Welcome back to this week's off the bench podcast from the Premier League. I'm Lee from

FPL family. I'm Lee from FPL family.

I'm as from FPL Blackbox. Well, morning as another challenging week in FPL, wasn't it?

Plenty of drama for us to discuss, including a couple of very notable penalty misses.

And after eight clean sheets in all competitions, Arsenal finally concede a goal to, you know, fellow Champions League hopefuls,

I don't know, Sunderland. We'll go through the weekends games in a bit, but before we do, how was Game Week 11 for you? It was a good week to have a bad week, I think, as the saying, the saying goes. I mean, it wasn't great, 41 points. I've seen some worse scores out there. I've seen some really, really good scores, but they're around

50, 60 points. So if you manage 50, 60 points, you're listening to this. Well done. I think that constitutes as a really good game week this week. And if you got like it 25, 30 points, you weren't a million miles off the average of 38. So I mean, I'm trying to take these poor game weeks on the It's happened a few too many times to me this season, but I do think this one was just a generally poor game week, right? There wasn't many points on show. We're going to talk about some of the missed penalties and players not scoring, good chances and players missing out like you had in your team. Well, players are not even showing up. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. If I missed it,

then tell me,

but I don't think there was even a hint of Mark Gehie,

not showing up for Crystal Palace at the weekend. Can't even walk, the, Glasna said. So this has been bad. Now I'm got my ear to the ground and listening to it, you know, I'm hanging on every word that Glasner's saying because I think he was talking about the fact he couldn't, yeah, heavily bruised foot.

Maybe there's a, you know, he's on crutches, etc. So, yeah, I'm fingers crossed. He's going to be okay after the international break. But for me, the gay he no show really was the difference between a red and a green. I had a very small red arrow. I was about 1.6 million before the game week. I'm at about 1.7 now. I was bang average, 38. I mean, literally bang average on the points. And Gahey, not turning up meant that I didn't get the Crystal Palace clean sheet, clearly. And in a world where, you know, a lot of FPL players have got Crystal Park, they are heavily backed, right? You've got the Richards and the Laquoise and the Munozoises there's a lot of Crystal Palace defence out there so for gayi not to play and for

Mark Guillaume to come on with the one as my auto sub I'm kind of minus five against the

crowd aren't I a little bit so yeah had gay turned up and got that clean sheet my you know

small red might have been a small green but either way way, it's an average game week. So, do you know what? Not, you know, not a hell of a lot going on in my team, but plenty of action on the pitch to discuss as. Let's start with Arsenal's draw at Sunderland then. And before we talk about Arsenal, because they are obviously going to be a topic of conversation for us, Sunderland, no joke this season. Goodness me, what a year they're having so far.

After 11 game weeks, their defence in particular, and I know that they've conceded two here

against Arsenal, but going forward, the defence looks great. Joint fourth for clean sheets with four,

joint fourth for lowest XGC as well. So the foundations on which this Sunderland side are built are very, very good. And we have to, we have to give kudos to Ballard, don't we? I mean, what a performance from Big Dan Ballard. I mean, more headed chances than any other defender this season. So he's just the big target man, isn't he, from set pieces? What a guy. And he took the goal so well,

didn't he? What a finish. And then I found out, I didn't know this actually, I'm not looking into Dan Ballard's history every week, but, you know, ex-Arsonal was in the academy. I didn't know. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. No, yeah, he's ex-Arssonal. He sort of grew up at Hale End and a few different loans,

etc. didn't kind of work out for him.

So, yeah, this was a big game for him.

Massive, massive performance.

And potentially, of grew up at Hale End and a few different loans, etc. Didn't kind of work out for him. So, yeah, this was a big game for him, massive, massive performance.

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