{"id":357506,"date":"2025-08-19T19:15:19","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T19:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/357506\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T19:15:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T19:15:19","slug":"northern-ireland-international-tops-fantasy-premier-league-standings-after-incredible-topflight-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/357506\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland international tops Fantasy Premier League standings after incredible topflight debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a weekend it was for Sunderland defender Daniel Ballard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not only did the Northern Ireland international make his Premier League debut alongside his international teammate Trai Hume<\/a>, but he also scored as the Black Cats got off to the perfect start beating West Ham 3-0.<\/p>\n

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Ballard<\/a> headed home Simon Adingra’s cross in the second half to make it 2-0 to the hosts at the Stadium of Light.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/b> Next’s ‘light and comfy’ boots now \u00a323 down from \u00a365<\/a><\/p>\n

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In the first half the 25-year-old was alert to get back and clear El Hadji Malick Diouf’s shot off the line with the scores still level at that stage.<\/p>\n

Those telling interventions at either end not only earned Sunderland an opening day win but also meant Ballard was the top player in the Fantasy Premier League this week.<\/p>\n

Remarkably three FPL managers triple-captained the centreback meaning they picked up a whopping 51 points!<\/p>\n

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Ballard even outscored Semenyo and Haaland even though the forwards helped themsleves to a brace in their opening games.<\/p>\n

While the former Arsenal man finishing as top scorer on game week one may have caught a few by surprise spare a thought for one FPL manager.<\/p>\n

@tarnjit_hundal posted: “Took him out my team on Wednesday gonna stop listening to these FPL experts.”<\/p>\n

It’s been an incredible few months for Ballard after he scored the goal to take Sunderland to the Championship play-off at Wembley back in May, now he is relishing being in the topflight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lads were so focused. We\u2019ve had this game in the back of our minds for six weeks now,\u201d he told safc.com.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe lads were ready. We matched them toe-to-toe and we had that little bit of quality in the final third which was the difference.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t quite expect to score today,\u201d he added. \u201cI thought I might have to wait a while for my next one but I\u2019ve been working on it a lot in the last few days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat second phase around the back post is something we\u2019ve worked on. It was a great ball in and I was delighted to score again. It was a fantastic feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What a weekend it was for Sunderland defender Daniel Ballard. Not only did the Northern Ireland international make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[161,125881,97359,10985,70212,1144,69408,101,125883,125882,69031,16,15,1927],"class_list":{"0":"post-357506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-arsenal","9":"tag-daniel-ballard","10":"tag-el-hadji-malick-diouf","11":"tag-fantasy-premier-league","12":"tag-haaland","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-northern-ireland-international","15":"tag-premier-league","16":"tag-semenyo","17":"tag-simon-adingra","18":"tag-trai-hume","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-west-ham"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115057034813789380","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}