GameDay Squad Football Round 1 review

Welcome to the Round One review for GameDay Squad’s Football Platform. In these reviews we’ll examine how the round went, who scored well and the talking points.

Round One has been run and done, ending with a controversial late penalty against Everton, which took away the clean sheets points from GDS coaches for Everton defenders and goalkeeper, Jordan Pickford.

A somewhat surprising leading scorer for the round was Sunderland defender Dan Ballard with 43.25. A 3-0 win over West Ham was the catalyst as Ballard managed to score on of those three goals.

A total of one goalkeeper, four defenders, one midfielder and four forwards made this week’s top 10, as a total of 32 players scored 20 or more points for the round. The top 10 for the week were Ballard, Kudus (36), Gakpo (32.5), Gudmundsson (29.5), Richarlison (29.5), Semenyo (29.5), Ait-Nouri (28), Acheampong (27.25), Raya (27.25) and Ekitike (26.5).

The major discussion points from the round included; how clean sheets are scored, duel dominance in scoring, nailing your defenders, and premium midfielders failing to fire.

As lockout began and the first game was underway coaches began to pray for their Liverpool defenders to not be subbed before the 60 minute mark. The 60 minute mark has become common in Fantasy Premier League circles for being the minimum amount of minutes a defender needs to play in order to reach a clean sheet, if they are subbed after that with the clean sheet still intact at that point then they receive a clean sheet. However, it was soon revealed, after popular defenders Frimpong and Kerkez were subbed on the 59th minute, that players had to play the full game for a clean sheet to count. This adds a further squad building element for coaches when it comes to defenders to select. Are the additional six points worth specifically targeting defenders who are usually nailed to play the entire game over someone who isn’t but is more likely to contribute to a goal? The likes of Van Dijk and Romero are the type of options that could be targets (if they weren’t already) given their importance to the defence and that they are captains of their respective teams.

A major trend during this game week was just how much scoring dominance came from winners of aerial duels. They appeared easy to come by in certain matchups and paid out in a big way for those players. There are two strategies that come to mind from this; targeting specific 1 v 1 matchups where physical or aerial dominance may occur and targeting teams whose style is likely to result in long balls AND have a mismatch with the opposition of short striker v tall defender (i.e. Van Dijk v Evanilson).

Due to the two aforementioned reasons it does mean that nailing your defenders every week appears to be critical. It appears, from this information, tall aerially dominant centrebacks are the preference, particularly in good fixtures. Of the 45 centre backs that started games this round only five (11.11%) of them did not play the full match, appearing to make it even more likely they, in general, stay on the field more often for a clean sheet. Of the 40 fullback/wingbacks that started games this round, 13 (32.5%} of them were subbed off before the full match. Again, not a huge amount, but enough difference to favour the centre backs over full backs if the trend continues.

It was a round that saw plenty of popular picks, particularly midfielders, fail to shine as the likes of Palmer (6), Rice (2), Marmoush (3.5) Enzo Fernandez (4.5) and Alisson (3.5) all scored poorly. This meant that going unique and playing the fixture worked particularly well this round as players such as Kudus (36), Gibbs White (24), Stach (22.5) and Reijnders (21) all performed well in fixtures seen as favourable.

…and that’s a wrap for the round! How did you score? Who were your best picks? Let us know below in the comments.