Fantasy Premier League: Gameweek 11 Review

Written by @NiallHawthorne

• Captain Cook – Discovered Australia and a place for the ne’er do wells of Britain and Ireland to holiday.
• Alastair Cook – Good at English Hurling
• Norman Cook – Had a Ball while spinning the decks
• Steve Cook – A goal, a clean sheet, three bonus points and a 15 point haul.

I know which of the four Cooks above is the most impressive – the one that broke Geordie hearts and put multiple police horses in severe danger of a pummeling. His GW 11 return must have been a real boon to the 0.5% of players who selected him. These people are wise beyond their years. I mean, it’s not a shock that Steve Cook put in this kind of performance. He has 6 goals and 2 assists from his previous two Premier League seasons with Bournemouth. One to watch in the future perhaps? Maybe, but I don’t do previews, so I’ll keep my powder dry on that one…

The next hero of GW 11 is a man from Egypt, where they have just discovered a large void inside the Great Pyramid. There are many speculating as to what may be found but I’m here to tell you that it’s not that exciting. It’s simply a sign taller than the Statue of Liberty that says ‘Captain Salah’. My God, the Egyptians were YEARS ahead of their time. Mo Salah’s outrageous streak of good form continued at the London Stadium on Saturday night and promptly got Slaven Bilic the sack. Two goals, three bonus points and a Premier League haul of 7 goals, 3 assists in 11 games is the kind of form that would make Cleopatra blush.

Next up we have a man small of stature but big of heart, a man who some old football types may describe as a ‘fancy-dan’, but one that can do it on a cold wet night in Stoke. A man who has spent two full seasons re-learning how to cross a ball so that he can get it high enough to hit Peter Crouch on the head. A man who racked up 13 points with a goal, assist and three Bonus Points. A man called Xherdan Shaqiri. I sometimes look back on history and marvel at how people in times of huge historical significance didn’t seem to appreciate what they were living through at the time. Well look around you lads and lassies. Trump. Brexit. Shaqiri at Stoke. Three things that make absolutely no sense. It’s happening, and it’s happening right now. Remarkable.

Next up we have three defenders all breaking the double-digit barrier, some less surprising than others. It’s now clear that Cesar Azpilicueta and Alvaro Morata have a ‘special bond’. No that’s not a euphemism for anything romantic (although they would make a very cute couple), it’s more the fact that it’s a wonderfully rare example when two players just click and one can’t stop setting up the other for goals, goals and more goals. The last time Morata scored a goal that wasn’t assisted by Azpilicueta, he had yet to reach puberty.

Leighton Baines has been a stalwart of FPL for many a season (11 in fact), but to say he’s been having a quiet one would be like saying that Everton have questionable ownership – too damn right he’s been having a quiet one. However he exploded into life on Sunday afternoon with a dramatic late goal to add to an assist and two bonus points. You’d be a brave man to stick him in your squad though, although that hasn’t stopped over 1 in 20 FPL players from doing so….mental…

Finally we have the ‘bolter’ of the week, Mr. Scott Malone of Huddersfield, owned by a whopping 0.1% of FPL players. Now I’ve done some digging and I can confirm that these people are related to Scott Malone, except his mother who didn’t have him in her squad. Unbelievably he took his seasons tally from 3 points to 15 points with an assist, clean sheet and the full bonus points. Congratulations to all the Malone family on their green arrows this week (except for Mammy Malone who wheeled her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow crying ‘Red Arrows’, ‘Red Arrows, Oh no! Oh no!’).

Two players strayed into negative points territory this week to lead our ‘Villains Of The Week’, and we’ll start our list with Christopher Schindler…Everything was going to plan with a lovely juicy clean sheet in the offing against the Baggies, and then he went and spoiled it all by getting himself sent off. -2 points clutched from the jaws of +6 points. Ouch.

Mind you if you thought that was painful, you should have seen Winston Reid try to catch Mane and Salah as they broke for the first Liverpool goal on Saturday night. It was like watching Boris Johnson becoming self aware – painfully slow and it never actually happened. A further three goals conceded along with a yellow card and the Kiwi finishes with -1 point.

Our final villains of the week are two strikers who have 39% and 48% ownership (and it wouldn’t surprise me if a large % of those FPL players had both), namely Harry Kane and Romelu Lukaku. While Harry clearly had an off day, it was a bad day to have it. Literally MILLIONS backed him to run riot against Crystal Palace and MILLIONS had a bad Sunday because of it. However he’s bound to come good soon, unlike our old friend Lukaku who has been having a barren time of late. You know what that means, don’t you? It’s time. It’s coming. Nothing can stop it. No, not winter. It’s…

#LukakuWatchYIRMA!!!!!! (Coming soon to a Twitter feed near you…)

Written by Niall Hawthorne.

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Niall Hawthorne has a strange view on most things.

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His views are his own, because quite simply nobody else would have them!