Week 16

There'll be a change of tone from here on in. If abstinence from Mike's unique brand of ManUre-love and Scouse-hatred makes any of you go cold turkey over Christmas, you can relapse on Twitter (@delpieri).
Straight to business. Another huge week for Harry, with 24 points this weekend. Add that to last week's 28, and that's 52 points in a fortnight. I'm guessing that must be some kind of record. Remarkably, he's still not in the lead, but he's narrowed the gap between first and second to just 15 points. Rooney and van Persie were once again at the vanguard of his assault, scoring 9 points between them, but it was in every sense an all-round effort, with 8 of his team scoring at least 3 points each. If Stoke continue to keep clean sheets, with Begovic and Shawcross in his team he'll be guaranteed a 6-point head start every week. An interesting Christmas period coming up. The jump from second to third is now 30 points, after an average week for most managers. A terrible week for Rico, with -2, sees his recent challenge wane. The table (sorry about the formatting - someone kindly remind me how to paste properly):
Diff   Total Points Defence Midfield Attack   1st Nick Ath 174 47 91 24 15 2nd Harry 159 24 40 75 45 3rd Mike 129 62 46 19 49 4th Rico 125 42 25 54 49 5th James 125 2 53 46 60 6th Sid 114 44 47 20 61 7th Stathis 113 25 41 45 62 8th Theo 112 20 50 39 82 9th Nick Ach 92 27 24 36 102 10th Don 72 16 28 31
One transfer to report: Stathi rebuys Azpilcueta for Bertrand. So long, Your Chairman