Neil Kelly and his Wet Bandits extended their lead at the top of the Champion J-League as his faith in Wayne Rooney paid off.
Like many of you, I lost faith in Nani a while back. A princely sum of seven points in October saw him jettisoned and despite an assist and a clean sheet in Gameweek 14, he wasn’t considered for a reprieve this week.
I hope you were smarter than me as he nabbed two goals, and an assist, to amass 18 points and be the top scorer in Gameweek 15. His team-mate, and a player who hadn’t scored a league goal since September 18, Wayne Rooney, also scored two but he wasn’t the top scoring striker to have in your side this week.
That honour fell to Norwich’s Grant Holt. Two goals against an injury ravaged Newcastle earned him the maximum bonus and a bumper haul of 15 points. At just 4.9m, he is one of the cheapest strikers around and with five goals in his last seven games Holt is fantastic value right now.
A star of past Fantasy seasons reared his not too pretty head this week too as Matthew Etherington rediscovered his goal touch. For the last two seasons the former Spurs man was a staple of many a Fantasy midfield with lots of goals, assists and clean sheet bonuses but this year he has been a bit of a dud until he saw his old friends Spurs and he netted 15 points on Sunday.
With only three clean sheets across the week (Liverpool, Arsenal and Swansea) few defenders were much use but the top man came from a team that did concede. Phil Bardsley gets the credit for assisting both Sunderland’s goals against Blackburn, earning himself nine points.
He had little to do with either piece of individual brilliance by David Vaughan and Seb Larsson but nobody said Fantasy Football was supposed to be fair.
Top keeper was once again Swansea’s Michel Vorm. The Dutch stopper could be the signing of the season, making save after save for Brendan Rodgers’ team. He leads the league in clean sheets with seven, one more than Wojciech Szczesny and Mark Schwarzer and three more than the overrated Joe Hart.
Even when he concedes a few he picks up points for the sheer number of saves he makes and the Flying Swan is now in over 30 per cent of teams so if you aren’t on the bandwagon, get on now.
Champion J-League
Neil Kelly stretched his lead in the J-League as he notched up an impressive 82 points, helped by having Rooney as captain and the timely transfer in of Nani. Conor Sheehy’s A Great Bunch’a Lads total of 79 was enough to jump him back into second place, putting him on 932, just three ahead of Hee Haw United and James Ward.
Last week’s second place team, Eoin Keane’s Pallas United, scored 62 to fall down to fourth while Clive Earley and his Derryowen Hawthorns clung onto fifth for another week with a decent tally of 71.
The man who usually does the round-up, Conor Heneghan, suffered a bad week, scoring just 46 and losing top spot in our in-house JOE league. I had hoped to be able to write 600 words on my own excellence when the duty of writing up this week’s piece fell to me but sadly a dismal 42 points saw me slip further off the pace. It was the wrong week to sell Rooney…
1. The Wet Bandits – Neil Kelly: 969 points
2. A Great Bunch’a Lads – Conor Sheehy: 932 points
3. Hee Haw United – James Ward: 929 Points
4. Pallas United – Eoin Keane: 927 Points
5. Derryowen Hawthorns – Clive Earley: 922 points
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