Dallas Premier League

Top on Both Counts

benditlikebergvall has the best record in the league, the most points, and now the biggest week of his season

Seven weeks in, most of the table is a story about who drew whom. His is not. He shares the lead at 5-2 with three other managers, and unlike the others he has the scoring to back it up: the most points in the league, and against the whole field each week, the best record anyone has put together.

This week was the biggest of it. His 131 was the top score of the gameweek and one of the four largest anyone has posted this season, built the way his year has been built: Haaland doing what the second overall pick is supposed to do, and Tarkowski, a third-round centre-back, quietly among the most productive defenders in the league. There was almost nothing left on his bench. It was a lineup, not a lottery ticket.

His two losses were his two worst weeks, one of them the lowest score of that gameweek. In the other five he has finished in the top four. The model has noticed: it rates his roster the strongest in the league and gives him better than a one-in-three chance of the title. In a table this bunched, that is the clearest favourite anyone has been.