NMA Blog Cup 2022 – We have a winner!

We may be in World Cup mode now, with the Premier League shutdown underway, but EPL Round 16 has brought us the small matter of the 2022 NMA Blog Cup Final!

Over the course of six hard-fought previous rounds, we whittled down the original 219 teams to just 20. Some big names fell by the wayside, but many NMA-11 leaderboard names made it all the way to the strong test. With all those heavyweights still in play, it was going to take a special performance to win.

Since we knew the confirmed Manchester City against Brentford’s line-ups ahead of the Fantrax deadline, stacking City’s assets would surely be the way to victory, wouldn’t it? Umm…not so much, it turns out.

Here are the full results:

So congratulations to Sir Boy United FCthe winner of the 2022 NMA Blog Cup, who claimed victory with a very impressive 145 points!

Commissions to others, and in particular to second The msneezie31 teamwho failed by an agonizing 1.5 points.

What was the secret of success? Well, for once this year it wasn’t Haaland, Salah or Cancelo. Together, these guys only managed 15.5 points between them, and they were the lowest-rated players on the winner’s side. Every other Sir Boy player scored at least 9.5 points, including two of the week’s top five scorers in Danny Ward and Darwin Nunez (29.5 and 26.5 respectively). So it was a very good all-round team for Sir Boy United FC.

The second-placed team had the same forward line of Haaland, Salah and Nunez, plus KDB, Trippier (didn’t anyone have Trippier?) and Laporte. But it was the other five players who made the difference, with Tavernier’s inspired pick picking up a whopping 26.5 points. Ederson disappointed on goal, picking up just 5.5 points after City’s shock defeat. Brentford’s late goal made all the difference here – without him we would have been looking for another winner.

Completing the podium is THKFIGHT, whose 129.5 points came mostly from eight solid players, all in double digits, including Nunez’s 26.5. Again, it was the goalkeeper who fell short as Lloris only managed 2.5 points.

There were four previously eliminated teams in the league who scored more than the winner, so if only they hadn’t fallen in a previous round, one of them could have been champions. Three of the blog team members made it to the final, and I’m happy to say that my own team The Motley Crewe emerged victorious from this little three-way battle, ahead of The stallexpress team and blog editor Jeff’s Alehouse WAG, even if none of us will have been very satisfied with his performance in the final. Stall will find some consolation in the fact that he still retains the top spot in the league. What a season it is!

I kept a cup performance tally (each team’s finishing position for each round), and the team that is clearly the most consistent is to singwith finishing positions of 29, 14, 7, 13, 6, 15 and 12 for a total of 96. They will just be disappointed that their performance dropped at the crucial moment. The Motley Crewe came second with a total of 114 and DISCO-ARGYLE third with 120.

Fantrax are now on a break for the World Cup, but the Premier League resumes on Boxing Day. Once back, you’ll want to get your league position as high as possible by GW-20 (January 14), as that’s when the NMA Cup-11 qualifying positions are determined. . The NMA-11 Cup is our blogging tournament for the second half of the season; see here for all the details.

Were you one of the Cup finalists, or even the winner? We would love to hear from you. You were well placed this week but eliminated in a previous round? Ken, we’ve got you covered for a – you would have been half a point away from winning! Please let us know in the comments.

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