Week 3 – Gruda is very Good-a

(Sorry 😆)

Our first partial double game week of the season, now we have the Carabao Cup included – led to some shock exits (Man Utd to Grimsby !😆) and a lot of points on offer for the non-European sides who’s players weren’t rested.

I wasn’t sure about the Telegraph adding the Carabao Cup to the game at first but, I think actually it has freshened the TFF game up a bit ?!

B. Gruda (£2.9m) is our Star Player of the Week and one of four Brighton players in the team after a great week for them, a 6-0 away thumping of Oxford in the Carabao and then a 2-1 victory over Man City !

Mixed fortunes for West Ham saw them dumped out of the Carabao Cup but then notch a superb and unlikely 3-0 away win at Nottingham Forest ! L. Paqueta (£4.0m) scored in both games and is our new Week 3 Player of the Season, pipping R. Calafiori (£4.2m) by courtesy of being £0.2m cheaper.

Another surprise 3-0 away win was for that of Palace at Villa, M. Guehi (£3.6m) scored a blinder and clean-sheeted and also enters the, very early!, Team of the Season.

A slightly controversial derby win over Fulham leads to T. Chalobah (£3.3m) and E. Fernandez (£4.3m) joining Chelsea teammate J. Pedro (£4.5m) in this weeks Team of the Season.

Interestingly, despite a tight 1-0 victory over Arsenal, champions Liverpool are the only side with a 100% record of three wins but, none of their players make the top 11….yet….! Last season’s superstar M. Salah (£7.7m) is still trailing behind 3 goal E. Haaland (£8.3m) by 7 points.

We head now into an International break and also the closure of the summer transfer window, some high profile injuries with W. Saliba (£4.6m) :-

currently in 14% of sides, adding to Arsenal’s injury woes.

With some last minute high profile transfers expected and the Carabao Cup 3rd round schedule to be determined (ties due to be played in weeks 5 or 6), we’ll return with a data update before the Week 4 fixtures kick off on 13th September.

For an early start to your transfer planning, the revised Fixture Difficulty list, found on the Player Stats Portal :-

moves the ‘big six’ clubs up the list in terms of favorable fixtures although, heavy rotation is expected for those 3rd round Carabao Cup ties, especially amongst the European cups participants… so, we recommend paying close attention to the Pts League only column as well as the League & Cup.

Finally for this week’s blog, some small tweaks to the reports on the portal, the Player Form report (Page 7) :-

has been improved to include a more useful graph (Top 5 only shown) and a Top N slicer which should help us focus on the higher performing players, shown here as an example for Strikers only, Top 10 :-

Have a play, any feedback and comments appreciated as always… 🙂