Welcome back, whether you had a weekend of triumph or were watching your point tally through teary eyes, isn’t it great to just have football back? Of course, I hope you were part of the former group (or do I? you are my competition after all…). If not, well step back from the precipice and revel in the fact that this game is a marathon, the first hurdle is gone, you clattered into it, but you’re up again and ready to take another stab and throw that discus further than ever (what just happened?)… Like Mo Farah, you have a long way to go and even if your squad isn’t doped up like every sprinter facing Bolt, it’s only week 1. So breathe.

In the hopes of keeping this shorter than last time, let’s delve straight into my team with an unexpectedly pleasant clean sheet. Foster proved up to the praise I gave him last week, bringing in a nifty wee bonus point alongside his banger CS. In defence, Kolasinac provided a solid 5 to begin my first full season, which I was grateful for by the end of that mad game. A dismal 1 from Dann was made up for with a 6 pointer from Stephens, who came in for Yoshida in case of injury. 21 points from 4 players, solid start.

My midfield had a similar pattern, with my bargain of the year, Milivojevic providing me with a great price of 1 point per 5m spent. Early days though, so don’t panic – although his substitution did hit a little hard. This was softened thanks to my Merseyside double producing 17 points between them with the wasteful Salah producing a goal and penalty ‘assist’ – after the entirety of reddit had called for his head – and Mané getting in on the action in classic Mané style. My final midfielder, Pogba had begun to make me rue my decision to pick him over Mhki, seemingly playing still quite deep, but his goal at the death relieved my concerns for now. A very solid 8 points kept a very happy me ticking along nicely.

Overall, I was delighted with my forwards… well, other than that piece of shit Gabbidiani who once again fucked me over. 2 points again, although I’m just thankful he didn’t come off 10 minutes earlier like I was expecting. He will have a few more chances, a good set of fixtures is still enough to convince me that he’s safe for the time being. Lukaku’s brace and 13 points were welcomed with open arms, however, his high ownership and captained %’s meant that my risk of not captaining him did not play out like I’d hoped. That being said, it was by no means a terrible choice to put my faith in the Argentinian maestro Kun, providing a strong 18 points to sicken my entire mini-league, being the only person to bring him in whilst everyone else had either Jesus or KDB, those bitches can suck it.

78 points. By fuck am I delighted with that, I was hoping just to be in and around average due to GW1 being so unpredictable, but most of my big calls paid off this week and I’ve started higher than expected. A respectable start at ~375k; whilst not anywhere near my 100k goal for the season, I am very happy with it. Can’t wait for the inevitable 35 points next week.

Since there was no difference between Me 1 and Me 2 this week, we move straight onto the Kneejerks, the team full of those with the highest ownership %. It seemed that the masses performed very well indeed this week, scoring 72 point. The star of this was oh captain their captain Lukaku with his 26 points. A poor showing by Kane and the expected no show upon Chicharito’s return to Old Trafford were saved by Alli and Salah gaining two goals, an assist and 19 points between them. Luiz’ last ditch goal provided a saving grace from Chelsea’s diabolical performance, and cleanies from de Gea and Cedric kept the ball rolling. 2 point returns from Zaha, Daniels and RLC rounded out a resounding performance for the kneejerkers; one much better than I expected, at least. Not good enough to beat the main, but pretty darn close.

It’s going to be interesting to see the very first bandwagons of the year. As of now, Xhaka is still the most transferred in player at ~180k. That is mad. Xhaka, GRANIT XHAKA, is the riser of the season. Looks like he’ll be the transfer in for the Kneejerks, as my limited options currently are either Zaha to Xhaka, or Kane to Vardy. I’m waiting until further in the week, and other bandwagons may appear in the meantime, but those are the two front runners going by current transfers. I have no control over this, so if Vardy ends up with the highest transfers in, then Kane has got to make like a tree.

I didn’t watch the Spurs game but people transferring out Kane already seems like madness. Now, I do admit to feeling somewhat chuffed at calling his poor performance, but if you brought in Kane at the start, trust him, he’s obviously going to come good, he’s Harry Kane, the lad loves a goal almost as much as Vardy loves a crate of WKD. Point-chasing is a bad idea. Most of us chose our team to last us for a good while (other than those madmen preparing to WC already at GW4), so hold firm. Yes, make a transfer if you deem necessary, like removing those red carded Chelsea players who fucked over many folk, but don’t chase points on silly sideways transfers. For this reason, I’m holding firm on my assertion not to make a transfer this week (for now anyway), I’ll save two for next week and can go about changing a team with exactly double the information! If I lose a few points by keeping Gabbidiani instead of switching to Mounie now, well it’s a few points, I’ll live. That’s my two cents on the topic anyway.

So thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed this. Any comments or suggestions then hit me up, always good to hear from people! My preview for GW2, where I discuss the Kneejerks in greater detail and have “Me vs. Me vs. Knee” fully up and running, will be up later in the week. Well played!

SSS.