Season 4 Weekly Update 29 - League B

Hello everyone and welcome to gameweek 29! We have midweek matches starting Tuesday so waivers were due this morning at 10am PST / 1pm EST! Some great matchups this week, led by John's narrow victory over Alex 41-39! Elsewhere, Mack pulled off the upset over me, 35-31, Cara upset Chris 60-43, Andrew picked up a big 3 points against ZachA 39-34, and Morgs had a real scrap against Travis in which she emerged with a 25-22 victory. Full results are as follows:

  • Matthew 31-35 Mack
  • Alex 39-41 John
  • Cara 60-43 Chris
  • Andrew 39-34 ZachA
  • Divya 18-37 Emma
  • Morgs 25-22 Travis

League Table

Weekly Matchups


And taking a look over at the league table, we see no movement whatsoever. But, we do see some gaps opening and closing, including John extending his lead in 1st to 4 whole points over me! Alex, ZachA, and Chris all stay exactly where they were, but the group below them grows closer, with Mack now just 1 point behind Chris! And as a reminder, Mack is 3 ahead of Morgs, who is 2 ahead of Emma, who is 8 ahead of Cara, who is 1 ahead of Andrew. Hope this helps.

Game Changers!

  • Mack: Antoine Semenyo - 8 pts - The knee slide extraordinaire takes from my B team and gives to my A team as Mack's star player scored his 14th goal of the season this week.
  • John: Bruno Fernandes - 13 pts - Not quite to Semenyo's level but the main man at United picked up his own 13th assist this season. Which is also a ridiculous amount, considering how rough the start of the season was for that team.
  • Cara: Hugo Ekitike - 15 pts - It seems that instead of getting goal contributions in each of the 3 weeks leading up to this week, he got them all this week. Good guy Hugo looking out for Cara.
  • Andrew: Morgan Gibbs-White - 9 pts - No Haaland and no problem for Andrew as the Nottingham Forest midfielder picked up his 7th goal of the season and somehow 2 bonus points as his team went on to lose to Brighton 2-1.
  • Emma: Alexis Mac Allister - 9 pts - The year of the scoring #8s continues as the Liverpool version picked up his second goal in just as many games in a game where honestly who didn't score. (the answer is Mo Salah)
  • Morgs: Alex Iwobi - 10 pts - WHAT A HIT SON. This man showing true Arsenal passion to put spurs to the sword. But we mustn’t forget Wilson who played a key role in setting up his goal

Congrats to John for winning February Manager of the Month! He also went undefeated with 12/12 points earned! This is his second manager of the month trophy!

Manager of the Month


And over on the form table, John also takes the top spot on PF over Mack with 12/15 points earned in the last 5 weeks! And then there's a whole bunch of people on 9/15.

Form Table


This week will see some great matchups, headlined by what should be an interesting one between Alex and Cara! Elsewhere, Chris looks to bounce back with a match against Morgs and Mack faces off against Andrew! Full matchups are as follows:

  • Emma (8) vs Matthew (2) (all-time: 1-0-1, 66-71)
  • ZachA (4) vs Travis (11) (all-time: 2-0-0, 86-70)
  • Chris (5) vs Morgs (7) (all-time: 2-0-0, 107-61)
  • John (1) vs Divya (12) (all-time: 2-0-0, 70-56)
  • Mack (6) vs Andrew (10) (all-time: 2-0-0, 101-55)
  • Alex (3) vs Cara (9) (all-time: 0-0-2, 60-67)

Shoutout this week to John for his 4 winstreak! And also to Mack for 3 wins in a row and Morgs 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

Hello and congratulations to the winner of The League (tm): Dylan! He has come from behind to defeat Matthew2 in the final by a total score of 80-74!

Knockout Stage


Champions Cup

And with The League (tm) coming to its end… welcome to the Champions Cup! Our final tournament of the season in which it has been decided (by the voters on Discord) to do a combined league tournament to close it out!

The Group Stage

To start will be a 5 week group stage in which 4 groups of 6 will battle it out to qualify for the knockout rounds! The top 4 from each group will move on, and the bottom 2 will be eliminated! These groups have been crafted with 3 managers from each league, pulled from 3 different pots (Pot 1: #1-#4, Pot 2: #5-#8, Pot 3: #9-#12). And have resulted in the following groups:

Group A:

  • Darryan
  • Luke
  • Matt
  • Alex
  • Emma
  • Andrew

Group B:

  • MatthewR
  • Jesse
  • Gavin
  • ZachA
  • Chris
  • Travis

Group C:

  • Zach
  • Kevin
  • Scott
  • Matthew2
  • Mack
  • Divya

Group D:

  • Matthew
  • Dylan
  • Coop
  • John
  • Morgs
  • Cara

The Knockout Rounds

The knockout rounds will consist of another 5 weeks: a single elimination bracket starting in the Round of 16 and culminating in a two-legged final in gameweeks 37 and 38! And, of course, how well you do in your group determines where in the bracket you end up, so every group stage match matters!

Oh, and in the case of knockout round ties, this is how we will handle it:

  • Number of goals scored by team - Number of saves made by opposition goalkeeper

For example, if Team A has 3 goals and Team B's goalkeeper has 2 saves, Team A will have a score of 1. You get the gist. And in further case of tie I'll have to brainstorm some more whacky ideas to try, which will probably look something like:

  • Total number of assists
  • Total sum of BPS
  • Most minutes played
  • Highest scoring player in the matchup

Anyway, just some ideas and feel free to let me know if y'all come up with anything else I should consider!

The Matchups

Okay and switching gears back to the actual cup matchups, here is who you all will be playing this week:

Group A:

  • Darryan vs Andrew
  • Luke vs Emma
  • Matt vs Alex

Group B:

  • MatthewR vs Travis
  • Jesse vs Chris
  • Gavin vs ZachA

Group C:

  • Zach vs Divya
  • Kevin vs Mack
  • Scott vs Matthew2

Group D:

  • Matthew vs Cara
  • Dylan vs Morgs
  • Coop vs John

And here's the matchups for the entire group stage!

Group Stage


Power Rankings

On the bubble (in no order): Jesse, Scott, Luke Fell off: None

Btw this is probably gonna be a quick one due to the turnaround between matches and the fact it is 11:50pm and I am just now starting this section…

10 - Matt (-) - League A - Last 5: 41 (W), 37 (L), 46 (L), 50 (L), 44 (L) - I mean you gotta give it to Matt and Dylan, they are putting up consistently solid scores and getting rewarded with loss after loss. Still, probably not someone you really want to go up against at this time, with points coming from players across the board. James picked up an assist this week, and O'Reilly (if not injured) and Donnarumma seem to be a solid Man City duo to have. On top of that Jacob Murphy returned for the first time in who knows how long, Cunha got an assist, and Bowen the defcon beast just hit the threshold 2 weeks in a row.

9 - Chris (-1) - League B - Last 5: 39 (L), 36 (L), 42 (L), 38 (W), 43 (L) - So this is just the section where people are scoring pretty well and finding ways to still lose. This time a 43 pointer just wasn't enough, despite Harry Wilson taking his g+a tally up to 17 (he actually is the goat). He also had Saliba's goal, Rice's assist, and Barry's 6 point ass-first goal sitting on the bench. Although it wouldn't have been enough anyway, since Cara put up 60.

8 - Dylan (+1) - League A - Last 5: 40 (L), 52 (L), 41 (W), 32 (W), 48 (L) - The symmetry of me removing a 48 (L) from the beginning of Dylan's 'Last 5' section and putting it at the end of the section was kinda beautiful. And I'm excited to do the same next week with a 40 (L). Although, his team is sorta starting to fall apart as 4 of his 9 vertical striped jerseys are now underlined with red. That is: Janelt, Mukiele, Brobbey, and Livramento for those who don't want to go check. But he still has: Richards, Van Hecke, Dango, Minteh, and Welbeck holding it down. So I think he'll probably be alright.

7 - Matthew (-1) - League A - Last 5: 34 (L), 40 (W), 70 (W), 38 (L), 27 (W) - You may be asking yourself: how is a split of 27/34/38/40/70 better than 32/40/41/48/52? Unfortunately the answer is that the first split can somehow win with the lowest score listed and sometimes luck is the best player you can put out there. And honestly watching the games this week made me want to fire my entire team into the sun (see Gakpo missing a tap in, Burnley scoring 3 goals against Brentford, and Aston Villa losing 2-0 against Wolves). Anyway, I write the list and y'all said vibes count as a viable method of ranking so I'm staying right here. In 7th.

6 - Kevin (+1) - League A - Last 5: 47 (W), 67 (W), 45 (L), 63 (W), 37 (D) - One of those results where I can't tell if Kevin or Luke is happier about drawing, or if they're both just sorta miserable. Either way, Kevin's been solid and obviously outscored me this week (and didn't lose) so I gave him 6th because why not. KDH, Caicedo, and Gravenberch have been ticking away, MGW is BACK, and Joao Pedro failed to return for the first time in 7 weeks. Anyway, it's too bad Keane didn't start because that was totally a game he'd score a screamer in.

5 - Mack (-1) - League B - Last 5: 41 (W), 30 (L), 52 (W), 46 (W), 35 (W) - Another huge win for Mack this week against Matthew2, which means she has now beaten Chris, Alex, and then myself in back to back to back weeks. And other than Guehi who got his clean sheet, all of her returns came from her midfield, as KDH and Garner represented Everton well with 6 points a piece, Semenyo scored his goal, and Casemiro continues to show us that you can commute from the Aegis Living to the soccer field and get 14 defensive contributions.

4 - John (-1) - League B - Last 5: 43 (L), 61 (W), 46 (W), 64 (W), 41 (W) - John's 2-game lead in League B is looking like more and more of an obstacle as he continues to just put up solid scores and dodge that dastardly 43 number. This time his points came from literally 3 players: Gabriel, O'Reilly, and Bruno Fernandes. Too bad there are rumors Nico could be injured.

3 - Zach (+2) - League A - Last 5: 40 (W), 41 (W), 54 (W), 52 (W), 54 (W) - Absurd consistency these past few weeks from Zach as he continues to knock on Darryan's door. He just need Ekitike to keep it up. And Sesko to keep it up (at least he proved he can score when starting). And Manchester City defenders to keep it up. And every time I look at his team I ask myself why I picked up Ajer instead of Van den Berg. Oh well. At least I don't leave a 7 pointer from Tavernier on my bench(I had 1 point on my bench this week :)).

2 - Darryan (-) - League A - Last 5: 61 (W), 51 (W), 24 (L), 46 (W), 43 (W) - Huge week for Haaland to be out considering Haaland got a Jurrien Timber 8 pointer off his bench to join his Saliba and Evanilson goals. It will be interesting to see how Darryan's team can handle the run in without Haaland. Or with him? Who knows with Pep how long he's actually out for.

1 - Matthew2 (-) - League B - Last 5: 49 (W), 45 (W), 39 (L), 43 (W), 31 (L) - Just a momentary blip here as I definitely wasn't rigging the promotion spots race by losing to Mack. Really just nobody did anything other than Evanilson and Thiago. And the most disappointing part of it was that Anderson didn't hit defcon for the first time in like 15 weeks. What's even the point anymore.

Good luck all!