Two of the best performances you will see this week came in the so-called non-elite leagues, as Sekou Koita of Red Bull Salzburg and Vladimir Rodic of Hammarby both scored a perfect 10 in their respective outings.
In our top five performers, nobody scored less than a nine!
The Malian scored two superb goals and provided two assists as well as creating a further key chance that should have been converted. He was his team's key man on the day with most of their positive play in attacking areas going through him. It seems that if star striker Erling Haaland were to leave next summer as expected, with elite teams reportedly interested, Salzburg already have a ready-made replacement ready to go.
Rodic was the standout performer for Hammarby in their comfortable 5-1 victory over Orebro, scoring a magnificent hat-trick. His first was a glancing header to equalise after his team had started poorly, and he stepped it up in the second half, smashing home a shot from the edge of the area in off the post, before rounding off his treble by cutting inside and curling into the top corner from inside the box.
Two goals and an assist from Aleksic as Basaksehir demolished Rizespor 5-0. To open the scoring, the Serbian cleverly held his run a yard or two inside the box to receive the reverse pass and whip a clinical finish home. His second was controversial in that it was initially ruled as offside, only for VAR to intervene to determine his close-range tap-in was legitimate. VAR actually giving a goal...interesting.
Two excellent strikers' goals from Fountas. The first displayed impressive opportunism as he took advantage of some unsure defending to burst through the backline and lash a right-footed strike home. For his second, to equalise and make it 2-2 later in the game, he beat the offside trap with an intelligent run before sliding a left-footed finish under the oncoming keeper.
Zinckernagel got Bodo/Glimt off to a flyer in their match against Tromso, scoring with just two minutes on the clock with a delightful chip after receiving a through-pass from Hakon Evjen. He scored his second to wrap up the 4-0 win just after the hour mark, once again receiving a lovely assist, this time from Fredrik Bjorkan, to coolly finish.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Two stars from the Eredivisie just missed out on the top five, as Sam Larsson of Feyenoord and Dennis Telgenkamp of Emmen were key for their teams' victories over Twente and Den Haag respectively. Larsson scored two in a 5-0 win for Feyenoord, while Telgenkamp made five saves and three clearances for Emmen as they kept a clean sheet in their comfortable 3-0 win.
ROUND TO FORGET
Conceding five goals as a goalkeeper is never a good day at the office, so certainly a round to forget for Rizaspor's Gokhan Akkan, who was hapless between the sticks his team's 5-0 defeat by Basaksehir. He made two saves the entire game, but one poor piece of judgement led directly to a goal. On to the next one, Gokhan!