals disallowed for very tight offsides - even if they were 'correct' decisions, we don't like to see goals denied for such small margins, and such almost-too-close-to-call incidents are in themselves significant instances of 'luck'; another - Tarkowski's header against Wolves - chalked off for a non-existent 'offside' by somebody else; and two more disallowed for illusory 'fouls' on the goalkeeper; only two penalties, as far as I can recalll, but both - one given, one not given - probably wrong; and then that string of poor calls in the Newcastle v Liverpool match, most unquestionable and damaging of which was the failure to send off Virgil Van Dijk for a clear assault on Anthony Gordon.... just because of his godlike 'aura'??) boosts it to an 8 out of 10 on the Luck-o-Meter, I'm afraid. And even that's probably a slightly conservative rating.

[Yes, this post has ended up being a good bit longer than most in the series. I fear I have unconscioiusly blended it with my former series of mini-analyses of all the individual matches, which I decided last week I'd have to discontinue because I was finding it too time-consuming. I don't know if it might be feasible to continue to combine the former two strands of the blog like this here in 'Luck-o-Meter'... Probably not. But for this week, at least, it seemed appropriate to go into a little more detail about the individual games because unexpected rotations, returns from injury, shifts in form, and surprisingly good or bad performances from individuals did seem to be the major factors both in team performance and result.... and how lucky I felt the results were. This probably won't always be the case.]