Bay Road Soccer Fantasy Football: The highs and lows of football

How can you beat Manchester City one week and then lose to Nottingham Forest the next?

Such are the mysteries of the Premier League as Liverpool fans spent all last week telling the world ‘We’re back’, before suffering the shock of the season against last-placed Forest. It just goes to show that in the top flight of English football, anything can happen, and that goes for the Bay Road Soccer Fantasy Football league as well.

If you have a shocker – and all of us do at some stage – then you can always redeem yourself the next week – Just look at this week’s top scorer.

Declan Murphy can’t have much faith in himself as a manager when he named his team ‘Going Down’, but the only way was up this week as he managed a superb 94 points.

At this stage every man and his dog has made Erling Haaland his captain, so it’s all down to who you pick to fill the other positions.

Declan started out strong defensively with goalkeeper Fabianski (8), and defenders Coady (6) and White (6) earning him 20 points, but in midfield he really excelled. If you don’t have De Bruyne (9) by this stage you should be locked up, but Declan also found a nugget in Fulham’s Periera (10) as well as Newcastle’s Almiron (10) and Brighton’s Trossard (7).

His five-man midfield brought him 38 points and with captain Haaland coring twice and Harry Kane also chipping in, it was a huge score for Declan.

That was in contrast to Philip Doherty’s ‘Diggindoc’ team which managed a paltry 31 points this week. While captain Kane got him 16, his midfield was shockingly poor with Zaha, Son, Anthony, Billing and Odegaard giving him just 8 points combined. There were some big names in there, but that doesn’t mean anything in the Premier League.

BAY ROAD SOCCER FANTASY FOOTBALL ‘MUST HAVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK’ – You cannot look past Newcastle’s Miguel Almiron, who is on fire. At just £5.4 million, he is exceptional value having managed double figures in three of the past five weeks.