Written by Jack A. Goodwin -Follow him on Twitter @JackAGoodwin
It’s taken a year, but we did it.
Now that the longest 38 gameweek FPL season on record has been completed, we can now all breathe for a moment before we become instantly stressed about the rapidly incoming 2020-21 FPL season.
A long road we’ve all travelled together, little did we know back in August 2019 how the season (and our lives) would be affected by what was to come.
Here’s a mini-story into our 38 gameweek adventure, from the ups n’ downs, the good and bad, and a startling look at how things changed over the course of the season…
(Ed. It’s a slow month and Jacky Boy has written a dissertation as opposed to a blog post. Therefore we are splitting this into 4 parts and stringing it out for longer!
In all serious – massive thanks and kudos to Jack for his work and posts this season – Pleasure to host excellent content)
GW1: Friday August 9th 2019.
The season started very much how it ended, quite literally. Liverpool beat Norwich 4-1 on one of Sky Sports first Friday Night Premier League match. VVD, Origi & Salah on the scoresheet for Liverpool alongside a Hanley OG meanwhile the Pukki Party was just warming opening for business.
This result had Liverpool top, and Norwich rock bottom of the league – if we only knew back then.
Elsewhere that weekend City battered West Ham 5-0 (Sterling hattrick) and Man United beat Chelsea 4-0 in a score line which did not reflect the play at all. New boy Dan James on the scoresheet alongside a Rashford double and Martial goal.
Arsenal’s Ozil and Kolasinac were absent from the opener because of “further security incidents” days after they were involved in a carjacking attempt where Kolasinac instantly proved to be quite the hero.
In the UK the economy shrunk for the first time since 2012 – at that time Sajid Javid was not too worried & the National Grid had a bit of a shocker (excusing the pun) as they plunged airport, rail and businesses into total blackout for several days – further ****ing off the nation as a 3-day storm rippled across the UK.
Lastly, again quite the reverse of the same time this year – as the 9th was the busiest day for airlines across the world with more than 17 million passengers taking to the skies on over 115,500 flights within a single 24-hour period.
GW2: Saturday August 17th 2019.
The Pukki Party had started! Teemu was the POTW with his hattrick against Newcastle in 3-1 win. It was draws all round for the elite of the league with City and Spurs playing out a 2-2 draw, Chelsea & Leicester 1-1 and Wolves holding Man United to a 1-1 result as well.
Where Sterling and Salah shined the week prior, it was FPL frustration as KDB and Mane were now top for their teams – a headache for captain choices week in week out.
It was here, GW2, where the FPL world was introduced to FLP darling (at least pre-covid) Johnny Boy Lundstram. A 14pt haul in the 1-0 win over Palace saw the then £4M defender transferred in by over 1 million managers (who would then have to wait 3 further GW’s until his next haul, 12pts against Everton).
This was the weekend where the internet took hold of a story when Jeffrey Epstein’s death is officially ruled a suicide – something still disputed now nearly a year on.
In lighter news, the UK was hit with a scorching 30 degree heatwave, Wales became world number one in Rugby after beating England 13-6 and the Foo Fighters headlined at Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park.
GW3: Friday August 23rd 2019.
It was the August bank holiday weekend and FPL started again on a Friday with Villa v Everton (2-0). Over the weekend Chelsea overcame Norwich 3-2, Liverpool took down Arsenal 3-1 and City humbled Bournemouth 3-1. Meanwhile it was a sad weekend for Man United as they were beaten at home 2-1 by Palace and Spurs dropped 3 points in a 1-0 loss to Newcastle.
Salah topped the TOTW with 15pts, Aguero finally turned up with 13pts and it was 2 goals for Tammy Abraham which started his great run of form scoring 6 more in his next 5 games.
Nathan Redmond scored for Southampton, something he wouldn’t do again until GW19 against Chelsea.
A huge environmental problem was happening as the Amazon Rainforest was on fire, quite heavily, leading many to speculate about the end of the world as we knew it.
Of course, not everything was doom and gloom, with renowned Sexologist Shan Boodram revealing that she uses vaginal juice to attract men, apparently very successfully. Stephen Fry also revealed that he’d lost over 5 stone in 4 months. We’re told these stories are in no way related.
Ben Stokes kept the Ashes series alive this weekend with an astonishing 135 not out to level the series at 1-1 and NFL Quarterback for the Colts Andrew Luck announced his retirement at 29 years old.
GW4: Saturday August 31st 2019.
There’s an early theme already, with City (4-0 over Brighton) and Liverpool (3-0 win at Burnley) racing ahead in the title hunt. Chelsea, Man United, Arsenal & Spurs all drawing to leave the two decent clubs to race between themselves.
Quite the TOTW with Vardy (16pts), Aguero (16), De Bruyne (13) and Trent (11) showing their FPL might. Sure, Sheffield’s Callum Robinson was there with his only double-digit return before being loaned out to West Brom in January, but we can’t have everything can we.
Ole Gunner was already getting boos from the Old Trafford faithful in their 1-1 draw to Southampton not knowing the twisty-turny season journey to 3rd place they’ve got ahead of them. They were 7th in the league at this point, it was only going to get worse before better.
Interestingly, 4 weeks into the season Crystal Palace sat 4th in the league, Wolves hovered above relegation in 17th.
Across the globe Hurricane Dorian was heading right for Florida as it increased from a cat 3 to 4, and hilariously Twitter’s @Jack was hacked – one tweet literally just the N word in all caps. In Hollywood we saw the release of already-being-called-a-classic film The Joker, meanwhile topping the music charts in the UK was Ed Sheeran’s (obvs) Take Me Back To London.
Tragically the motorsport world mourned the loss of Anthoine Hubert who sadly passed during the Belgian Formula 1 weekend.
GW5: Saturday September 14th 2019.
United back to winning ways with the 1-0 victory to Leicester, Spurs and Chelsea had their scoring boots on with 4 & 5 goals respectively and Man City…Hold up a moment, the Pukki Party just derailed the Man City title charge with a 3-2 win!
Still very early on in the FPL season but Mane once again had his name etched into the TOTW alongside a trio of Spurs players fronted by Son who scored twice at Palace. Callum Wilson and Buendia scored their only double-digit returns of the entire season and there was a freak appearance by Southampton’s Moussa Djenepo. This was also the first hattrick for Tammy Abraham.
The atmosphere was building over in the US as the KSI vs Logan Paul press conference literally kicked-off meanwhile Liam Payne had his first solo gig in Madrid, Spain – kids grow up so fast now don’t they!
In world media it was reported that Osama Bin Laden’s son had been killed, Blenheim Palace shut down amid fears of a golden toilet seat going missing, Gareth Thomas revealed he has HIV & Snickers shocked the world by teasing the idea of changing their name back to Marathon – all in all an eventful week I think you’ll agree.
GW6: Friday September 20th 2019.
5 Man City players and 3 West Ham players in the TOTW, what happened here then?
The now infamous 8-0 thrashing of Watford by Pep & the Gang in which the first 5 goals came in the opening 18 minutes of play! For reference, because a lot has happened at Watford, the manager at the time was Quique Sanchez Flores. Pep’s right-hand man was Mikel Arteta, keep up you lot.
After this GW Wolves were in the relegation fight and weirdly at one point Bournemouth climbed up to 4th. Man United lost 2-0 to West Ham and Chelsea fell short 2-1 to Liverpool.
But of course, the FPL world only really cared about Man City this week, TOTW players included Bernardo Silva (19pts), KDB (17), Mahrez (15), Otamendi (15) & David Silva (11). Watford’s Kiko Femenía scored -3 after his yellow card and the bucket load of goals conceded.
Big, BIG day for nerds around the world as the Area 51 Raid was famously planned for this weekend – a raid which saw a few thousand flock to the US desert to Naruto-run around reporters and smoke some suspicious things.
Also in the states a whistleblower inside the intelligence community filed a complaint about communications between President Trump and a foreign leader – something which spiraled until something else mental happened over there to distract the news.
Oh yeah, t’was also the week Greta Thunberg had a go at us all, exclaiming “How DARE you!” about the world climate crisis.
GW7: Saturday September 28th 2019.
Fun fact, this was my birthday. That aside, there was also some footie. Liverpool edged Sheffield 1-0 in the weekend opener bookended by Man United drawing 1-1 to Arsenal the Monday following.
What happened in between was Chelsea, Spurs and City winning, Wolves got back to winning in a 2-0 win over Watford and Leicester struck Newcastle with 5 goals – Brendan Rodgers at the time playing down any talk of Champions League next season (lol).
Star man for GW7 was Wolves def Doherty in a TOTW spearheaded by the in-form Vardy (12pts) and Josh King (12). For all his international stats, this was Gini Wijnaldum’s only double digit haul for Liverpool.
Alexis Sanchez began his Inter Milan career with 2 goals in his first 22 minutes of play and over in Yeovil the referee sent off a ball-boy for not returning the ball properly.
Bars & Melody apparently got through to the Britain’s Got Talent Champions Final is a weekend clearly headlined by the cancellation of Metallica’s world tour due to front man James Hetfield’s return to rehab. Clearly.
GW8: Saturday October 5th 2019.
Man United fell to 12th in the league with defeat to Newcastle after Matty Longstaff of all people fired in the winner. Also surprisingly, the out of form Wolves beat the in-form Man City 2-0 at the Eithad leaving Liverpool a huge 8 points ahead in the League after just the 8 games – Adama Traore taking all the points (16) in that one.
James Milner registered his only double digit return (13) in a pretty awful TOTW filled with Vi lla, Brighton, Newcastle & Watford.
It wasn’t just United with tears, as Spurs lost 3-0 in the weekend opener to Brighton after their awful midweek 7-2 battering by Bayern in the Champion’s League. Note/ Poch was still the Spurs manager at this time.
It was World Teacher’s Day, Wine Day (in Moldovia) & Engineer’s Day (in Bolivia), quite the day.
Boris was getting stick from everywhere about Brexit, which at the time was our biggest issue, as deadline dates were being juggled about in the same week Megan Markle & Harry were banging on about some phone hacking of sorts – not that most cared, really.
GW9: Saturday October 19th 2019.
Still not a sneeze in sight, FPL went on with the highlight of the weekend being Man United and Liverpool’s encounter which ended 1-1.
Danny Ings scored, starting his run of goals in the next 2 games and 12 in the next 10 games.
City vs Palace had FPL managers drooling at the prospect of points, only for little to happen, Jesus and Dilva the only point reapers.
UK politics now, and a week passed by for Boris to give Charles Michel of the EU an extension request for Brexit, the same day Jeremy Corbin tweeted “jog on Boris”, failing to be hip and/or cool in one swift tweet.
Hundreds of thousands flocked to London streets to protest Brexit, some stepping away for a lovely spot of ice skating at the Natural History Museum whose Winter Ice Rink opened to the public – pretty much sealing the return of festive Christmassy sprit – in October.
GW10: Friday October 25th 2019.
Not to be outdone by City’s 8-0 a few weeks prior, Leicester annihilated Southampton 9-0 in an embarrassing match for the Saints – Bertrand ending the match on -6pts for his red card to top it off.
Pulisic scored his first Premier League hattrick against Burnley in a 4-2 win whilst Arsenal were held 2-2 by Palace.
Liverpool beat 2-1 in yet another test passed for Klopp and his mighty men with the weekend finishing on a high note for the red side of Manchester with a 3-1 victory at Norwich (their first away win since Feb 2019) – a match which also saw Tim Krul save 2 penalties and take home 16 points for the effort.
BIG FPL week for some, as Vardy, Pulisic & Perez each scored 20 points, Chilwell just behind with 19.
With Dance Monkey stuck in everyone’s bloody heads, we all enjoyed Halloween tucking into the KFC 80-piece popcorn bucket (for £6) which they trialed this week whilst frustratingly chucking their Xbox controllers at the wall as the new Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare ended up crashing servers and consoles alike.
Oh yeah, Kanye also proclaimed to be the “Greatest Artist of All Time” … Poopy-di scoop, Scoop-diddy-whoop, Whoop-di-scoop-di-poop…. genius.
FOLLOW JACK ON TWITTER @JACKAGOODWIN
Written by Jack A. Goodwin -Follow him on Twitter @JackAGoodwin
Jack is an “alternative FPL writer” (Who knew, right?) looking for hidden tales behind the most obscure players, dark humour in the game and the creative storytelling to the most mundane of GameWeeks!He’s played the official game for over 7 years, running leagues throughout the offices of his day job.
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