The Pre-Match Preamble – Gameweek 37

The Triple Captain chip is a curse.

When I actually fire it off at 11.45 I’ll do so with such trepidation, knowing that if it fails as miserably as I fear, it could catapult me into a spiral of frustration.

It’s all very well for the gloaters who slapped it down on Sergio Aguero or Alexis Sanchez back in Gameweek 34 but, for the rest of us poor souls, we now face a tortuous and fearful week ahead.

Taking a risk with the captaincy is bad enough in any given Gameweek. When that gamble is ramped up a notch by the potential of triple points this becomes a nightmare scenario.

A bad captain has wrecked my weekend in the past. That ill-advised faith in Harry Kane at the Lane, that missed opportunity as Sanchez or Aguero run riot. Damaging stuff.

Now the potential misery could be escalated to a new level: the Triple Captain is threatening to drag a big black cloud over the weekend sunshine and render me a charmless, monosyllabic monster.

My ability to operate as a basic human being over the next three of four days hangs on the performances of Jermain Defoe, or Andy Carroll or maybe even Eden Hazard.

I almost feel I should offer an advance warning.

Perhaps I should just sit my life partner down, Google some West Ham images and explain that the big guy with the ridiculous ponytail is about to cause me a great deal of irrational pain and misery over the next few days.

I’d expect her to frown. To ponder and ask searching questions.

One of those questions might even be – “but you could have put it on Aguero or Sanchez in Gameweek 34, why did you play your Bench Boost instead?”.

At which point, I’d stand, kiss my children and go and pack my bags. It would be the only answer I have left.