The Pre-Match Preamble – Gameweek 34

I’ve rarely been so downbeat about a double Gameweek.

Each season we seek them out. Like searching for the local derby in the fixture list, we anticipate them and look to relish every minute of exctitement they can deliver. These are the times we cherish as Fantasy Football managers; friends and family just don’t understand.

But this Gameweek 34 has never really convinced me.

Even before Thursday’s events, the allure of uncertain Manchester United assets, backed the unmagnificent Middlesbrough and Palace candidates, always struggled to appeal.

In midweek our one protagonist bowed out – the single asset who seemed most likely to break the double-digit barrier was cruelly removed from the equation.

It’s almost as if Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s knee buckled under the weight of our double Gameweek expectation.

Without our leading man, it’s now left to uncovincing understudies Christian Benteke and Alvaro Negredo to keep our show on the road. Confidence has taken a knock, but it seems we simply must pin our hopes somwehere.

We’ve seen it all before: previously, 70,000 of us based our double Gameweek prospects on a certain Stephane Sessegnon, such is our willingness to seek out that one big return.

Splintered over six days, the agony and anxiety of Gameweek 34 is set to be strung out and prolonged. We could easily end up heading into Wednesday praying for a Middlesbrough clean sheet and cheering every Ben Gibson clearance. If ever you needed to build a case on how Fantasy Football can warp your view of the beautiful game, there it is right there.

But this is perhaps part of the appeal of double Gameweeks. We spend the season steadily building around in-form assets, working towards any template that arises, then these end of season events arrive to shake things up and promote unlikely heroes.

The words Negredo and Triple Captain were never meant to sit within the same sentence. Just as Carroll and Triple Captain jarred twelve months ago.

But no matter how much we attempt to anticipate and strategise, somehow it seems these double Gameweeks creep up on us, forcing us down the most unexpected avenues.

Benteke and Negredo now have the opportunity to carve their names in Fantasy Football folklore over the course of the next seven days.

Clearly, Zlatan, for all his bravado, titles and winners medals, just couldn’t handle that kind of pressure. Sessegnon set the bar too high.