Fog Dude

The final scores went into the original post on Sunday night, and the table was figured out soon after that. The Maestro bet against one of his own D2D choices, which is a bit sneaky. It's very much within the rules, but perhaps against the spirit of them. Anyway it worked out well for him as 8 of the other participants disagreed with him, earning him a whopping 16 bonus points and catapulting him up to third place. To be fair, he'd have been into double figures without that alongside 4 more players. Briefcase extends his lead over TildeGuy at the top, but joint worst performer Failed Promoter sinks to the bottom following a decent round for Grecian. The average haul was 9.4 points this time out.

Away from Austria, wins for Bayern, Dundee United, Arsenal, Spurs and Man City all proved fruitful, but stalemates in Stratford and Dingwall were tougher to foresee. A score draw in Frankfurt-am-Main and an unexpectedly comfortable home victory in Eindhoven also turned out to be difficult to guess beforehand. 

The next set of matches will be up in the first post very soon... 

Premier League

Arsenal 3-1 Everton 
Brighton & Hove Albion 2-0 Tottenham Hotspur 
Cardiff City 0-3 Manchester City
West Ham United 1-2 Chelsea 

Scottish Championship
Falkirk 1-0 Dundee United
Ross County 2-2 Inverness Caledonian Thistle

German Bundesliga
Eintracht Frankfurt 1-1 'RasenBallsport' Leipzig 
Schalke 0-2 Bayern Munich 

Eredivisie
PSV Eindhoven 0-0 Ajax Amsterdam

Austrian Bundesliga
Wacker Innsbruck w/The Maestro 2-1 Admira Wacker

The results went into the opening post only about an hour ago. The link to the table and the next set of fixtures will follow shortly. 

Well, it all fell into place nicely for Briefcase this week, didn't it? He got his D2D correct, and 10 out of 13 other participants wrongly thought that Liverpool wouldn't win at Wembley. He now leads the standings by a full 10 points, and would've been top scorer this time out even without those bonus points. The two worst performers of the round, Failed Promoter and Grecian, sink into the bottom two spots. 

I'll be brief since this is late as travel and getting straight back into the swing of things took its toll on me yesterday: the first 3 scorelines proved impossible to foresee exactly right, and the score draw in France turned out to be a dud, but the other 6 outcomes all produced their fair share of one- and three-pointers. The average haul per player was an impressive 9.2 points. 

I'm making my picks earlier than normal because I'm off to Vienna tomorrow morning. As part of that trip I'll be taking in the Viennese derby on Sunday, but the Austrian League will have to wait until the following round to be featured here. All being well I should be back in time to do the update as usual next week.

Premier League

Bournemouth 2-1 Leicester City
Chelsea 3-0 Cardiff City
Everton 2-0 West Ham United 
Huddersfield Town 1-1 Crystal Palace
Manchester City 3-1 Fulham
Newcastle United 2-2 Arsenal
Tottenham Hotspur 1-2 Liverpool w/Briefcase 
Watford 1-0 Manchester United 
Wolverhampton Wanderers 0-0 Burnley 
 

Ligue Un
Toulouse 1-3 Monaco

The results went into the original post on Monday night. I'll put the FPL Cup results in soon along with the next set of fixtures, but in the meantime you can figure out who won by looking at the right-hand side of the table. It might be worth mentioning (belatedly) that the plan is for the top 4 in each group to go through to the quarter-finals. Given that one group could end up with a lot more points than the other through cross-pool play (which sounds like a long-range pass in water polo, now that I think about it), that opens up the possibility of someone sneaking into the knockout stages with only a few draws to their name.

As for the main competition: Vegeta was the top scorer this week and moves up a few places, but TildeGuy was only a point behind him, so he extends his lead at the summit. Rory remains a point adrift at the foot of the standings. We don't need to point out who the worst performer was... 

The average score was 8.78 points this time out, which is slightly on the low side for an international round. Ghana losing in Nairobi against 10 players was a surprise, but a similar reverse for Puerto Rico didn't prove as much of a shock as a couple of people thought they'd come unstuck in the Windward Islands. Canada's victory in a former Danish colony was even more one-sided than anyone expected, although Grecian was only off by one goal. A narrow triumph for El Salvador was easier to guess beforehand. The European outcomes weren't so tough to foresee, with optimism for the Home Nations the main thing catching people out. Another defeat for the Dutch at élite level was generally good for at least one-pointers. 

22 hours ago, Glenryck Pilchards said:

I wish I had discovered that the Danish team is full of ringers a little bit earlier.....

Yeah, I read about that the other day and wondered how many people would notice. Seems the cat's out of the bag now, and the dispute might be resolved in time for the match anyway.

On 9/4/2018 at 7:50 AM, Glenryck Pilchards said:

St kitts and Puerto Rico should be 1-1. Damn fat fingers.

You know you can edit your post as long as you don't do it after the earliest game in any given has kicked off, right? I did manage to mess up the formatting on top of everything else this week though, so any strange symbols in the predictions might not be entirely down to your ample digits.

On 9/4/2018 at 3:25 AM, Shy Dad said:

Apologies for missing last week. Head went all over the place from working nights and then not getting the new job I was after. I don't do walkovers though so I'll update this with my predictions after I finish work 

No worries, I know the feeling. I ended up being unexpectedly busy last week and then found out I'd be even busier than I already thought for the next 6 weeks, which partly explains how my old frazzled brain got confused and ended up doing the update sooner than was necessary. Without further ado, time for my own picks: 

UEFA Nations League

Denmark 2-2 Wales 
England 0-0 Spain 
France 1-1 Netherlands 
Liechtenstein 2-1 Gibraltar 
Northern Ireland 1-0 Bosnia-Herzegovina
Scotland 3-1 Albania 

Africa Cup of Nations qualification Group F

Kenya 0-1 Ghana 

CONCACAF Nations League

Montserrat 0-3 El Salvador 
St Kitts & Nevis 1-3 Puerto Rico 
US Virgin Islands 0-2 Canada 

On 9/1/2018 at 1:12 PM, ultimo the great said:

Oops late to the party

Leicester City COME ON LEICESTER Liverpool (12:30pm)

Oi! No live discussion. 😝 I did mention at the beginning of the sign-up thread that we were going to have a lot of Saturday lunchtime starts this season. You're going to have to be even quicker on the draw next time because it's an international round, so it starts on Friday* (and if you don't like it, go and burn an effigy of Michel Platini). 

Nonetheless you were a bit unlucky. Only myself and MVP RULZ disagreed that Man Utd would win, so you don't get many bonus points for betting correctly. I think I got caught up in the Mourinho/Woodward crisis hype and forgot just how crap Burnley had been in their first 9 matches – still no win in 90 minutes for them. Hopefully you won't be the only person that happens to and in any case, there should be time for a second D2D go-around in the second half of the season where you might get a more balanced fixture. 

The German postponement sets a bad precedent. You can just phone up the German authorities claiming you want to stage a political protest and you can disrupt their schedule massively. Maybe they'll even get so far behind that they'll cancel their overlong winter break! Because the match isn't due to be replayed for quite a while, it's been declared void for FPL purposes. 

Anywya, the rest of the results went into the opening post last night. The table's been updated and also contains the draw for the group stage of the FPL Cup. Next week's matches will also be up there in a tick... 

*ETA: Drat, I got mixed up and could've waited until tomorrow night after all for the update. There are no Friday games this time, but be aware that there could be during the 3 remaining international breaks (plus Easter, of course). 

Unfortunately the match in Dresden has been postponed for the peculiar reason that far-right demonstrations are planned for tomorrow... in Chemnitz. At least it means people have an extra half hour to get their picks in before the Leicester game, I suppose. 

1 hour ago, PunkStep said:

Sorry, just force of habit

That nightmare scenario isn't impossible if one of those clubs finishes third in their Champions League group. (A guy can dream, right?)

I actually think Tottenham would do well to get to the Europa League round of 32 after that horrific draw. Group B looks tougher than Group C. I reckon Napoli rather than Liverpool might miss out there. 

Premier League

Burnley 1-1 Manchester United w/ultimo the great 
Cardiff City 0-2 Arsenal 
Chelsea 3-1 Bournemouth
Leicester City 1-2 Liverpool 
Watford 2-2 Tottenham Hotspur 

Scottish Premiership
Celtic 0-0 Rangers 

La Liga
Celta Vigo 2-1 Atlético Madrid 
Real Betis 1-0 Sevilla 

Zweite Bundesliga
Dynamo Dresden 2-0 Hamburg 
St Pauli 1-3 Cologne

The results went into the opening post on Monday night, then the table was figured out. I forgot to calculate a key statistic in the opening two rounds: the average score! That was a whopping 10.2 points this week, helped in no small part by a terrific performance from top scorer and new leader Glenryck Pilchards, who is above TildeGuy on most exact scores. Adam TH17 was the next best player on 14 points, enough to haul himself out of the bottom two despite missing the previous round. Fellow newcomer The Maestro slips to the bottom though, level on points with worst scorer Rory. 

Vegeta bet wrong on Saints to win at home, with 11 other participants rightly disagreeing with him. Elsewhere, triumphs for Juve, Arsenal and Chelsea, plus a score draw at Dean Court and a stalemate in Huddersfield all proved fruitful, but Man City being held at Molineux and a one-sided away victory at Old Trafford caught quite a few people out. Five- and six-goal thrillers at Craven Cottage and the Stadio San Paolo also turned out to be tough to foresee, so a special mention to ultimo is in order for getting the scoreline from Naples spot on.

A new set of 10 will be up in the original post very soon.

On 8/22/2018 at 9:23 AM, AdamTH17 said:

Apologies again, didn't anticipate how little I'd be on my phone during holiday!
 

Don't sweat it. I can't give you any points for last week, but you only get kicked out if you miss 3 rounds in a row, so you're well in the clear. 

Besides, it sounds like you were doing holidays properly if you hardly ever looked at your phone. Hope you enjoyed it.

Premier League

Arsenal 3-0 West Ham United
Bournemouth 2-1 Everton
Fulham 1-0 Burnley 
Huddersfield Town 0-0 Cardiff City
Manchester United 1-2 Tottenham Hotspur 
Newcastle United 2-2 Chelsea 
Southampton w/Vegeta 1-1 Leicester City 
Wolverhampton Wanderers 0-3 Manchester City

Serie A
Juventus 2-0 Lazio 
Napoli 3-1 Milan 

The results went into the opening post on Sunday night, and now we finally have a shiny new table to link to there shortly. TildeGuy got his D2D bet right since Unai Emery's Arsenal are still labouring under the impression that Shkodran Mustafi is a professional footballer. Half of the other 12 participants disagreed with him, earning him a dozen bonus points and a healthy early lead. It's a bit of a false gap to second place as most people haven't had their D2D turn yet. In a low-scoring round, 3 players would've been joint top scorers on just 8 points apiece without those bonuses.

It looks like @AdamTH17 hasn't got into the habit of making his picks yet, since he sat this one out. Fellow newcomer The Maestro also hasn't yet hit double figures, but Failed Promoter sits in a more than respectable fifth spot after the opening couple of rounds. Briefcase is the nearest challenger thus far, although only 6 points separate him from third last at this early stage. 

Away from Stamford Bridge, genuine home wins for Everton and Leicester and a 'home' victory for Spurs (still at Wembley for the time being) proved the most fruitful results, with the outcomes at Brighton, Burnley and West Ham turning out to be harder to guess beforehand.

Some big scorelines in Germany too, but luckily we avoided the ties that finished 1-9 and 1-11! Mainz winning at Aue yielded a lot of one-pointers and one three-pointer, but a shock on the Baltic coast for Stuttgart caught most people out. Big-spending Hoffenheim emphatically avoided an upset at former champions Kaiserslautern – who nowadays ply their trade in the third tier – which again cost a lot of players a point each.

The next set of 10 fixtures will be in the original post soon. 

18 hours ago, RIDDUM_N_STYLE said:

Question for the non league enthusiasts, what the hell is going on with the changes to the Southern League this season? Why has it been split into two divisions ala what they used to do with the old 4th Division back in the day?

Someone at the FA who's even more obtuse than I am took the word 'pyramid' too seriously. They're aiming for 4 divisions in the seventh tier, 8 in the eighth and 16 in the ninth. Once all the reforms are done it's supposed to be nice and neat. Sadly we're in a complete mess at the moment because there's a long transitional phase, not just in terms of promotion and relegation, but also with how byes work in the early rounds of the FA Cup and Trophy. Clubs are being forced to accept promotion (as well as some questionable sideways moves like the one mentioned above) and the FA is dictating the uniform size of each division to the formerly autonomous leagues. 

Premier League

Brighton & Hove Albion 1-1 Manchester United 
Burnley 0-0 Watford 
Chelsea w/TildeGuy~! 1-0 Arsenal 
Everton 2-2 Southampton 
Leicester City 0-1 Wolverhampton Wanderers
Tottenham Hotspur 3-1 Fulham
West Ham United 0-2 Bournemouth

German Cup First Round
Erzgebirge Aue 1-2 Mainz 
Hansa Rostock 0-3 VfB Stuttgart 
Kaiserslautern 2-1 Hoffenheim

12 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

It's a really interesting subject though, isn't it?  I'm kinda of the position that Europe needs less borders, not more, but it's such a complex issue.  Can you recommend some good reading material on it?

It is indeed fascinating. I'd say the world as a whole needs fewer international borders. 

I'm often shit at remembering where I actually acquired knowledge or saw a great bit of analysis, I'm afraid. That trait didn't serve me very well at university. A load of what I've read about Catalonia won't have been in English anyway.

Don't get me wrong about The Guardian either. There's a lot of great stuff in there still. It's just that much of their reporting on the Catalan crisis appeared to have been dictated to them from inside the Ecuadorian embassy. 

On 8/11/2018 at 7:20 PM, RoryFice said:

As I have never had a successful D2D team ever, perhaps it's time to stop picking exotic diddy teams. Bloody faux-German Romanians.

Well, that's one interpretation of 20th-century European history, I guess. You got your D2D bet wrong and 12 of the other 13 participants got their bonus points. Only ultimo agreed with you, but only Vegeta got maximum points for that result. I seem to recall that the Romanian top flight used to be called Divizia A, which sounds a lot cooler than plain old Liga I. You could probably pick some less unusual clubs next time though, yeah. I bumped Dundee-Aberdeen off the card at the last minute just to get this one out of the way!

It's that awkward first week when there isn't even a table to link to yet. Newcomer The Maestro is joint last with Rory, but I'm sure he'll have better luck soon. Briefcase is the early leader on 11 points, over Glenryck and TildeGuy, who were the other players into double figures this time. New fixtures will be up in the original post in a minute. 

You're right. I was maybe drawing an inference that wasn't quite there. It is an error that the newspaper in question was clinging to frequently late last year, mind you.

If however, he was saying that the left-wing credentials of Sánchez can only be measured by his attitude towards Catalonia, then I'd maintain that he's already shown a marked difference in domestic and refugee policy since coming to power. As you say, we should wait for David to clear that up himself. 

All right Keith, teach me how to argue properly then. 

The way the now-deposed PP government dealt with the attempted referendum in Catalonia was violent and authoritarian. David obviously sees those as exclusive traits of the right.

The main motivation for the separatist movement in Catalonia is for the region to keep more of its own money and quite possibly even to stop water being sent to the drier south during the summer. Lately there are useful idiots from the utopian far left (in this case, the ERC and the CUP) backing them because they now want independence at all costs. The secessionist 'project' has only ever been led by figures from the right, however – first Mas, then Puigdemont and now Torra. 

I don't know if that addresses David's point in an acceptable manner, but it's an interesting enough subject to me that I'm going to leave it here anyway. 

Just now, Keith Houchen said:

No he isn't, he is pointing out the irony of a party calling themselves Socialista are anything but.

Okay, but that's true of a lot of parties that have inherited the name 'Socialist' or 'Labour/Workers' in many countries these days. 

It's a fair point that the PSOE attitude towards Catalonia has made them a bit too cosy with the Spanish mainstream right (which is less overtly racist than in almost any other European country, by the way). In other ways, though, Sánchez has sought to distance himself from the policies of the previous administration under Mariano Rajoy despite lacking anything like a parliamentary majority, particular in regard to refugees. 

On 8/13/2018 at 3:22 PM, David said:

Spain is a very Catholic, traditional country with undertones of Franco still in existence in my opinion. The way they simply crushed the Catalan independence movement was a prime example of that.

It's a weird old place, as you'd assume that having a party knows as Partido Socialista Obrero Español in power would be a good thing, but the leader of that party, Pedro Sánchez, supported measures to take control of the regional administration last year and sack the last Catalan government.

Not terribly left-wing I'm sure you'd agree.

You're making the Guardian-style mistake of thinking the Catalan separatist movement isn't led by the right. 

On 8/13/2018 at 7:04 AM, PowerButchi said:

*Barnsley Football Club.

Please stick to your quite fucking sweet, quite frankly, sporting knowledge. Especially as regards Welsh league football.

See? I'm not that bad, referring to teams with 'FC' like an unreadable UEFA.com article. For a real masterclass in that kind of bellendery, check out what UKGameShows.com insisted on calling the World Cup final. Like the rest of you I call it France v Croatia, for the record. 

Diolch Butch. Yeah, I watched your beloved Cefn Druids lose at Cofi on S4C on Sunday afternoon and I've noticed who's top of the Cymru Alliance after 2 games following an enforced demotion, but who else wants to discuss that here? 

On 8/13/2018 at 4:14 PM, The British Bushwacker said:

*Headington United

One of the teams to vote against Oxford City being elected, 2 years later changed their name and got elected themselves, we still like to think of ourselves as the 'real' Oxford club, our average home gates of 270 to theirs says otherwise.

Thank fuck for that! Sorry I couldn't remember your username earlier. Thanks for the advice from @Cod Eye too. Sad to hear that you feel you have to avoid some situations due to your disability. I've done the same the past couple of days.

As for tonight, away from the Champions League it was strange to see League Cup matches going straight to penalties after full time, even though that change was already announced a couple of months ago. Can't really get excited about any of the (very few) upsets either.

24 minutes ago, Teedy Kay said:

Neither did either of the Dundees from the other, so you're point in relation to your own rules is?

*your

To be fair that point only really applies to Oxford. The two Bradford clubs coexisted peacefully for decades in the Football League. 

Dundee and Dundee United are clearly quite an unusual case. Like I said, fans of The Terrors probably wouldn't appreciate being referred to as simply 'Dundee'. 

38 minutes ago, Teedy Kay said:

Didn't know that teams from the Southern League Premier South played in the Checkatrade Trophy!?

Town never stole a place in the professional game from Supermarine though, did they? 

4 minutes ago, Cod Eye said:

Go bollocks. You know for a fact that if someone mentions Bradford or Oxford in relation to The Football League, then they don't mean Oxford City or BPA. You're just trying to be an arse...

I'm really not. When I say something "does my head in" I genuinely mean it. Try living with Asperger's Syndrome for 33 years and then get back to me about how it feels. If I had a pound for every time I've held back from posting what I was thinking about inaccuracies I'd be able to retire by now, but I can't do it all the time. Pedantry isn't a gimmick, it's my condition and my personality. 

Anyway I'm sure we used to have a semi-regular poster here who was an Oxford City supporter that never got abuse for fighting the same fight. Unfortunately I can't remember at the moment who it was.