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Hello everyone and welcome to gameweek 9! Waivers this week are due Thursday at 10:30am PDT / 1:30pm EDT! Highlights this week include Mack's narrow 40-38 victory over Cara, Morgs' solid 46-40 win against a fellow top 5 team in ZachA, Chris' high flying 22-18 win over Divya, and Alex getting deja vu with a 37-43 loss to me. Full results are as follows:

• Matthew 43-37 Alex
• Cara 38-40 Mack
• Andrew 28-59 John
• Divya 18-22 Chris
• Morgs 46-40 ZachA
• Travis 31-46 Emma

League Table

Weekly Matchups

This week sees my team surge ahead to a 6 point lead over my head-to-head win over Alex, who now sits joint 2nd with Chris. The duo is joined by Morgs on 15 points, just ahead on PF! They move ahead of ZachA, whose loss takes him to 2 points back of the top 4. Mack and John move behind him by 1 point, leapfrogging Cara (on PF) and Andrew. Emma also sees herself move up the table this week over Divya.

And onto the game changers!

• Matthew: Daniel Munoz - 10 pts - Assisted Mateta for his first goal and then decided to run it back a few minutes later. Also seems to have found his defcon legs?
• Mack: Nathan Collins - 9 pts - Saved at twilight by a huge Collins performance. Good thing West Ham is absolutely dire.
• John: Jean-Philippe Mateta - 17 pts - If this man could score to his xG he'd be in ballon d'or considerations.
• Chris: William Saliba - 6 pts - Arsenal defense is actually a cheat code. Gave up like 0 xG after scoring their goal.
• Morgs: Nordi Mukiele - 17 pts - Huge week to have double Sunderland defenders, geez. 27 points between Ballard and Mukiele.
• Emma: Reece James - 18 pts - If only this guy wasn't made of glass. But hey 3 assists in the last 4 weeks is solid.

After the second gameweek of October, John takes a narrow PF lead with 98! He is just ahead of Mack, myself, and Chris, who are the only remaining undefeated teams!

Manager of the Month

In terms of form, I sit on top of the table with 15/15 points earned in the last 5 weeks! Morgs is the lone manager with 12/15 points.

Form Table

This week will see some great matchups, headlined by a top-half Henderson derby between Mack and Morgs! Elsewhere, ZachA takes on my team, Emma looks to continue her solid form with a match against Chris, and Cara takes on Andrew in a midtable battle! Full matchups are as follows:

• ZachA (5) vs Matthew (1)
• Chris (3) vs Emma (10)
• John (7) vs Travis (12)
• Mack (6) vs Morgs (4)
• Alex (2) vs Divya (11)
• Cara (8) vs Andrew (9)

Shoutouts this week go to myself for 6 wins in a row, and to Chris, John, and Mack for all putting together back to back wins!

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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

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The League

Congratulations for completing The League (tm) Group Stage! The knockout bracket is now set, and to be started in Gameweek 20! But first, let's take a look at some of our matches this week! Highlights are led by, of course, the insane 58-59 matchup between Zach and John (in which the latter won). Elsewhere, Jesse picked up a narrow 30-28 win against Andrew to secure his undefeated group stage run, ZachA defeated Matt 40-37, Morgs fended off Gavin in a high scoring 46-39 match, and I picked up a 43-37 win against Alex. Full results are as follows:

• Matthew 43-37 Alex
• Luke 36-22 Chris
• MatthewR 23-40 Mack
• Gavin 39-46 Morgs
• Darryan 67-31 Travis
• Kevin 22-38 Cara
• Dylan 50-43 Matthew2
• Jesse 30-28 Andrew
• Matt 37-40 ZachA
• Coop 35-46 Emma
• Scott 35-18 Divya
• Zach 58-59 John

And as for the table, congratulations to Jesse for being the group stage champion! He put together an impressive 8-0-0 performance to pick up a maximum 24/24 points! He has qualified directly to the quarter finals, along with Zach, Dylan, and myself. This means that Chris and Kevin, who were both in the top 4 at the start of the week, have earned a single week playoff bye instead. They are joined by Luke and Darryan, who round out the top 8. Darryan actually knocks MatthewR out into 9th with his loss this week, so he will play in the first playoff round and is joined by John, ZachA, Mack, Alex, Andrew, Matthew2, and Matt.

Shoutout again to our bottom 8 competitors, it was a hard-fought group stage and we have more cups in store!

To look ahead to the bracket, a quick look at the knockout bracket starting on Gameweek 20 will be:

Quarter Finalist: Jesse

• MatthewR vs Matt (winner plays Darryan)

Quarter Finalist: Matthew

• John vs Matthew2 (winner plays Chris)

Quarter Finalist: Zach

• ZachA vs Andrew (winner plays Luke)

Quarter Finalist: Dylan

• Mack vs Alex (winner plays Kevin)

All of these matchups will be single legged, with two-legged ties starting in the quarter finals!

There is a real possibility that I play myself in the quarter finals…

The League - Group Stage Table

The League - Group Stage Matchups

The League - Knockout Rounds

Power Rankings

On the bubble (in no order): ZachA, MatthewR, John Fell off: ZachA, MatthewR

10 - Morgs (NEW) - League B - A big week for Morgs as she defeated ZachA in the head-to-head for this spot off the back of Sunderland's defense yet again coming up big. While her consistent points are mostly coming from Ndiaye/Iwobi and defcon, she has put herself within 8 points of the top PF on the form table, so I think it's reasonable to see this team doing well, especially with Isak's "season starting now" and Enzo coming back from injury.

9 - Zach (NEW) - League A - The other Mukiele owner, Zach put up another big week (making it 120 PF in his last 2) to force his way onto this list. Rogers and the Aston Villa attack have started clicking, Saka is back, and Guehi refuses to get less than 3 points.

8 - Alex (-) - League B - With his team slowly turning shades of yellow/orange/red, Alex may not be long for this list, but a solid PF showing this week from his backline kept him in contention. Though with 13 points from his Sunderland CS, he might need to find some solutions as Sunderland's fixtures turn for the worse.

7 - Dylan (+2) - League A - Seemingly the winner (so far) of the Welbeck trade, Dylan put up yet another solid performance off the back of double digit returns from Danny and Gabby. 25 points from 2 players won't happen every week though, so he'll be crossing his fingers Salah can remember who he is. The rest of his team is pulling in 3/4 pointers though which is solid.

6 - Jesse (-3) - League A - Another product of 'live and die by 1 team' sees Doku and Reijnders pulled at 58' with CL rotation, Isak and Strand-Larsen struggle in teams that are having trouble scoring, and Sarr and Kudus having an off week, despite Crystal Palace scoring 3 goals.

5 - Mack (+1) - League B - Semenyo is emerging as the Salah of this year and Woltemessi just picked up his 4th goal in 5 games to prove that maybe you can make the switch from the Bundesliga to the Prem seamlessly. On top of that, Gyokeres just scored 2 against Atletico Madrid so maybe it's his time to start scoring in the league?

4 - Luke (-) - League A - A rough week for Luke as his defcon-heavy backline produced 1 defcon and 1 own goal. Yeremy Pino looks… rough, yet if Gakpo could aim 1 inch closer to the middle of the goal he would've netted 4, so not super sure how to rate him. Anyway, Thiago looked good (albeit could have scored more), Woltemade had a nasty flick to score, and apparently Ndiaye was the only player defending for Everton against Manchester City.

3 - Matthew (+2) - League A - Mateta finally scored 3 to make it 5 goals this season on 7.8 xG and Munoz is looking like the 1st DEF pick I chose him as. However, the rest of my team is injured or doing nothing so we'll see how long this lasts.

2 - Matthew2 (-1) - League A - Genuinely not a bad week from this team (funnily enough scored the same amount of points as my League A team), with Munoz, Rogers, and Thiago all doing well. Evanilson however was injured suddenly and Salah is ghosting. I did pick up Ait-Nouri though so we'll see how his time is split with O'Rielly moving forward.

1 - Darryan (+1) - League A - Finally time for the Haaland team to take the top spot, and a lot of it is off the back of Arsenal's insane backline. With their 5th clean sheet of the year and barely a sniff of the goal for Fulham, I can't see why playing 3 Arsenal defenders would ever be the wrong move. On top of that Xhaka has been super solid, Onana is back from injury, and as soon as I trade Georginio he returns, so, uh, nice one.

Good luck all!