Hello folks. First off, apologies – I’ve not been able to get one of these out now for a while. First the double gameweeks hampered our regular schedules, and then I took it upon myself to move house – selfish I know, it won’t happen again.
Anyway, I digress – it’s been over a month since the last catch-up, and boy what a month November was. We’ve had two double gameweeks to contend with; a favourite occurrence for many Scout posters (myself included); that’s meant that we’ve enjoyed the highs of people hitting over 100 points (myself included) and the lows of coming back down to earth very soon after (once again, myself included). We’ve just had gameweek 14 which saw Chelsea beat Arsenal with ample help from Drogba and Ashley Cole. But the real headline grabber for fantasy managers this past week was Wayne Rooney, with able assistance from the penalty spot. Let’s delve and see just how his hat-trick impacted across the Scout Leagues…
Fantasy Football Scout League (Fantasy Premier League)
Nothing changes, even in a month off. In fact we have pulled away further at the top of the “League of Leagues”. Fantasy Football Scout are currently comfortably the number one league to be in and, when we dig a little deeper, it’s easy to see why. At the end of my last report Joe Lewis was leading the Scout League; now down into 47th place you can see it’s not easy to maintain such vitriol all season long. Our new leader is Liam Owens with an 84 point haul this week inspired (like many, one imagines) by Ryan Giggs and captain Rooney. Not only is he Scout Leader, but Liam is also 2nd in the world as this is written – could this be the year where someone from this here site manages to grab the overall crown on top of the Scout title? Here’s hoping. Of the regular site posters, ZB FC is right up there in 2nd place, Warlock has managed to keep his head above water in 5th, and Little Lukin & smuggs are 12th & 15th respectively.
Fantasy Football Scout League (Can You Kick It)
Over in Can You Kick It, the Scout League is actually playing second fiddle at the moment to the good folk over at the FISO forum – it’s been a bit of give and take of late between us, so I back us to take the top spot back very soon. Speaking of top spots, a new face is top of the Scout League. Lee Newman was one of many who benefited from having Wayne Rooney as skipper. Having made an assured climb for the last 9 weeks, jms has now made it up to 5th place (on top of some other frustrating gains in the FPL game). Our show-runner Mark has also been a recent recipient of success and makes it up to 22nd this week, as he looks to push on into the top 10 over Christmas.
After BP FC lost his second game in a row, this time to Marknlard, he has finally lost his grip on the top spot and handed it over to one of our resident Arsenal fans MFaulkner. The mantle was claimed with a 64-45 win over one of the other pretenders to the throne, Comfy Coxy. Unsurprisingly, Wayne Rooney as captain played a major part here and he also did the trick for Granville, Dino, Mark, MegasalviO and Jimi. The previously mentioned jms also managed to walk away with 3 points, even with a below average 41, thanks to facing the worst manager in the league this week… myself. Sigh.
JWF is quite simply walking away with our second Head to Head league and is probably already dreaming of the title. Not only is he the highest ranked manager in the league, he is now 9 points clear of his closest competitors – Aldershot Rejects and Dick Fran Dyke. It was a closely fought 53-50 victory over Bedknobs & Boomsticks this week that made the gap even greater. Given that margin of defeat, B & B is perhaps regretting the decision to buy Evra instead of Scharner even more in retrospect. Elsewhere in the league Feanor soundly thumped my Scout colleague Superior Being (who also suffered a bit of a disaster gameweek), Roysbrotherjohnson bested an even worse Fran and Jonny rose up to 8th place with a victory of our Irish burner of the midnight oil, …al.
Many things have changed over the last month but djman102 is still there sitting pretty (just about) at the top of our third Head to Head league. This week his (Rooney-less) team won out the slog, with a Drogba captain helping him to a 69-44 victory over Anorak. Down at the bottom of the table in an early 6-pointer TorresMagic managed to clear past Dan B with a slender victory, not helped by the fact Ashley Cole was crying out on his bench to be played. Even though he is 12th in the Scout League (and a stonking 63rd in the world I hasten to add too), Little Lukin isn’t an impenetrable fortress and this week they fell foul of Bigadz with his team equipped with three of the weeks big hitters – Didier Drogba, Ashley Cole & Wayne Rooney.
In our fourth Head to Head competition there is a new face at the top, complete with a broad smile across it. Canucklehead moves on up to first place thanks to a 23 point difference in the overall rankings (it was a win over tabfitz, by the way, that pushed him to the summit). Elsewhere, Rouge123 is quite probably (and quite rightly) still crying into his pillow having been absolutely thumped by 80 points to 20 this weekend. Just a single clean sheet, courtesy of Mr. Joe Hart, earns you the first “Arm around the shoulder” award of this long cold December. Elsewhere here, Mike McBam, Sasquatch (where have you gone?), JN and Uncle Ben all won their games this weekend just gone – well done chaps.
It seems in the wake of my last report an old face has returned to the number one spot of our final Head to Head league. Welcome back to the pinnacle Captain Keg. A score of 70 more than doubled his opponent James Russell who amassed just 34 points. Below our leader, jils scored a highly commendable 74 points this week but didn’t have an easy test as they attempted to climb back near the top of the table. Their opponent Peter Hwang also had Wayne Rooney as captain but goals from Cole, Duff & Agbonlahor (as well as a couple of clean sheets to boot) made the difference. In a game of two of our more regular posters, chinmusic came out top leaving The Hunt to join the slog at the bottom of the table.
Duncan Burman is still top of the Reserve League even after this four week break of reports, and he still has yet to lose a game – a record of 13-1-0 is seriously good record. Closest rival BKR remains in second place but has now lost their unbeaten record.
That’s just about it. While I felt a little on my return, hopefully it didn’t prove too rusty to absorb from your point of view. This sets me up for a massively busy December. Christmas shopping you ask? Nope, we’ve got six sets of fixtures in the space of just over three weeks. I’m not quite sure how I will be spacing out these summaries over the next few weeks then – but I do know that I definitely won’t be moving house again any time soon. Hopefully, if you grab that vital Head to Head win, or charge your way up the Scout table – I will see it, and you will grace the shores of my next Scout League Summary.