Team of Shadows

Episode 4 - GW 32 Wrap-up, the “Zaha to the Rescue” edition

Greetings, all!

Welcome back to the cozy little rabbit hole, where we venture down into the insane exercise of what-ifs, but-ifs, and if-only-I-had-done-that’s. Simply put, I played my WC back in GW29, but am comparing that Early WC team against a Shadow Team that I’m running on paper, in which I plan to save that second WC for GW36. Go back and catch up if you really want to get comfy down here with us crazy people.

If you missed Episode 1 where Scott explains WTF is going on here then check it out here.

The Moves

This week, the Early WC team decided that they couldn’t ignore the force of nature that is named Dele Alli. Yeah, I can’t stand him as a player, because I think he’s kind of a nasty whining, occasionally diving kind of jerk who really annoys us old curmudgeons with his dorky little handshake routines, but the bottom line is that the kid’s got serious game. Pedro had been coming into his own a bit when I played my WC, and had made his way into that GW29 WC squad based on that, but he’s done both diddly AND squat since then so swapping him out for Alli was simple. The early WC team had two FT available and rolled the other one over.

The Team of Shadows already had Alli, having bought him back in GW29. They looked at the fixture list for GW32 and saw City hosting Hull as a potential goalfest and they decided to swap Siggy out for Leroy Sané with their one FT. Both teams decided to #AlwaysCaptainKun.

The Teams

The Early Wildcard team is in the table below, as is the Shadow Team that is currently kicking my ass and that will play a Late Wildcard in GW36. The prices are at the deadline going into GW32 after the moves were made and the points in parentheses were on the bench.

The Verdict

I finally hauled back a few points against my evil shadow twin this week. New purchase Alli neutralized the prior advantage the Shadow Team had held, and last week’s new purchase Wilf Zaha came through this week with a pair of assists against the Gunners to tally eleven points. The Shadow Team’s move ended up essentially a wash, three for new Sané vs two for the outgoing Siggy the Sea Monster. Both teams were still hoping that Gabbiadini would return soon and were holding onto him in hope of that, so both benches came into play. The Early WC team also had to cover for Mourinho’s decision to rest DDG and Valencia. Ben Davies’ clean sheet and JWP’s three-pointer came in for their squad, along with Jakupovic’s three-pointer. Here’s where the depth provided by that early WC is perhaps serving that squad a bit better. The Shadow Team chose well in their bench order but could still only manage a two-pointer from Darren Fletcher to cover over the Gabbi-sized hole in their lineup. In the end, it was an 80-75 win this week for the Early WC Team, but on the whole, (or in the Hole?) the Shadow Team of Patience still holds an edge.

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

Early WC team: 80 points, overall points 1810, overall rank 18,882

Late WC team: 75 points, overall points 1826, overall rank 11,947

Both teams got green arrows for GW32.



Coming Up

The Shadow Team has one FT in hand and 0.4 ITB. The Early WC team has two FT but only 0.1 ITB. Both teams really need to decide what they are going to do with their dead striker position. Gabbiadini has returned to full training and is “in contention” for the game, so it could be an option to just hold him and see what he can do. Both teams are also running out of time to prep for GW34 doubles. Early WC team has three DGW players in place but Shadow Team only has one.

Good luck everybody!

Scott (@tempebug)