Remember last round, when 40 players backed Chelsea and watched them lose 0-2 at home to Tottenham? The crowd has moved on. In Gameweek 9, 38 of the league's 124 picks went on Tottenham — the side that did the damage — and this time the crowd was on the right end of the result.

FPG is simple: pick one Premier League team each round. If they win, you score points.

Round 9 was a normal round. The only derby on the card was Tottenham v Crystal Palace, kicking off at 17:30 on Saturday. The deadline was Sat 31 Oct at 12:30 UK.

Saturday Teatime Decided the Whole Round

Tottenham won it 2-0, and in FPG a derby is not just another fixture: in a derby a win earns an extra point, and a draw costs one just like a defeat. If you want the longer version, here is how derbies score in FPG.

It was also where the round's luck lived. Sky Sports reported that the match turned on a 13th-minute red card, a yellow upgraded to red for serious foul play after a VAR review, and that the defeat left Crystal Palace third-bottom (Sky Sports, as of Sat 31 Oct). Thirty-eight picks were already in by the time any of that happened. Nobody is offering to give the points back.

The Gap Between the Derby Pile and Everyone Else Who Won

A win is worth +1, a draw nothing and a defeat -1, with an extra +1 when your team beats a side another player picked, and an extra -1 when it loses to one. Six players were on Crystal Palace, so the Tottenham pile collected that too, and the derby point on top of it made 3 — the best score in the round, reached by 34 players.

The other four on Tottenham came in on 2, and that is the deadline's work: miss it and a team is picked for you; it scores as normal, but if that score is positive you lose a point. Twenty-seven scores carried that dock across the round, and since it can only land on a pick that finished positive, not one of them came off a draw or a defeat.

Which is why so many of the other winners read lower than you would expect. Brentford's ten backers split five on 2 and five on 1 after the 2-0 against Nottingham Forest, and Arsenal, Bournemouth and Chelsea each had five on a winner in the same shape: one on 2, four on 1. Brighton's two and Everton's two won away from home and still finished on 1 apiece.

The Draws and the Defeats

Seventy of the 124 picks won. Twenty-three drew, split four ways: eleven on Aston Villa and two on Fulham out of the 1-1 between them, seven on Hull City and three on Ipswich out of their 2-2.

Thirty-one picks lost. Three of the round's hosts went down by exactly 0-1 — Liverpool with five backers, Manchester City and Newcastle with four each — while Sunderland's four were beaten 3-1 at Coventry. The heaviest of it was the six on Crystal Palace at -3, because the derby takes its point off a defeat too.

Where That Leaves the Table, and Last Week's Call

The leader is on 21, and the only player keeping them company is on 18. Three points between them, which is exactly what a derby win paid this round: one good Saturday and that lead is gone. Everybody else is further back than that.

Tottenham's trouble now is arithmetic. Each team can be picked twice a season, and after Saturday 12 players have used both their Tottenham picks while 56 have used one. Chelsea is further down that road — 30 players have none left at all — so the teams the crowd keeps reaching for are the teams it is running out of.

As for the call in the preview: Bournemouth at home to Leeds. Bournemouth won 2-0, so it was a good call. It was also worth less than doing what everyone else did, which is not how that sentence usually finishes.

FAQ

What happened in FPG Gameweek 9? Tottenham beat Crystal Palace 2-0 in the round's one derby, and the 38 players who had backed Tottenham took the best score in the round. Thirty-four of them finished on 3.

Which pick cost the most in Gameweek 9? The six players on Crystal Palace, who finished on -3. That was the heaviest score of the round, and it came from being on the wrong end of the derby.

When is the Gameweek 10 deadline? Fri 6 Nov at 20:00 UK. It is a Friday evening lock, and the rules cover what happens if you let it go past you.

Round 10 is open: one pick, about thirty seconds, over at fpg-app.com. The only question left is whether you fancy following the crowd two rounds running.

Written by Toby Gaskell, Founder of FPG