Fog Dude
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Posts posted by Fog Dude
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It might be a low bar to clear, but I'd say Angel Has Fallen is better than either Olympus or London.
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Decades ago, a Boost was my chocolate bar of choice from the vending machine on a Friday (the one day I didn't bring in a packed lunch) but I recall my friend who I was studying A-level German with made a bloody convincing case for a Lion bar as well.
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1 hour ago, SuperBacon said:
Well this will pop at least 2 members on here
WWE oughta book the SkyDome and see if they can outsell British Uprising 2004.
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As we know, WrestleMania tends to take place in late March or early April, which is close to the men's footie international break so Spurs or West Ham (or Arsenal) wouldn't have a European game around that time. Wembley might want to host an England home match instead though.
The FA Cup semi-finals are generally a good few weeks later than that these days, so there's no issue with Wembley there. Some people have managed to find logistical barriers where none actually exist.
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27 minutes ago, Tamura said:
Take a look at the online jobs market, in paritcular admin jobs. You'll find a reasonable standard of English is pretty much the bare minimum to be considered for many jobs, that's before you even get to things like telephone manner or knowledge of Microsoft products.
If you're suggesting my voting choices are based on grammar then you're mistaken. I have the misfortune to live (or in the future potentially so due to bondaries being redrawn) in a marginal seat so my vote goes to Labour without any consideration based on the suitability of any of the candidates. That said, I remember getting a local election leaflet for a potential Tory candidate that had over 20 spelling and grammatrical errors in, starting with the hilarious "Since been elected" as the opening of the first sentence.
Once again, I'm not criticising Dorris per se. I'm making the broader point that people running the country aren't capable of communicating using a level of English that would get you a minimum wage jon as an administator.Oh, mate... people in glass houses and all that. "It's" isn't always a contraction of "it is" by the way. What's it short for in the phrase "it's still got plenty left in the tank" for instance?
Besides, possession or otherwise of qualifications or traits which are required for most jobs are not a measure of someone's dignity. The only qualification for being an MP is to get voted in, and rightly so (although Culture Secretary probably was on overpromotion for the lawmaker in question here).
Punctuation aside though, yes Dorries has hardly covered herself in glory this past week. But the whole melodrama over whether she gets a peerage and when she's actually gonna step down and what Johnson promised her is just a distraction from the wider Conservative civil war from which we're all suffering, as well as the increasingly cruel and extreme policies the whole party still seems to be getting behind.
At least if this blue-on-blue action were happening after a Tory election loss it'd be a bit funnier for the rest of us. Then again, without a functioning opposition who knows what a government of another stripe would try to get away with.
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6 hours ago, Mr_Danger said:
Sounds like a bellend.
Well, for a guy born as late as 1986, it is more than a bit suspicious that his middle name is Adolfo.
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Well, it looks like this season will go down in history as the one where The Colossus of Boggo Road denied Sheikh Mansour the Quadruple.
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On 6/7/2023 at 11:05 PM, TildeGuy~! said:
2nd to @MVP RULZOnce again
Congrats.
Hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you dropped to third place behind ultimo at the very end there mate.
I know it can be difficult to find the link to the standings among my usual wall of text, which is why we embed it into a post at the very end of the season. So on that note, here is the final classification for the record books:
Not much more to say about this, but it's notable that Stinky's season fell away somewhat as he sank into mid-table behind a returning seph, so he appears among both the positive and negative stats. The champion is unsurprisingly found twice there, with my own username also to be seen three times on the right-hand side. Again, not exactly shocking.
The only other noteworthy thing to add would be that ultimo would've won the whole thing if he hadn't skipped 3 entire rounds. Even though he hasn't missed a round for months, and last time he did it hardly looked like he'd be in title contention, it just goes to show that it does pay to stay on the ball and make posting your picks part of your weekly routine.
Keep in mind that partial missed weeks are not accounted for when working out the averages. Shy Dad and Nicko make a return in this archived version of the table. The former would be welcomed back with open arms next season, the latter would be treated with a tad more suspicion. Oh, and we're definitely not following any whims in August that by March were clearly utter brainfarts, i.e. the thread will be just about the Predictions and Fantasy League discussion will have to go elsewhere again. Adding a write-up about that every week added to my workload and it felt so futile when it was clear fairly early on that nobody else was about to provide even occasional updates as to how they were going.
As for the question from our champion, I'm not the best custodian at this as on my current laptop I've only got the archive from the past 4 of my 15(!!) seasons of running this. Plus, we had to switch image-hosting sites for the table from Photobucket to imgur somewhere along the way, so quite a bit was lost at that point too. But regardless, @MVP RULZ has definitely won 3 of the last 4 with only my complete anomaly somehow preventing 4 in a row, and instinctively I feel like he won at least one more back when there were quite a few more people taking part.
So that's it then. For somebody who said they were so totally done with the current season, I was still enough of a football junkie to be tuning into the Conference League final on YouTube (via the smart TV, natch) and checking the Irish play-off results this past midweek.
If nobody else comes forward to organise it, then I'll start a sign-up thread week commencing the 24th of July, with the main thread following on the evening of the 9th of August. In the meantime, either enjoy the men's Champions League final and the internationals plus the preliminary rounds of next season's UEFA club competitions, or else just take a break from footie for a while if that's what you prefer.
Me? I'll be trying to find a stream of the Spezia v Verona relegation playout on Sunday night, then adding some Premier League fixtures to the 2023-24 spreadsheet by Thursday lunchtime...
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1 hour ago, Your Fight Site said:
He’s an absolute cunt, so not surprised to see him “succeed” as a Tory MP.
Not an MP, he's got one of those nonsense 'regional mayor' jobs – in his case on Teesside, where he's frequently mentioned in Private Eye in relation to very dodgy dealings involving the 'freeport' up there. Which I guess in his eyes makes him a success. To most people that sounds like unbridled corruption.
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The InterToto was an infinitely superior competition. And West Ham actually (jointly) won that in 1999 too but it apparently doesn't count as a trophy.
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Was utterly baffled by above post last night (unless Barry is some kind of sitcom about Fantasy Football or predictions that I need to check out?) but it saves me from double posting, so I'll take it. I'll aim for earlier Wednesday posts next season, but tonight once I didn't get this out before the Conference League final started I knew it'd have to wait until afterwards.
Anyway, the top of the thread was updated for the final time last night, so the table has since been updated and uploaded too.
Without further ado, it's my pleasure to announce that MVP RULZ has retained his title and is once again the UKFF Football Predictions League Champion! Huge congrats to him. This one's for 2022-23 although I'm sure he's losing track of the years by now like the rest of us. To sweeten his victory even further, his beloved Owls achieved promotion with a record points total for a third-place team in their division, managing to knock a Champions League-bound team out of the FA Cup and produce an all-timer in the comeback stakes along the way. Fortunately for Wednesday, that inexplicable defeat to Big Dunc's vegan army over the March international break didn't quite come back to haunt them.
The symmetry continues as I finished last for the second year running. Kind of calls into question my credentials for even selecting the fixtures week to week, doesn't it? That one year I actually won looks more like a total fluke all the time.
Unusually, there was actually one bit of movement on the last day. Worst performer this time out, Tilde, was overtaken by this round's top scorer ultimo in the closing stretch, which means the latter has ended up as runner-up in both our predictions competitions this season. Always the bridesmaid, eh?
In terms of the matches, highly anticipated wins for *deep breath* Barça's women, Man City, Celtic, Leipzig, Inter, Lazio, Juve's men, Porto and Flamengo each proved fruitful. The Spanish results and the Italian women's game yielded a mixed bag of guesses, whilst the French outcomes plus two stalemates across the pond caught most people out.
All of the season-long stats should be embedded in one big climactic post which is currently tentatively scheduled for Friday, which is also when you can find out details on when to expect the sign-up and main threads to go live over the summer.
In the meantime, gratitude and feedback/suggestions are both equally welcome as usual. Thanks to all for playing!
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On 6/2/2023 at 8:17 PM, Fog Dude said:
The regular round-up to this week's action might appear earlier than usual since I'll be in Manchester on Tuesday.
Well, I thought I goofed here so it's good to know I didn't make any promises! This isn't the big announcement of this season's champion, but it has turned into an announcement about next season that the regulars should be interested in.
I added the Brazilian match to the provisional final 'bumper' week a couple of months ago. I then spotted nearer the time that it'd been put back to "0:00" today and interpreted that as midnight last night. I didn't want to swap it out for and took a chance that it meant the hour I initially thought.
However, my hunch was wrong and the match still hasn't kicked off at the time of typing this. So, that means we won't have all the results in until 2am. By which time I need to be asleep before getting on the train to Manchester tomorrow. Meaning the initial round-up is now not due until Wednesday, with the final blurb following goodness knows when.
It's quite likely we've got a mathematical winner already but I don't like to figure out the 'ordinary' points (as opposed to bonuses, which there aren't any of this week anyway) until all the scores are in. I'm sure the top three could figure it out among themselves if they're really getting impatient.
"But how does all this relate to future seasons??" I hear you ask. Ah, well you see, it gives me the chance to make two key changes known:
First of all, Monday games will be available for inclusion on the card as standard, not just on Bank Holidays. It's always been a silly rule, since Monday Night Football has been well established for decades now. Besides, cup ties that get postponed can have results featured as long as they're completed within a few days. Friday night and Saturday lunchtime matches will continue to be ineligible (except at Easter – I'm looking at you, ultimo) to give people the widest possible chance to make their picks in time. And that's even more important than before, because...
... the other change is that I'll aim for the weekly round-ups and posting the new set of 10 in the initial post on Wednesday evening, instead of last thing Tuesday night at present. For ages I prided myself on slipping that in before midnight, but you've probably noticed that it's been a couple of hours later than that more often, and that's not healthy for me or the competition. The only people it's perhaps unfair to are Tilde and Vegeta who tend to pick early, but it makes sense to wait until most teams' midweek matches are over so we know how the form book stands.
Plus: inadvertently, you're all getting a preview of both those changes this week! Rather like when teams wear the subsequent season's home shirt in their last fixture of the season so they can sell a load of them over the summer.
Right, that'll do for the moment. Thought it'd be good to say that now rather than rain on the eventual winner's parade with a bunch of admin and housekeeping.
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On 5/31/2023 at 8:51 AM, Fatty Facesitter said:
Morning all, posted this in the main footie thread but if Mark Field (AKA Tomiyasewy) can drop me a PM, he has won the coveted Official FPL UKFF 'Chippy Tea League' - and thus not only has he won the league, but also as per I promise I made earlier in the season, he's won a free chippy tea on me 👍
Congrats to him, and to the winner to the Chippy Tea Cup. Proud to have been runner-up in the latter tournament even if I finished absolutely nowhere in the main league competition. Hope Tomiyasewy enjoys his meal!
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Full disclosure – I did consider rounding out the card with the men's A-League final, but of course a Saturday night game in Australia is a Saturday morning one here, and that's too soon a start for us so you were all spared one last trip Down Under.
The regular round-up to this week's action might appear earlier than usual since I'll be in Manchester on Tuesday. Not for a football thing, but it does feel apt since it's the first-ever Manc derby FA Cup Final a few days prior.
That'll hopefully be followed by the big final blurb to finish off the thread before next season's EPL fixtures come out, which is just 4 days after the men's UCL final. No respite for ol' Foggy.
Women's UEFA Champions League Final
Barcelona 3-1 Wolfsburg (at the Philips-Stadion, Eindhoven)
FA Cup Final
Manchester City 3-0 Manchester United (@ Wembley)Scottish FA Cup Final
Celtic 4-0 Inverness Caledonian Thistle (@ Hampden)DFB-Cup Final
Eintracht Frankfurt 2-1 RB Leipzig (at the Olympiastadion, Berlin)Primera División
Villarreal 2-2 Atlético Madrid
Celta Vigo 1-0 BarcelonaSerie A
Torino 1-1 Inter
Empoli 1-2 Lazio
Udinese 2-0 JuventusLigue 1
Auxerre 0-0 Lens
Monaco 3-2 Toulouse
Nice 3-3 Olympique Lyonnais
Stade de Reims 0-1 MontpellierPortuguese Cup Final
Porto 2-1 Sporting Braga (at the Estádio Nacional, Oeiras)Women's Italian Cup Final
Juventus 0-2 Roma (in Salerno)Campeonato Brasileiro
Vasco da Gama 1-3 FlamengoMLS
Seattle Sounders 2-2 Portland Timbers
Colorado Rapids 1-1 San José Earthquakes -
Right, let's round up the Fantasy League for the last time, then we can focus solely on the Predictions next week. And indeed, next season as we can hopefully agree never to speak of this sordid tryst between the two FPL threads ever again.
I did use my last free transfer in the end, bringing in Eze of Palace and captaining him while shipping out Fulham's Reed. The former had a half-chance late on against Forest but ultimately just got the bog-standard 2 points doubled up.
Scored were down across the board as a lot of players were rested in what was a low-key final day for over half the teams in the league. Of my other 14 players, 8 didn't play, including both keepers. Curse you, Klopp, for resting Alisson just for the fixture list's death throes! And damn Lopetegui too for suddenly giving Kilman a breather. At least my vice-captain Thiago Silva was lucky enough to actually get a full 90 minutes under his belt too.
All that meant I suffered more than most from the changed line-ups and got only 20 points for the round, so I lost the election nerds' Cup final as well as the coveted Chippy Tea one. I made it to my bare minimum target of 2k points with room to spare by finishing on 2,146 points but not winning any cups at all is definitely a step backwards. I was in the top 4m players out of nearly 11.5m globally, and almost in the top 40,000 for Welsh residents.
My squad was worth just £98.3m at the finish line, with £600k in the bank, so I wasn't great at spotting which players were about to increase in value. Used to pride myself on that. Drat.
Selling Kane with a month to go felt like a good bet because Spurs had no double rounds and were out of form. While both those things stayed true, ol' Harry the Tory simply carried on scoring regardless so letting him go was possibly the last big mistake in a season full of lots of little one that all built up as the campaign went on.
My best finish was 4th in the league for neurodiverse people from the Westcountry – even though I no longer live there – and my lowest (not counting huge semi-official leagues of Fantasy Football podcasts), 19th in the league simply entitled 'UKFF'. Not even a bronze medal anywhere in sight. Gah!
Whilst this remains a joint topic, feel free to post your squads or mention how you did in the replies. Make the most of it, because it's not an offer I'm going to be extending to next term's thread.
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Whew, that ^ took forever. But it's over now. And as a fan of a Championship club who attended only matches in the Welsh pyramid this year, I was so over this neverending season weeks ago already. But I decided that it'd be improper to end it before the last set of EPL games. And as a fusspot, I don't want to end on an even number of rounds.
So we've still got one week left to go. The only gimmick is that it's a 'bumper' week. No wildcard fixture, no D2D, no FPL Cup, just 18 matches worth 3 points each. So, all to play for still. MVP RULZ leads the table by half a dozen heading into that final day, and can perhaps count himself unlucky that the League One play-off final wasn't featured because he'd probably have picked up at least one more point for that.
Instead, the clash we did include at Wembley went to penalties so that yielded no points whatsoever. All season long there was space earmarked for two German fixtures, but at the last minute I could only find room for one. And Dortmund blew it, so that was another dud. If I'd have known they'd choke I might've made more effort to keep Cologne-Bayern in after all.
The last 'wildcard' encounter of the season fell at Fir Park, where Dundee Utd's relegation was confirmed as their cross-town (cross-road?) rivals pass them on the way up. There was a point earlier this season when both of those outcomes looked highly unlikely. Football, eh? Anyway, the hosts won by the odd goal in 5 and 5 was also the number of people who claimed a bonus point each.
Elsewhere, wins for Everton, Leicester and the Chelsea, Man Utd and Celtic women's teams all proved fruitful, but not everybody foresaw Villa getting the three points they needed to get an Unai Emery side into Europe. As if that should ever have been in doubt! Yet another cratering of the Leeds defence turned out surprisingly difficult to guess beforehand. Probably because their opponents were Tottenham, plus there are a lot of Big Sam admirers on here.
The conclusive card of 2022-23 will mercifully go live in the opening post sharpish.
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So, triple-captaining Haaland worked out a bit better after Wednesday night's game, but would've seemed wiser still if that late goal had stood. It's moved me up a bit in a couple of leagues, but I was still narrowly knocked out of my family league Cup and absolutely thrashed in another semi.
Not decided whether to use my spare free transfer yet, since we've also got all of tomorrow to make a choice either way. I've got a spare £2m in the bank but am resigned to having a squad worth well under the maximum budget come the end of the season. Could pick somebody who's at home in a meaningless easy-looking fixture, or a player likely to start for a team that needs to win to get into Europe or stay up. One of my two Fulham outfielders would be prime candidates for the chop.
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Premier League
Aston Villa 3-1 Brighton & Hove Albion
Everton 2-0 Bournemouth
Leeds United 3-2 Tottenham Hotspur
Leicester City 2-1 West Ham UnitedChampionship Play-off Final
Coventry City 1-2 Luton Town (@ Wembley)Scottish Premiership
Motherwell 3-3 Dundee UnitedWSL
Liverpool 1-0 Manchester United
Reading 0-3 ChelseaWomen's Scottish Cup Final
Celtic 0-1 Rangers (@ Hampden)Imitation Bundesliga
Borussia Dortmund 3-0 Mainz -
I'm on a measly 30 points so far this round in the Fantasy League. That's below average and puts me down in two leagues (including Chippy Tea, unfortunately) and level in the rest.
Of the Cups I was knocked out of last time, I was admittedly thrashed in one but in another I lost by only 4 points, and in the other I succumbed by a mere 2 points! Agonising stuff.
This season I'm on course to make it to just a single Cup final, which would be a disappointing step backwards considering I won 2 of them last campaign.
The best performers in my squad this week are Kieran Tripper and Declan Rice... but I left the latter in the last sub spot in what could prove to have been his last home game for The Hammers. Triple Captain seems wasted on Haaland at the moment. Haven't decided what to do with my last free transfer of the season yet, so I'll let you all know once the current Gameweek has been completed.
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On a similar note, that Man City-Chelsea should never have ended up as the D2D match in all honesty, considering it turned out to have nothing riding on it after all. It's been an unusual season in terms of scheduling, and in fairness, when somebody keeps picking City as their second choice (which means that turn will likely fall in the second half of the season) and they've been an absolute machine in the run-in for 5 of the past 6 years, something like this was bound to happen sooner or later.
That said, Vegeta hardly receiving any bonus points despite getting his D2D bet correct, in a round where I'm top scorer, is just what the doctor ordered in terms of making things exciting at the foot of the standings. By the same token, we appear to have a bit of a title race again as the chasing pack of Tilde and ultimo both made it into double figures to close the gap to MVP RULZ at the summit.
So yeah, the results went into the first post on Sunday night and the table has since has its penultimate ordinary update for the present term. It was a high-scoring round, with the remaining bonuses coming from the randomly selected "wildcard" fixture, the FA Trophy Final. Nobody got the exact scoreline of 1-0 – or at least, not the right way around – but 4 participants did at least foresee a win for the Shaymen to claim an extra point apiece.
Elsewhere, victories on the road for Man Utd and PSG plus dramatic score draws at Anfield, Molineux and the Estádio José Alvalade were generally fruitful, but a stalemate in Nice and crucial away reverses for Arsenal and Marseille caught most people out.
The last regular set of 10 for 2022-23 will be up at the top of the thread shortly.
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Now that the Fantasy League Gameweek is finally over, my provisional score is 93 points, bringing me to 2,052 overall. That puts me up in five leagues, static in the rest. Looks like I'm out of one of the UKFF cups and well as that of a group for neurodiverse people in the West of England. I've snuck through to the semis against my cousin once removed in the family cup, and am comfortably progressing versus election nerds, mates from secondary school and last but not least, in the all-important Chippy Tea Cup.
Pope did score one more point than Alisson in the end. Mitoma turned out to be a poor choice for the armband after all, with his 5 points doubling up to 10. In addition to the players mentioned in the previous post, Haaland, Burn, Tripper and even his own team-mate Lewis Dunk would've been a better pick. That basically cost me any chance of hitting a century for the round. Glad I didn't use up the triple Chip this time, at least.
I am, however, cashing in the treble captaincy on the Norwegian goal machine next time (as boringly obvious a tactic as that is) with Dunk as back-up. I'm prioritising players with a double header once again, so I've left Alisson, Ings, Robinson and Rice on the bench in that order somewhat reluctantly because they've only got one match apiece, even though it's a very winnable home fixture in each case. We'll see how that works out in a few days, I suppose...
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Premier League
Bournemouth 0-2 Manchester United
Liverpool 3-2 Aston Villa
Wolves 0-3 Everton
Nottingham Forest 1-1 Arsenal
Manchester City w/Vegeta 3-1 ChelseaFA Trophy Final
Gateshead 1-0 Halifax Town (@ Wembley)Ligue 1
Lille 2-0 Olympique de Marseille
Nice 0-0 Toulouse
Auxerre 1-2 Paris Saint-GermainA Primeira Liga
Sporting Clube 2-2 SL e Benfica -
Still one match to go in the current Fantasy League gameweek, and things are looking... okay. Seems I'm heading out of two Cups and it's gonna be close in a couple of others. I'm ahead by a single point in one of the UKFF ties, but we've both got a bunch of players who could appear again on Thursday night so it's still up in the air there. It's likely that Gündoğan and Salah will get more points from one match than my sextet of double-duty workers will from two.
I left Alisson on the bench and he's currently got a point more than Pope, but the latter plays again in midweek. Reed's 6 points will replace the strangely absent John Stones, but I'm not getting Robinson's half-dozen. Sandwiched in between them is Ings on 2 points, but he was unlucky to have a goal ruled out for handball on Sunday. Had that been allowed I'd have been cursing that I used up my Bench Boost already in the previous round.
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The final Predictions League scores went up in the initial post on Sunday night, including the one for the actual FPL Cup Final. Hard luck for ultimo, but well done to @Vegeta who lifts the coveted trophy and was the weekly top scorer in the process. That also means he's now almost certainly not gonna finish last in the table, but in this high-scoring round I'm gonna say there was no shame in being the least good performer this time out, even if I might be a little bit biased in that regard.
No change in the leading trio, but special mention to the chasing pack as seph was the only other participant into double figures, whilst Stinky nabbed all the bonus points for himself by getting the scoreline spot on from the randomly selected 'wildcard' fixture, match #8, even though a couple more people correctly managed the right result from Balaídos – which was an away win.
Elsewhere, victories for Man Utd, Man City, Fulham, Chelsea Women and Barcelona all proved fruitful, whereas home successes for Villa and Palace caught a fair few players out. Guesses for the stalemate at Pittodrie and the Coupe de France féminine result turned out to be more of a mixed bag.
For most of this season it wasn't my intention to hold the Cup final before we get all the D2Ds done, but plans kept changing even more than usual so that's what we've ended up with. Nonetheless it's probably best to get it out of the way this coming weekend so that it doesn't end up on a potentially meaningless final-day fixture. So that'll feature on the next card which will go live in the opening post very soon.
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In the Fantasy League, I've got the highest possible number of Brighton and Newcastle players in my starting XI ahead of their game against each other in a week's time. Decided to give the armband to Mitoma with Trippier as back-up, but I'll hold off on using my Triple Captain chip until there's a slightly busier midweek for the following matchday.
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Premier League
Aston Villa 3-1 Spurs
Crystal Palace 0-0 Bournemouth
Manchester United 1-0 Wolves
Southampton 2-1 Fulham
Everton 0-3 Manchester CityFA Women's Cup Final
Chelsea 3-0 Manchester United (@ Wembley)Scottish Premiership
Aberdeen 2-0 HibernianLa Liga
Celta Vigo 1-1 Valencia
Espanyol 1-2 BarcelonaFrench Women's Cup Final
Olympique Lyonnais 0-1 Paris Saint-Germain (in old Orleans) -
On 5/6/2023 at 12:46 PM, ultimo the great said:
I can also dice slice and julienne
Haha, touché. You've had a decent couple of rounds to be fair, avoiding being the lowest scorer last time despite a wrong D2D bet and then this week being the second best performer, a point ahead of anyone else in the top 6. Similarly, seph picked late over the weekend but was nonetheless not among the trio of joint lowest scorers. Now for the bad news: your Cup final opponent, Vegeta, did even better and is now 10 points clear of last place as the only player into double figures for the round. In another development you'll love, the first club matches added to next season's spreadsheet are from Seattle and The Twin Cities. Oh joy!
Anyway, as you can probably tell, the results went into the original post on Monday night, with the table being recalculated right away after that. MVP RULZ extends his lead by a point, widening the gap over TildeGuy to 7. The bonuses this time came just from the 'wildcard' which was randomly selected once the scores were in as match #4, the huge clash at St James's Park. A majority of participants correctly thought there'd be a narrow away win, but nobody thought it'd be a comfortable 2-0 victory for the title-chasing Gunners.
Elsewhere, triumphs for Chelsea, Spurs, Fulham, Huddersfield, Real Madrid and Bayern generally proved fruitful, but a reverse for Villa, setback for Stuttgart and a ridiculous final-say seven-goal thriller at The Den (which saw both teams miss out on the play-offs in what was surely a swansong for Ben Brereton Díaz at Blackburn) all turned out tougher to foresee.
The FPL Cup final set of 10, including two more actual Cup finals, will be up in the first post shortly.
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Speaking of which, I'm through to the quarter-finals of in no fewer than SEVEN (count 'em!) cups in the Fantasy League and climbed the standings in six private leagues recently. I'm also only 16 points off that magic 2,000 mark so barring disaster should get there with plenty to spare this season. With the Bench Boost spaffed away last week, auto-subs were my saviour this time as Stones and Ings both didn't play so Mitoma on 5 points and Rice on 3 bolstered my midfield nicely.
I wisely left Dan Burn on the bench as he scored zero despite playing 81 minutes, but unfortunately another defender, Lewis Dunk, performed even worse and scored minus 1 point for being on the wrong end of a 5-1 home thrashing. I wasn't surprised that a desperate Sean Dyche team pulled off a crucial win at a knackered Brighton side, but I was shocked by the scale of it.
Aside from that, Alisson on 5 points was the right choice of keeper over Pope on just 2, whilst Gündoğan on 13 would've been the only stronger pick than Salah for captain. The latter's 10 points double up to 20 for me.
Since this is a quiet midweek – basically the only one at this late stage of the campaign – I'll figure out what I'm doing for this coming weekend in a day or two.
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My provisional score in the Fantasy League is 120 points, not bad but not as high as I'd like for a double round where I used up one of my Chips. Haaland's 16 doubled up to 32 but Welbeck on 17 and Salah on 18 would've been even better choices as captain. Looks like I should get through comfortably in all the Cups against people who clearly aren't giving it as much thought as I am by this stage.
Not that it mattered because I played my Bench Boost this time, but there was more evidence of poor team selection – Reed and Robinson, whom I left on the bench, both scored more than 4 people that were in my starting line-up.
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Following tonight's results, the Huddersfield-Reading match no longer has anything riding on it. Sorry about that, but scheduling for these catch-up games is done for Sky's benefit, not ours. Oh well. Here are my picks anyway:
Premier League
Bournemouth 2-1 Chelsea
Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 Crystal Palace
Wolves 1-2 Aston Villa
Newcastle United 3-0 Arsenal
Fulham 3-1 Leicester CityChampionship
Huddersfield Town 2-2 Reading
Millwall 0-0 Blackburn RoversSpanish Cup Final
Osasuna 0-3 Real Madrid (@ la Cartuja, Seville)Imitation Bundesliga
Hertha Berlin 0-1 VfB Stuttgart
Werder Bremen 1-1 Bayern Munich -
On 4/29/2023 at 1:18 PM, thevestofdeanambrose said:
Some battle for the chippy tea scudetto! Me and Klopps Barnet have been head to head for weeks now.
Ha, I never need to look at the top of the standings in any of those private leagues! Good to know there's a close title race heating up there too, mind. Also, I misread 'battle' as 'batter' at first because, you know, fish on the brain given the name of that league.
I note the Cups have started in all of the UKFF ones too, and I seem to be winning my ties so far. The closest contest is against someone whose name could be a reference either to Man United or the Belgium national team – we don't know anybody around here who likes both Belgian football *and* Man U, do we? Hmm...
As I've mentioned, I shipped out a load of players with my Wild Card last time, meaning I got nothing for Brentford or Arsenal's most recent wins or for Spurs' 3 goals on Sunday. I was right to start the apparently 'doubtful' Danny Welbeck since he bagged a brace and scored 15 points and I've spent loads on Salah as a luxury player as well, who at least came good-ish with 7 points. Hoping Haaland can nick a few against West Ham in midweek and thereby justify the armband.
Already got rid of Alexander-Arnold and Fabiański and brought in Nick Pope and Lewis Dunk ahead of their bonus fixture against each other in Gameweek 36. In the meantime, I'm going with Mo as captain with robo-Erling as backup. By some weird contrivance, all my players have ended up with a home game next (which would've been true even without the two latest transfers) so it's a pity I can't use Bench Boost again this time. Mitoma, Rice, Burn and the aforementioned Pope all fail to make the cut so are benched.
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The results went into the opening post on Monday night, and the table was updated straight after that because Bank Holidays throw my whole weekly routine out of whack and this season is ending with even more of them than usual. MVP RULZ is in the lead, but Tilde joined him in double figures and therefore keeps pace at the top. This may be the week when Stinky Dad played himself out of contention as he got no bonus points and didn't make up for it with regular ones. The gap at the foot of the classification is down to 5 points, but Vegeta does still have his second D2D to come.
Before that, he'll face ultimo in the Cup final, who now looks less likely to be in with a realistic chance of The Double thanks to a second-half comeback from bottom side Benevento. The equaliser came 4 minutes from time after Parma had been reduced to 10 players, which kind of sums up their season. The outcome confirms they'll have to return to the top flight the hard way as they're now 15 points off Genoa in the second automatic spot with only 9 points left to play for – if the play-offs even happen under Italy's complex rules which Notts County probably wish applied over here.
Anyway, everybody except Stinky rightly disagreed with him to claim their pair of bonuses apiece. The outstanding bonus points came from the 'wildcard' fixture, in which I'd given Nantes the kiss of death by mentioning their excellent record in la Coupe. They were duly dispatched by Toulouse, who emphatically proved that reverse nominative determinism is an observable phenomenon in Saint-Denis. First season back in the highest tier and now they're straight into the group stage of the Europa for next season.
Guesses were really good this week with no-one managing to pick less than half the games correctly, but only one exact scoreline was spot on. Brentford's late winner earned Tilde that three-pointer but cost some other players 2 points each, whilst a few participants were only one goal out in the odd remaining match. On the other hand, we also had a 6-0, a 4-3, a 4-1 in what was meant to be a tight relegation scrap and a 5-1 in a Cup final, so it's understandable nobody bet on those outrageous scores in what should've been a nervy, cagey late-season affair.
Right, bit of an unusual wrap-up this week, but a new set of 10 will again be going live at the top of the thread sharpish, including another major continental domestic Cup showpiece, some more Monday matches and what should be the last visit to the lower divisions of the campaign.
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Getting us back on track with proof that Seaman could still have his brainfart moments even when not expected to jump (although granted, this one is generally blamed on Pearce):
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6 hours ago, Fatty Facesitter said:
is anyone else in this for the long haul for this semi?
Football Predictions League 2023/24 sign-ups
in Off Topic
Posted
Where did the summer break go, eh? Feels like we only just saw Sheikh Mansour finally win ol' Big Ears in Istanbul, and now it's already just two weeks until the first card for next season goes live.
But that'll be in separate thread, as usual, where we won't be mixing it up with Fantasy League stuff this time. Here's how it all finished up by the end of the last campaign.
I've toyed with bigger changes during the off-season, but have decided to keep to 10-match cards as a rule (Christmas/New Year/Easter/the final day still being the permitted exceptions). With the Women's World Cup on at the moment, I'm conscious of trying to feature more women's internationals, and also the need to include at least one women's domestic game during the men's international rounds.
The other big difference is that Monday matches are now allowed as standard, but Friday night (again, apart from Good Friday) & Saturday lunchtime remain off-limits to give people as much time as possible to make their picks. This is important because it relates to a guideline for...
Dare 2 Disagree (D2D)
Yup, we're still doing this too. Three teams each sent via PM please, and depending on numbers & overlaps, we'll use either one or two of them for special bonus point bets spread across the season. I've cleared some space in my inbox (alas, "Do you like Rachel Stevens?" we hardly knew ye) so you all know what to do.
The sole rule for D2Ds is no reserve or youth sides, A-teams only. Apart from that, anything goes: national teams, women's teams, mega-clubs, fallen giants; any country, any division.
The strong guidelines mentioned above aren't hard and fast rules per se, but it'd make things easier if you could stick to them:
Full disclosure: I freely admit to holding a penchant for sides in that last category myself, but to be fair, I am actually looking for a ticket to a German third-flight match for the autumn at the moment.
The FPL Cup will also be returning. Format depends as ever on how many people play and what sort of teams they choose for the D2D, because I don't like to put FPL Cup rounds in D2D weeks so that my ageing sleep-deprived brain doesn't get too frazzled.
Right, enough rambling. Let's get on with this!