American Scouser FPL CUP 2020: Matchweek 1
We go again!
It is fair to say that if you do not have the Egyptian King, Mohammed Salah, in your starting 11 in fantasy this week, you may want to shift heaven and earth to make that happen. However, with some difficult games ahead for the Reds, starting Salah may not be a pressing issue, in spite of his 20-point haul from Matchweek 1.
If you captained the hat trick hero – even better, but as you can see from the graphic above… 21,256 oracles saw fit to risk their once-a-season triple captain bonus at the first opportunity. This ended up earning them a whopping 60 points through Salah. Most Fantasy Premier League Veterans will be patient with the triple captain and await the congestion of fixtures until a double gameweek points scenario, but not these mavericks!
Other top performers from Saturday’s games include Willian (two assists) and Aubameyang (goal) in Arsenal’s 3-0 win.
The headliners from Sunday’s games are essentially Jamie Vardy having a double-penalty party. Spurs fell at the first hurdle to Everton, with no major point-scorers in that match.
Mondays games saw Jorginho get on the score sheet with his own penalty, and Wolverhampton defeated Sheffield United on the road, with excellent performances from Wolves Saiss (goal, clean sheet), Jimenez (goal), and Scouser Conor Coady (clean sheet).
In each game certain players are assigned bonus points, as you can see from the graphic above. The system used to determine these bonus points system is rather complex, essentially taking into account over 30 groups of statistics, ranging from minutes played to pass completion percentages and even offsides committed.
The image above is a joke tweet from popular UK quiz show genius, Richard Osman. Osman is best known for being the creator and co-presenter of the BBC One television quiz show Pointless – accordingly, he posted a lineup that would have resulted in a pointless week for the owner who chose these players. (Note: the exclamation points in the lineup above do NOT mean they are “dangerous players,” as was incorrectly suggested online… in fact it means they likely will not feature due to injury!)
While there is no lesson to be learned from this lineup, it gave me a cheap giggle and should serve as a reminder to watch out for those injuries and non-starters!
The graphic above shows the highest possible scoring team in for this week in the FPL. Of course, triple-captaining Salah will have done most of the work here, but as you can see with a massive score of 142, the rest of the team also put up their fair share of points.
Even though it could not be earlier in the season, here is how things are shaping up in our own league table:
With the first matchweek done and dusted, we have our leader board… The Top 10 in the American Scouser Fantasy Premier League. Congratulations to everyone on a very competitive performance!
Well, we made it through the first week. Only 37 left!