Team of Shadows

Episode 8 - GW 36 Wrap-up, the “Just Kill Me Now” edition

Greetings, all!

Welcome back. Short turn-around. No chit chat. For a full-blown explanation of WTF is going on here, go back to Episode 1.

The Moves

It was finally time for the Shadow Team to play their Wild Card! That was a bit more tedious to do on paper than it is in real life, but not too much of a headache. And even though it was a “fake news wildcard”, it was actually almost as much fun. I’m going to be sad when FPL is over for the year. But maybe I should get a life. Anyway, the Shadows had a team value of 106.3 and a selling value of 103.1 when they popped the cork. My real team had been on a total value of 106.5 and a selling value of 103.7 back in GW29 when they pressed the early WC panic button. Vardy and Jesus joined Kane in the frontline while Hazard and King were the main additions to the midfield. Both the Shadows and my real team decided to dump Alexis in the swamp after a lengthy run of shite returns. They pivoted to Ozil as Arsenal coverage and put the two million in savings elsewhere on the pitch. The jury is still out on that decision. The other moves the Early WC real team made were to ditch Zaha for Hazard, Lukaku for Jesus and Gibson for Monreal.

The Teams

The Early Wildcard team is in the table below, as is the Shadow Team that I had been neck and neck with. The prices are at the deadline going into GW35 after the moves were made and the points in parentheses ended up on the bench.

The Verdict

Just. Kill. Me. Now. Seriously. Now. NOW. Holy shit this went sideways on me this week. After the Shadow WC was played, I kind of thought the two teams were going to be in a run for it down the stretch, with potential for either side to come out on top, but with the Shadows slightly ahead because they wouldn’t need to take any hits. Well Pong Forster took care of that nonsense thinking, but it also shows just how random all of this shit is. The two teams go into the week about 1,200 apart in OR, and just because Boring James Milner decides to let the giant behemoth get in his head, Pong ends up with 16 points in that match alone. New picks King and Vardy also delivered for my arch-nemesis of self-control and between those three, the path was well-paved for me to take an ass-whuppin this week.

Before I started this experiment, my overall rank was 19,971



Early WC team: 60 points, overall points 2047, overall rank 18,014



Late WC Shadow team: 85 points, overall points 2075, overall rank 8,635



I dropped another red arrow while the Shadows soared on their WC and are now sitting up there in the rare air of top 10K dreams.



Coming Up

Shadow Team should be set for DGW37, or else I really screwed the pooch in playing their WC. (Barring injuries) They will likely save going into 37 and have a pair of moves to mess around with for the grand finale in 38. Real Team will need to make a couple more moves to optimize the roster for 37. This was always the deal going into this experiment. Should you take the hits early to salvage a perceived mess, or play the wild card early and then take the hits later to optimize for the big DGW. We’re entering the final act of this play. Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, the curtain is about to rise.

Scott (@tempebug)