Could there be a better cure to the January blues than bagging £250,000 on a free competition? Probably not. One of our punters could practically taste the cash and feel the victory on their finger tips this weekend, until Andre Gray dealt them a cruel blow.
It’s easy to understand why this lad would choose the striker as his second selection of the week. He recently bagged the club’s first top-flight hat-trick in over 40 years against Sunderland, alongside a late winner against Middlesbrough on Boxing Day.
With Burnley performing well at Turf Moor – winning four consecutive league games – and Gray looking to be back on-form after his ban for homophobic tweets, he looked like quite the sensible option.
Now, if I’d said a few weeks ago that the winner was going to come from a super-sub by the name of Joey Barton, you’d probably have told me to piss off.
@GaryMurg We might be crap. We may well be really over rated but at least we don’t have to live in Burnley!
— Joseph Barton (@Joey7Barton) May 4, 2014
It took just five minutes for Barton to score a free-kick that put Burnley ahead, despite Southampton looking like the promising side for most of the game. Just 67 people correctly predicted that Joey would score during the game.
Jermain Defoe, this round’s post popular selection with over 75% of punters on him. He had already done the business for Sunderland against Stoke, bagging a goal in the 40th minute despite his team’s eventual loss.
As our Gray-backer’s Jackpot selections went down at the second hurdle, no doubt he hung his head for the rest of the weekend and tried to forget about it, that is until his other seven selections began to slowly trickle in…
Jermain Defoe – Found the net after 40 minutes for Sunderland, scoring their only game in a 1-3 loss to Stoke.
Andre Gray – Let down. Pure and simple.
Junior Stanislas – Grabbed a penalty for Bournemouth after just three minutes, despite his side losing to Hull.
No goalscorer – This impressive prediction was for the Watford v Middlesbrough game.
Manuel Lanzini – It may not have been Carroll’s wonder goal, but Lanzini found the net in The Hammers 3-0 battering of Crystal Palace.
Pedro – Chelsea proved they don’t need Costa anyway, as Pedro fired home in their 3-0 win over Leicester.
Romelu Lukaku – Pep was outed as a fraud, and the big Belgian opened the scoring for The Toffees.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic – United fans prayed to Zlatan last night after he headed in a late equaliser against Liverpool.
After predicting seven out of eight correct scorers, and being the only entrant to do so, this punter won the £2,500 round prize.