Season 4 Weekly Update 24 - League B

Hello everyone and welcome to gameweek 24! Another normal week with waivers due at 5:30am PST / 8:30am EST! Some great matchups this week, headlined by Mack's brutal defeat to ZachA 45-54. Elsewhere, Chris took a similar devastating win against John 52-43, Alex defeated Emma by a narrow score of 26-22, and Travis picked up all 3 points against Cara 45-33. Full results are as follows:

  • Divya 14-44 Matthew
  • Morgs 39-22 Andrew
  • Travis 45-33 Cara
  • Emma 22-26 Alex
  • ZachA 54-45 Mack
  • Chris 52-43 John

League Table

Weekly Matchups


Taking a look over at the table, once again nobody has moved. However, John's lead in 1st over me is cut to just 1 point, with Chris, Alex, and ZachA all picking up wins and extending the gap of the top 5 to 6 points over Emma. She remains just 1 point ahead of Mack, who is now joined by Morgs on 33 points. Further down, Travis's win sees his gap with Divya go down to just a single point as well!

Game Changers!

  • Matthew: Evanilson - 8 pts - Crazy game between Bournemouth and Liverpool as the Cherries found themselves winning all 3 points 3-2, including one scored by Evanilson. That makes it 3 goals in 4 games for the Brazilian.
  • Morgs: Enzo Fernandez - 8 pts - Enzo filled in the Cole Palmer role nicely as he played the number 10 and scored a penalty. Kinda what he's been doing all season, other than scoring 0.8 xG chances.
  • Travis: Estevao - 13 pts - A huge week for the young Brazilian as he got a goal and assist (and was subbed off before the clean sheet wipe) against Crystal Palace. Surely he's got the most g+a per minute in the league?
  • Alex: Jarrow Bowen - 12 pts - A binary week for 8 of Alex's players, but not Jarrod as he found himself in the hexadecimal world with a 12 pointer (or is that 18?).
  • ZachA: Joao Pedro - 12 pts - See last week's update for my prediction that this would happen. It does mean that he will blank next week. Sorry to Zach and Kevin.
  • Chris: Harry Wilson - 10 pts - The Wilson name lives on. Wait - Callum is still around? Anyway Harry continues doing what Harry does and scores yet another huge goal, this time against Brighton.

With just 1 week left in January, Alex takes the top spot on the manager of the month table with 12 points! He is ahead of me, Chris, ZachA, and John, who will all be routing against him this week!

Manager of the Month


And, of course, Alex also sits atop the form table with 15/15 points earned! Chris and John are just behind with an impressive 12/15 points in the past 5 weeks!

Form Table


This week will see some great matchups, headlined by a top 3 matchup between me and Chris! Elsewhere, John takes on ZachA in what should be a fun one, Mack faces off against Emma, and Andrew and Divya go up against each other in a Gribbins derby! Full matchups are as follows:

  • Matthew (2) vs Chris (3) (all-time: 1-0-1, 78-71)
  • John (1) vs ZachA (5) (all-time: 1-0-1, 71-72)
  • Mack (7) vs Emma (6) (all-time: 1-0-1, 78-69)
  • Alex (4) vs Travis (12) (all-time: 2-0-0, 91-69)
  • Cara (9) vs Morgs (8) (all-time: 2-0-0, 70-46)
  • Andrew (10) vs Divya (11) (all-time: 0-0-2, 49-66)

Also let me know if you like the all time records added here and if you think there is a better way for me to display this!

Shoutouts this week to Alex for 5 wins in a row! Also to ZachA for 3 in a row and to Travis for picking up back to back wins!

Stats

Copium Tables

Performance Table

Luck Table

xP Table (manager vs average)

All Manager Table

Statistical Breakdowns

Gameweek Breakdown

Manager Breakdown

Timelines

Position Timeline

Points Timeline

Points For Timeline

The League

Welcome to gameweek 5 of the knockout rounds of The League (tm)! So, something rather interesting happened this week, as we have encountered some untrodden ground in Game of Stones history- our first 2-legged draw! Since Andrew defeated Zach in the first leg 34-21, and Zach defeated Andrew in the second leg 35-22, we are all square at 56. And that means (drumroll please) a penalty shootout!

How this will work is that I have asked both managers for a list of 5 players to be their penalty takers. Those 5 will be their players for the matchup this week, with the higher scoring set of 5 being the team that moves on!

And, in the case of a tie, I have asked each manager for a numbered list of their remaining players, so that each player on that list will be scored directly against his counterpart (e.g. #1 vs #1, #2 vs #2), until we have a winner! And if somehow they continue to be all even, I'll just take a vote on who the league wants to move on.

So, without further ado, here are the squads:

Zach:

  • Morgan Rogers
  • Bukayo Saka
  • Enzo Le Fee
  • Hugo Ekitike
  • Matheus Nunes
  1. Trossard
  2. Guehi
  3. Henderson
  4. Sesko
  5. Burn
  6. Jesus
  7. Reinildo
  8. Fofana
  9. Darlow
  10. Tavernier

Andrew:

  • Erling Haaland
  • Morgan Gibbs-White
  • Matheus Cunha
  • Noni Madueke
  • Nick Pope
  1. Timber
  2. Branthwaite
  3. Martinez
  4. Doku
  5. Havertz
  6. Ortega
  7. Martinelli
  8. Muniz
  9. Kiwior
  10. Frimpong

Good luck in our first ever penalty shootout!

And since we had matchups that didn't tie, I guess we should cover those. Unfortunately, the winner of the first leg won the second in all of these, meaning Darryan took a 67-55 win against Jesse to make it to the semi final, where my League B team awaits, having defeated my League A team 75-66. The winner of the penalty shootout will face Dylan, who defeated Alex 97-63. Full results are as follows:

  • Jesse 28-31 Darryan (55-67 agg)
  • Matthew 38-44 Matthew2 (66-75 agg)
  • Zach 35-22 Andrew (56-56 agg)
  • Dylan 48-26 Alex (97-63 agg)

Knockout Stage


Power Rankings

On the bubble (in no order): Matt, Coop, Alex, ZachA Fell off: Alex

10 - Dylan (NEW) - League A - Last 5: 49 (W), 44 (W), 29 (L), 49 (W), 48 (L) - 4 40 point weeks in the last five push Dylan on the list despite the interesting bench decisions this week leading to a 1 point loss to MatthewR. That said, a goal and assist from Richards and Mukiele (and another set from Szoboszlai) all contributed to the near 50 pointer. That is on top of Brobbey scoring his 3rd goal in 4 games and Barry scoring his 4th goal in the last 5 games. Will they continue their runs of form? Is Barry any good? Will Minteh ever start a game again? Will Dylan un-bench Mohamed Salah? All questions we may never know the answers to.

9 - John (+1) - League B - Last 5: 46 (W), 31 (W), 42 (W), 32 (W), 43 (L) - I'm not saying it wasn't a blunder to waiver out Szoboszlai, but I'm also not not saying that. I guess he did get a return from the guy he picked up (yet is still at -5 since Szo scored 13 this week), so that's a positive? Anyway, solid scores from Emi Martinez finally getting a clean sheet, Stach with a solid performance, and Bruno Fernandes doing as Bruno Fernandes does (3rd assist in a row). Also, the rare off week where Gabriel didn't do anything. And even more surprisingly the goat Dominic Calvert-Lewin.

8 - Kevin (-2) - League A - Last 5: 27 (L), 45 (W), 39 (L), 36 (L), 27 (L) - Another rough week for Kevin as he experiences a lot of 1s and 2s across the board. Hope is not completely lost though, with Gibbs-White having a pretty solid past few weeks, Joao Pedro doing as expected and scoring in back to back games, and KDH getting some minutes finally. That said, Keane looks unlikely to be starting as long as Branthwaite is healthy, Kerkez was subbed early for Robertson, and Thiaw seems to be oscillating between hauling and doing nothing.

7 - Zach (-2) - League A - Last 5: 46 (W), 28 (L), 40(L), 21 (L), 35 (W) - He stopped the slide, but it's looking a bit dicey for Zach's team as 17 points of his 35 came from Manchester City defenders this week. Granted, Nunes may be the new Trent, but Sunderland has looked a little rough the past few weeks (and have a difficult stretch ahead of them), Saka and Trossard have been fairly absent, Crystal Palace has been collapsing defensively, and can anyone tell me if Sesko and Ekitike are starters or not? He does have Morgan Rogers though, who now has 12 goal contributions on 6.8 expected. Interesting.

6 - Mack (+2) - League B - Last 5: 51 (W), 41 (W), 53 (W), 28 (L), 45 (L) - Yeah that's the 3rd 40+ point score this week on this list to lose, and it has been a rough one for Mack in that regard, having had a recent 52 point loss as well. Her team is solid though, Andersen having his defcon 14 times this season, Guehi surely being the defensive plug that Manchester City needs, and Semenyo scoring the goals that Haaland can't. Although the letdown from Garner getting only 7 defensive contributions after a run of 15/19/16/16/29 must be quite huge. I guess Leeds are just possession merchants? Anyway, the only question mark is that FWD position, where the question remains - will Strand Larsen go to Wolves and be worth anything?

5 - Chris (+2) - League B - Last 5: 42 (W), 63 (W), 36 (W), 35 (L), 52 (W) - Another solid week from Chris as he gets back to winning ways with a big one over John off the back of the goat Harry Wilson. Oh and all 3 of his strikers scored: Watkins, Barry, and Micky Van de Ven. Plus, Tarkowski should get the huge boost from having Branthwaite back in the starting lineup. The worry here is how many yellows I opened up his team to: Saliba, Van de Ven, Watkins, and Xhaka are all flagged, with at least 3 of those names being ones I'm pretty sure aren't starting this weekend. Get well soon Chris's team o7

4 - Matthew (-) - League A - Last 5: 41 (W), 30 (L), 40 (W), 28 (W), 38 (W) - Perhaps someone looked down upon me and blessed my team with some luck, because I won yet another match by 2 points this week. Even after the FPL sniper on the grassy knoll decided to take out Tielemans' defcon (and his ankle) in a recalculation on Monday. Honestly, it does kinda feel like my team is hanging on by a thread at times. Khusanov is a child wearing a starting center back for Manchester City mask, Gakpo could be benched any day yet continues to get me 2 pointers because he's the teacher's favorite, Barnes and Foden basically don't exist, Mateta is Mateta, and the only two guys I can rely on these days is Semenyo and Murillo. Which doesn't really feel like a title winning combination. Whatever I'll celebrate my Branthwaite pickup and Munoz being back from injury and lose to Luke next week.

3 - MatthewR (-) - League A - Last 5: 50 (W), 51 (W), 30 (L), 37 (W), 49 (W) - It seems like maybe MatthewR has escaped his woes of inconsistency as he - wait, it looks like he's coming up on a 20-30 week sometime soon - but for now he's back in the title race, led by now injured Van de Ven and now injured Ollie Watkins. Good thing he has Havertz to potentially start? Anyway, he does have some solid guys, including 2 point merchants in Schade, Gordon, and Mitoma, and 4 point merchants in Tarkowski, Lacroix, and Andersen. That's pretty good, you're at 18 points and that's without 5 of your guys playing. And those guys are… Enzo Fernandez, Martin Odegaard, and the injured players mentioned earlier. :sanchez2:

2 - Darryan (-1) - League A - Last 5: 42 (L), 43 (D), 58 (W), 36 (L), 31 (W) - You gotta imagine leaving Evanilson on the bench with an 8 pointer was intentional, right? At this point it must be to boost his numbers on Alex's spreadsheet, because that's the 16th instance of a player with 5+ points sitting the bench for him this season. But hey, a win's a win and if you don't need the PF who cares if it's on the bench. Anyway, Arsenal players are flagged (nothing new), and Haaland is finally getting some rest, so I'm sure we'll see a hat trick any day now. Good luck to the unfortunate soul that goes against rested Erling.

1 - Matthew2 (+1) - League B - Last 5: 22 (L), 61 (W), 60 (W), 31 (L), 44 (W) - I think it's fair to move myself back up to the top spot here, what with my not benching Evanilson and Salah, along with Murillo, Anderson, and Rogers all being the defcon beasts they are on my team to be. Plus, Munoz is back, Bournemouth's fixtures turn green, and I might just have a Wolves player to play in the double gameweek. Isn't that something.

Good luck all!