Fog Dude

If you mean City, the Imps were a division lower than Grimsby are now when they reached the Sixth Round too.

The other team in Lincoln, in contrast, last made it to the competition proper in 1997.

And yes, I do have to mute the voiceover on the League One round-up on ITV4 every Saturday night to stop me from throwing my slipper at the telly.

On 2/22/2023 at 11:42 AM, Fatty Facesitter said:

Ligue 1
Stade de Reims 2-2 Toulouse w/me

Welcome back! Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it'll also get you nowhere. Your second go-around at a D2D is still a while away yet. There's an FPL Cup quarter-final waiting for you at the end of the month too.

We had a full house with everyone picking on time for the first time in ages, which made me happy. On the other hand, I got my D2D bet wrong, which made me... less happy. But we also have a title race on our hands with a new leader in the latest table update, and a closely fought battle between the bottom two, both of which made me happier again.

That Toulouse collapse at Reims means everybody else claimed their bonus points, including those who only opted for a draw. And, as is customary, left me as the lowest scorer for the round. The only other bonus points came courtesy of Bournemouth's late consolation at home to Man City. That was the randomly selected 'wildcard' fixture, with that goal depriving seph, Nicko and Vegeta of two bonuses each and gifting a pair of extra points to Rory instead, which was enough to tip the balance and make him the week's best performer.

Tilde and Vegeta were still only a point behind him, with the former managing to leapfrog MVP RULZ in the process, albeit on most exact scores only. And, as mentioned, Shy Dad has closed the gap at the foot of the standings to just a single point.

In a high-scoring round, wins for Man Utd, Arsenal's men, Chelsea's women, Celtic, Spurs and PSG all proved fruitful. A reverse for Everton and a stalemate at Selhurst Park caught most people out.

Speaking of that venue, we'll be straight back at Palace's ground for yet another Arsenal-Chelsea women's match as part of the next set of 10. That card, which will also include a crucial D2D, is going up in the first post in just a tick. 

===

The Fantasy League gameweek has still got two matches left to go, so a full update on that can wait.

16 hours ago, gmoney said:

Sami Zahn and Kevin Owens vs The Usos

If by Mania he's gone from Undisputed Title contender to working a gimmick as a German tooth, I can't see that going down very well with the crowd. 

League Cup Final

Manchester United 3-0 Newcastle United (@ Wembley)

Premier League
Everton 1-0 Aston Villa
Leicester City 2-3 Arsenal
Bournemouth 1-2 Manchester City 
Crystal Palace 1-1 Liverpool 
Tottenham Hotspur 0-0 Chelsea 

FA Women's Cup Fifth Round
Chelsea 2-1 Arsenal 

SPFL Cup Final
Celtic 3-1 Rangers (@ Hampden)

Ligue 1
Stade de Reims 0-2 Toulouse w/me
Marseille 2-2 Paris Saint-Germain

Since the last bit of housekeeping, the EPL has carried out another couple of big logistics dumps that will have an effect on both our competitions. First, on the Fantasy League side, four sides have been given a double round for Gameweek 27 next month, but it's very possible none of them will have a league fixture the following weekend, so that might be the best time to use your Wildcard chip if you haven't already.

On top of that, it was announced yesterday that a whopping twelve teams will get a double week in matchday 29 (first week of April) so getting a load of players in from those clubs over the international break could be a wise move. 

As for me, I got a just-above-average 47 points but still went down in the two UKFF private leagues. All my defenders (two from Newcastle, one from Wolves and one from Arsenal) were terrible and yet the goalies were immense: Alisson got 7 but I went with Leno and he produced a double-figures performance with an outstanding 11 points.

Kane was a decent pick as captain since his 5 points doubled up to 10, but one of my two Arsenal midfielders would've been an even better choice. Andreas who I left on the bench got more than both Man City players who started, but my other two outfield subs scored zero.

Next week, Becker gets the nod in goal because he's got 2 matches. That leaves Leno benched by default, where he's joined by Fulham's still-doubtful Serbian striker plus the Newcastle duo who are without a league fixture. Arsenal and Wolves have also got a double round so Ødegaard is handed the armband with Kilman as vice-captain.

===

On the Predictions League front, the match I'd pencilled in for seph until a few weeks ago has been brought forward to a Saturday lunchtime start, so I'm glad I rejigged things after all. Anyway, his guess turned out to be a tad pessimistic as Liverpool kept a clean sheet and won by more than one goal. That was enough for him to be the top scorer for the round.

I haven't had to give out a reminder of the rule for missing your D2D round in yonks so it's worth mentioning: if he hadn't picked in time, he'd have earned minus points regardless of the result. Speaking of skipping weeks, @Fatty Facesitter is on thin ice for the second time. Normally I'd say I hope he's all right, but he's not only been on the forum, he's been prolific in other threads and can't have failed to spot this one. Since it was Nicko's idea to combine the Fantasy and Predictions threads this year, I know it hasn't exactly taken off but all I can say is – come on mate, at least see out the season.

Right, first post and table updated, yadda yadda. I've once again got MVP RULZ listed as finishing on 3 points so I hope that's actually accurate this week. That allows Stinky and Tilde to close the gap at the summit. The latter is now up to second place but it's Vegeta who would've been top scorer had it not been for the D2D bonuses thanks to a wildcard bonus from the match at the AmEx that sees him leapfrog Rory.

Smash-and-grab raids were the theme of the round. Fulham, Saints, Bournemouth and Milan all managed them (as did Everton with much the same tactics, except they were at Goodison), while late equalisers for Forest and Brentford plus a second goal each to make things a tad more comfortable for Liverpool, Lazio and Juve prevented five more. And indeed it was those last few outcomes from Italy that proved far more fruitful than the mostly surprising results closer to home. Most people's scoring would've been much lower had they relied solely on English scorelines.

A new card will be up in the initial post very soon. 

7 minutes ago, seph said:

Newcastle 2-3 Liverpool.

Been a shit week due to illness, just catching up.

Sorry to hear that. I can sympathise as I somehow regurgitated Wednesday night's dinner on Thursday twice, 4 hours apart (but I suspect I caught the bug at that SuperBowl party, social gatherings be damned). Glad to see you're well enough to post again now.

Now you've successfully avoided the embarrassment of missing a D2D turn while being the actual inventor of D2Ds, you've still got time to guess the scores for tomorrow's Italian matches. Better pop them in a separate post so it doesn't void your Liverpool bet.  and as I was typing you snuck in with an edit before the deadline like a pro. Good job!

On 8/3/2022 at 12:01 AM, Fog Dude said:

Oh, and the second D2D turn is for @seph so with any luck he'll make his picks a bit earlier than last time!

Well, that turned out to be a tad optimistic, didn't it? Despite missing the boat for the 3pm games, @seph still has just over an hour and a half to at least make it fair for everybody else by placing his D2D bet, and avoid incurring a points deduction in the process. Not something I've had to issue a warning about in over a decade – and that was in the days before you could tag people on here!

So here's the proper table update with a few things corrected now. I think even with those mistakes, we still had a better round than VAR did last weekend. Anyhow, time for my own picks:

Premier League

Brentford 2-0 Crystal Palace
Brighton & Hove Albion 2-1 Fulham
Chelsea 3-0 Southampton
Everton 1-0 Leeds United
Nottingham Forest 0-3 Manchester City
Wolves 0-0 Bournemouth
Newcastle United 3-1 Liverpool w/seph 

Serie A
Monza 2-2 Milan 
Salernitana 1-1 Lazio 
Spezia 1-2 Juventus

===

Over in the Fantasy League, it was another below-average performance with 54 points. Definitely made a poor choice of captain since Ødegaard got just the bog standard 4 points for 2 matches, which doubled up to 8. Deciding to give the armband to vice-captain Haaland (although he was said to be a doubt for the Arsenal game) or Gündoğan would've been a safer bet as they both made it into double figures. 

Struijk of Leeds didn't play and has since been shipped out in favour of Wolves' Killman with one eye on their forthcoming two-hander. My #1 sub was Andreas who got 6 points, but because of stupid formation rules I had to settle for Thiago Silva as his auto-replacement, who could only muster 2 points. Do they need to bring back the All-Out Attack chip? Yes they do, Garth. 

Lloris is now listed as out until April, so Alisson comes in as my other free transfer of the week but remains on the bench for now. Dan Burn is restored to the starting line-up ahead of a doubtful and out-of-sorts Aleksandar Mitrović. Harry Kane is captained, with England team-mate Kieran Tripper as back-up as both have home fixtures in which they could potentially fill their boots. 

1 hour ago, MVP RULZ said:

@Fog DudeI think my score of 3 is wrong

I got Fulham, Man Utd, Barcelona, Porto winning correct and got the exact score of Crystal Palace vs Brighton correct also

Just scrolled back to your picks, and right you are. I can see that straight away, so I was obviously completely out of it when I checked your scores the other night. If I'm making that kind of error now, then we've got absolutely no hope when the Easter double week comes around!

Will update the classification accordingly and link to that in my next post.

Unfortunately for the title race, this means you can scratch what I said about it being a good week for Stinky Dad to miss.

The Fantasy League gameweek isn't over until the match at The Emirates finishes, so we'll get to that in a day or two.

===

On the Predictions League front, I managed to squeeze in an update to the original post before dashing out on a whim to a SuperBowl party on Sunday night, just to remind myself why I don't do social gatherings very often. 

So I've mostly been recovering from that during my spare time and didn't get around to figuring out the table until yesterday. Bit of a poor turnout again, without the excuse that it was a Cup weekend or international round. Were some people perhaps prioritising the NFL this time? 

Some decent scoring from those who played, but the only movement involved ultimo leapfrogging late picker Seph, who nonetheless still has a 15-point cushion over the bottom half of the standings. Stinky didn't play, but luckily for him MVP RULZ was only able to extend his lead at the top to 4 points. 

Shy Dad got his D2D bet right as Sankt Pauli produced something of a surprise against former regular European qualifiers Kaiserslautern. All 7 other participants wrongly disagreed with him, meaning he's closed the gap on Vegeta to just 4 points as well and given himself a fighting chance of not finishing last. 

The 'wildcard' fixture was chosen as match #7 that did for Well's manager at Starks Park. A few people guessed the scoreline exactly in reverse (i.e. 1-3) but nobody got it spot on, so Rory and ultimo take home a bonus point each for at least foreseeing the upset in Kirkcaldy. 

Elsewhere, wins for Fulham, Wolves, Man Utd, Kilmarnock, Barcelona and Porto – all but one of them on the road – plus a score draw in the "mustn't-call-it-the-M32-derby" derby all proved fruitful, but an emphatic victory for Leicester caught absolutely everyone cold. 

A new set of 10, including yet another D2D, will go into the opening post shortly.

49 minutes ago, Shy Dad said:

Second Bundesliga

St Pauli w/Shy Dad 3-2 Kaiserslautern (Sunday 12:30) 

Apologies, I'm pulling 50 hour weeks at present and if I don't remember to even look at this, I won't think about football at all. Only found out today that Fulham aren't in the relegation zone like I thought. May explain some of my guesses this season.

Jeez, that sounds positively inhumane mate. I can barely hack 15 hours half the time. I'm sure nobody here would be offended if you can't make this silly little competition a priority unless and until you can get that down to something more reasonable. Thanks for making your D2D bet with plenty of notice for most other players though.

On the specific Cottagers point, they were on prime time BBC1 just last night and the fact they weren't struggling as expected this season was a major talking point of that coverage, but if you were either toiling or sleeping then I suppose it's understandable you wouldn't have noticed. Anyway, my picks: 

Premier League

Crystal Palace 1-2 Brighton & Hove Albion
Fulham 3-1 Nottingham Forest
Leicester City 1-1 Spurs
Southampton 1-3 Wolves
Leeds United 2-0 Manchester United 

Scottish Cup Round 5
Dundee United 3-2 Kilmarnock
Raith Rovers 0-1 Motherwell 

La Liga
Villarreal 0-2 Barcelona 

A Primeira Liga
Sporting Lisbon 2-2 Porto 

Second Bundesliga

Sankt Pauli w/Shy 0-0 Kaiserslautern

===

On the Fantasy League front, no transfers this week . Lloris – whom I should've given the armband in a below-average performance last time – and Struijk, whose double week wasn't much use in the end, are listed as doubts so they're benched, but replacements Leno and Andreas have the easier-looking fixture anyway. Dan Burn and Thiago Silva also drop down to being subs, with Mitrović and two-games Martinelli restored to the starting line-up.

Højbjerg did well with the assist and clean sheet last time too. Kane was my best outfielder then so keeps his place, but Scandi duo Ødegaard and Haaland get the nod as captain and vice-captain respectively. Saliba and Gündogan also have two chances to score points as their teams face each other on Wednesday, so they start. Up the Øs!

Worth noting in advance that Everton, Liverpool, Wolves and (again) Arsenal have got **double rounds** in gameweek 25, so stack up on players from those clubs before the end of the month if you can. Conversely, that's also League Cup final weekend so ship out players from Man Utd, Newcastle Utd, Brighton and Brentford. Might want to use the Wild Card chip if you need to and haven't cashed it in yet.

It's been another okay week in the Fantasy League, but the current round isn't technically over until after tomorrow night's match so we'll save a full update for later in the week.

===

As for the Predictions League, the results went into the initial post on Sunday night and now the table's been updated too. Low scoring, and no movement, so little to report except the gap closing at the very top. MVP RULZ still leads, but by a single point after Stinky made it into double figures courtesy of two three-pointers plus some bonuses. Tilde in third spot was the only other participant to get an exact score right. 

So how come Stinky nabbed all the bonus points for himself? Well, everybody guessed the outcome at Old Trafford correctly, but only he thought it'd be that close and then it turned out to be the randomly selected 'wildcard' game. I almost didn't include that fixture because it's the sort which feels like a nailed-on home win. And so it proved in the end, but it wasn't particularly comfortable. I decided to feature it after Palace's late equaliser at Selhurst Park last month. Plus, if Man Utd can get past Barcelona in Europe, then it might be the last match they play all season on a Saturday mid-afternoon. 

Elsewhere, nobody foresaw a six-goal thriller and an away victory in a Midlands derby of sorts at Villa Park, whereas success for Brentford and Brighton plus a score draw in the Netherlands proved more fruitful. Liverpool, Leeds and Man City all fired blanks in defeat which caught most people out, with Arsenal's failures also producing a dud as both the men and women dropped crucial points on the road. The south coast clash in France produced more of a mixed bag of picks.

Anyhow, as I mentioned last week, I've been moving things around on the fly in an attempt to front-load the remaining D2Ds so that we have some wriggle room in case they're off or missed for whatever reason. The knock-on effect is that the semi-finals of the FPL Cup have been put back and they're now pencilled in for what I suppose the media will soon start referring to as Coronation weekend. Due to the extra Bank Holiday, games set for Monday will be permitted during that round.

I'm going to try tagging a now chronically absent player at the top of the thread in a moment to afford him one last chance to climb off the foot of the standings. If the people who usually make their guesses on Friday evening want to help him out in subsequent weeks that'd be dandy, but please don't feel pressured to do so. Thanks.

7 hours ago, Gus Mears said:

Merica Cathedral has some great examples of stone faces saying' U WOT M8?'

Not sure if you mean Mérida there, or Murcia. 'Murica of course has its cathedrals but they haven't got nearly as much architectural history.

Anyway, on topic, one of the first things I did when I got Sky was check Eurosport teletext to check how Serie B and the 2. Bundesliga were getting on. I wouldn't get online at home for almost another 2 years so I found that window into other countries' lower leagues fascinating. The next most popular sports seemed to be volleyball and handball, which was quite the contrast from the Beeb's offering of cricket and rugby. 

Sadly Germany wasn't able to return the favour. At the start of the 2001-02 season, I was visiting Nuremberg one Saturday and saw fans filing out of the stadium in the distance, from my vantage point of the old Nazi rallying grounds. I wondered how they'd got on, and then asked myself "hang on, how did my team get on"? My aunt's then-partner said I could check Bildschirmstext once we returned to his place, so I did and lo and behold... only the Premier League results were listed under 'Englische Liga'. Fortunately when I landed back home I found my Dad had hooked the PC to a dial-up modem and so I rarely needed to use teletext after that. 

More recently I definitely recall looking at both Belgian and Spanish teletext while studying there for old time's sake just before Ceefax was permanently shut off over here. The internet was so slow in my flat in Galicia that sometimes it was still quicker to search out information on the TV. 

So, onto the long-awaited Fantasy League update then. In the last round, which ended 10 days ago, I got 61 points. That was below average, but I would've been the other side of the mean score if I'd just started the right goalie or made a better choice of captain. Somehow that still left me up in 3 leagues, including both of the UKFF ones, and level in another... but unsurprisingly down across the board in the rest.

Apparently I went out of the general Cup in Week 18 without even noticing. That leaves me on 1,111 points in the overall classification, inside the top 4.3m players which I guess I'll take at this stage.

The keepers were in direct competition with each other, as Lloris (9 points) whom I left on the bench came out on top over Leno (2) in defiance of recent form. You never know which Haaland you're gonna get from week to week, so I only made him vice-captain this time. Unfortunately he decided he was in the mood for scoring, meaning his 17 points would've doubled up to 34 with the armband. Come to think of it, might not have been a bad shout to use the triple captain chip, but I'll save that for a double round later in the season.

The only other decent point-getters were Struijk and Thiago Silva thanks to clean sheets, plus Gündoğan and Kane for their attacking performances. All of that quartet finished on 6 points apiece. I also should've started Dan Burn (6) and Pierre-Emile Højbjerg (3) over any of Saliba, Martinelli, Andreas or Mitrović but sadly I left the former duo on the bench.

One big bit of transfer news just before the window closed was the loan of Cancelo to Bayern for the rest of the season, with an option to buy. And I had noticed he wasn't playing as often lately, and didn't do all that well when he did start. At least this way Danny Murphy (plus some other ex-pros with more than half a brain cell and some worldliness who really ought to know better) can stop referring to him as Cantchello instead of the more correct Can-say-lu. Yes, he used to play in Serie A but that doesn't mean his name must be pronounced as if it were Italian forever more.

Anyway, what it means for the competition this thread is concerned with is that I've had to use my one free transfer this week on shipping him out. I've got over £1m in reserve but there are no defenders who are worth that much more than ol' sourface João himself, so I've been forced to go for the slightly cheaper option of Kieran Trippier and save the rest to bolster a different area of the squad in a future gameweek. 

He goes straight into the starting line-up next to fellow well-rested Magpie Burn, while four of the five aforementioned non-performers from the previous round drop to the bench, with just Saliba getting a second chance. Struijk of Leeds is captained almost by default as my sole player with a double week, but he's listed as a doubt and the two fixtures look tough at any rate so the armband might cascade down to Kane. 

===

My picks: 

Premier League

Aston Villa 1-0 Leicester City
Brentford 2-1 Southampton
Brighton & Hove Albion 2-0 Bournemouth
Manchester United 3-1 Crystal Palace
Wolves 0-0 Liverpool
Nottingham Forest 2-2 Leeds United 
Tottenham Hotspur 1-2 Manchester City 

Women's Super League
West Ham United 0-3 Arsenal 

Ligue 1
Marseille 0-1 Nice 

Eredivisie
Feyenoord 1-1 PSV Eindhoven

On 1/28/2023 at 1:05 PM, seph said:

Schalke 0-3 Cologne (Sunday 14:30) kölle alaaf!

Well, they kept a clean sheet at least. Luckily for you it was the other German game that was the wildcard fixture this time, but unfortunately it was ultimo who nabbed all the bonus points as the only person to get the exact score, even though a fair few others did rightly think that Union would get the win. A few players at least managed a one-pointer from the stalemate at Schalke.

Anyway, the results went into the opening post a bit earlier than usual on Sunday evening, and now the table's been updated too. Scoring was obviously way down from the previous week, but still decent. Two people returned, but Nicko sat it out as he was otherwise occupied by an important mission. He aimed to recreate a scene from a Steve Coogan film and ended up re-enacting one from a Rowan Atkinson movie (for those with terrible taste in cinema, this constitutes an upgrade). Hopefully he won't miss the next round back here though. 

Somehow there was no movement whatsoever in the standings. Perhaps the positions really are settling down now it's February and we're getting into the business end of the season. Vegeta's cushion over Shy Dad is now up to a healthy 13 points, whilst at the other end MVP RULZ retains his 8-point lead.

Closer to home than Germany, progress in the Cup for Spurs, Chelsea, West Ham and Manchester United generally proved fruitful, but a goalless draw at Portman Road and a score draw that led to a penalty shootout (ignored as ever) at Leicester caught most people out. The outcomes at West Brom and Wimbledon were very emphatic for the visitors in both cases, which sadly is something that still seems to happen more often in women's football than in the men's game. Those scorelines were understandably only useful for one-pointers at best.

I've juggled a few things around on the schedule these past couple of days so that we should be able to get a couple of D2Ds in this month after all – but not just yet. All of which means another ordinary set of 10 should go live at the top of the thread shortly... 

===

So, transfer deadline day is over. And yes, that's affected my Fantasy League team. But I haven't decided who to bring in yet. I'll let you know about it on Thursday, but in the meantime, it's worth noting that a double round has been confirmed for Man U and Leeds players this coming matchday, in case anybody wants to transfer players from those clubs in.

On 1/25/2023 at 5:31 PM, Shy Dad said:

Shit sorry folks. In not paying any attention to football bar Celtic the last two weeks I've absolutely forgot to check this. Will get my predictions up tomorrow to apologise for my tardiness. 

In future can someone just @ me if I'm not in here by Friday evening? Stupid working hours mean i tend to forget half the shit I'm supposed to do or planned.

It's okay. I understand that this silly little competition is hardly going to be anyone's overriding priority week to week. I already do all I can by tagging people in an edit to the first post if it's their D2D turn, and in the blurb if they've missed two rounds in a row as you've just done. 

I've made it part of my routine to do at least something towards the FPL every day, but that's easy for me to say when I actually run the thing. Naturally though, not all tasks require the same amount of time or effort. And things like Bank Holidays, postponements and ever-changing real-life circumstances do disrupt that pattern which make it more of a struggle. 

Thursday is one of the more important days as it's when I make my picks. That means I can look at the guesses of people who post later and alert them if there are some missing or the scoreline makes no sense (e.g. "Spurs -1vX Wolves" or "Hereford 3-0 Gloucester City") without prejudicing my own hunches. Sometimes I do still just have time to skim-read and miss these things though, or only spot them once it's basically too late.

Most people seem to pick quite late on Friday now, so if somebody else wants to help you out that'd be grand, but don't sweat it if not. You will still be welcome to come back refreshed next season.

Anyway, as promised, my predictions for this weekend. No replays in the women's Cup BTW, so remember that usual extra time/shootout rules apply:

Men's FA Cup Fourth Round

Ipswich Town 1-2 Burnley
Preston North End 1-0 Spurs

Women's FA Cup Fourth Round
Chelsea 3-1 Liverpool 
Sunderland 0-3 Manchester United 
West Bromwich Albion 0-2 Brighton & Hove Albion 
Wolves 1-3 West Ham United 
Wimbledon 2-1 Charlton Athletic 
Leicester City 2-0 Reading 

Imitation Bundesliga
Hertha Berlin 1-1 Union Berlin 
Schalke 0-1 Cologne

===

Since Tuesday night it's dawned on me that this weekend's matches obviously don't count towards the Fantasy League and this post had been busy enough already with Predictions League issues, so the update can wait for another day again... 

4 hours ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Asian looking characters on the drawing, must be Vietnam's Main Man, @simonworden

As one of the forum's resident language nerds, I feel compelled to point out that Vietnamese uses a heavily modified version of the Latin alphabet. 

On 1/22/2023 at 7:53 PM, seph said:

Forgot about this FFS

As Wade Barrett used to say, I'm afraid I've got some bad news. First, when you posted that, it was still a few minutes to kick-off in Bilbao so you could've made a valid guess for that game. It pays to double check those start times if it's still the weekend instead of simply assuming you've missed the boat completely!

Secondly, a few hours later once I'd put the results into the opening post, that same match was selected as the random 'wildcard' fixture, meaning there were 5 points up for grabs rather than just the usual 3. Some people got the exact score from that Real Madrid victory to claim their bonuses.

Thirdly, it was a bad round to skip. Everybody who played made it into double figures and all of them got at least two correct scorelines. Joint top scorer MVP RULZ is back at the summit of the table with TildeGuy now in a strong third position.

Last call for @Shy Dad to carry on this season. If he's giving up, then that means Vegeta and equal worst least good performer for the round, Rory, are level on points at the foot of the standings. It also means there won't be a D2D for a while.

This week's already got moved forwards, and though I try to keep to the original vision of one turn roughly every other week, they could end up backloaded towards the end of the season at this rate. It's becoming increasingly difficult to find decent matches for them that haven't been moved outside of our usual window of acceptable start times. 

Anyway, this week Stinky got it wrong as Everton's failure to get even the draw he bet on finally did for Frank Lampard's tenure in charge of The Toffees. That means all other participants get bonus points, including Rory who opted for an away win because that still counts as disagreeing even though the pick was incorrect.

So, what made this ordinary-looking set of games so much more fruitful than usual? Well, no outlandish scorelines or stalemates helped. The closest we came was the five-goal thriller at The Emirates on Sunday but I somehow guessed that spot on, three other people at least got the right result, whilst Rory... had it down in reverse.

Elsewhere, three score draws but they were always among the more likely clashes to finish that way. Success on the road for Villa and relatively comfortable progress for the favourites in the three Cup meetings tie up an extraordinarily triumphant round nice and neatly (though I understand the score at Ochilview flattered the visitors a tad). 

Let's hope for more of the same in the next card, then. That'll be up in the initial post very soon. 

===

And yes, the Fantasy League happened too, but I think a proper update on that can wait until Thursday since the only midweek fixtures this time of year are from the Carabao.

8, 10, 11, 20, 26

Another little Fantasy League update following the last two nights' matches: I chose the wrong goalkeeper as Bernd Leno bagged more points (3) from one game than Hugo Lloris managed (0) from two. Kane is up to 7 after tonight so that doubles up to 14 for me. Fellow double-rounders Højbjerg, Gündoğan and Cancelo continue to disappoint on 3, 2 and 1 points respectively.

Erling Haaland redeemed himself somewhat with a goal to bring himself up to 8 points, but Joachim Andersen didn't even play last night and is now listed as out with a calf injury until next month, so he'll be shipped out. No team is set to have a double header for the next two matchdays unless something changes at very short notice, so by Saturday morning I'll have to make a transfer based on actual form for the first time in quite a while.

That leaves me on 54 points for the round and 1,031 overall. Well within the top half of total players but easily in the bottom half for the gameweek, which gives a good indication of the proportion of people who either don't want to change their side from week to week or who forgot their login details. My private leagues haven't updated yet but it's almost needless to say that I'm generally trending downwards in those.

===

My picks – 

Premier League

Bournemouth 1-2 Nottingham Forest
Leicester City 1-3 Brighton & Hove Albion
Southampton 2-1 Aston Villa
West Ham United 1-0 Everton w/Stinky 
Arsenal 3-2 Manchester United 

Scottish Cup Round 4
Arbroath 0-2 Motherwell
Stenhousemuir 0-1 Livingston

La Liga
Athletic Bilbao 2-3 Real Madrid 

French Cup Round 10
Chambéry 0-3 Lyon

Eredivisie
Feyenoord 3-1 Ajax

There are still two matches to go in the Fantasy League matchday, but things aren't going too well. Seven players could yet redeem themselves in the midweek games, and those whose only match was at the weekend didn't do too badly with 9, 8, 6 and 2 points respectively. Just Martinelli slightly letting the side down there.

All that leaves me on 35 points so far, so below average for the round. And one of the players who was meant to be working double duty is now listed as in doubt. At least the 3 outfielders I left on the bench only scored 3 points between them though, including one who contrived to double-touch a penalty.

I keep forgetting to mention that the list of players I let go who are suddenly either scoring loads, assisting tonnes or getting bucketfuls of clean sheets would be as long as your arm. 'Frustrating' doesn't even cover it.

=== 

Another thing that has been slipping my mind lately is why certain fixtures on the Predictions side have missed out: first, PSG played on Friday night a couple of weeks back, and next week they're on Monday night. Napoli-Juve was dropped for the former reason, while Leipzig-Bayern is snubbed on the same grounds for this coming round. The Manchester derby suffered from the Saturday lunchtime fate, as do Liverpool-Chelsea and Walsall-Leicester domestically over the next pair of gameweeks. As for El Clásico in Saudi? That wasn't a proper one, and we didn't even known for sure who the Supercopa finalists would be this time last week anyway.

Next month, two Everton matches in consecutive weeks have been moved to start times that aren't acceptable for inclusion on the card. Which is why a D2D involving them has been brought forward to the next set of 10, which will be in the opening post shortly... 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm only strict about that to give people the longest amount of time possible in which to make their picks, and yet we were once again not a full house this time out. That wasn't really fair on Tilde, who nonetheless managed to get his D2D bet right. Five of the other eight participants incorrectly disagreed with him – and yet, unusually, those bonus points weren't enough for him to be top scorer. 

We have a new leader of the pack, folks, and it's not him or seph, no siree. In fact, it's joint best performer Stinky who sneaks ahead of MVP RULZ on most exact scores. We really do have a title race on our hands now, it seems.

Equally great was Nicko, who moves emphatically away from level last place into the heady heights of seventh spot, leapfrogging hapless Rory and Vegeta, plus the absent Shy Dad, in the process. He's already got half as many three-pointers in the past two rounds as he got in the entire first half of the season. Yet somehow, one of the few results he guessed wrong this week was the big Portuguese clash! Whoops, better not tell the missus. 

So why the relatively high scoring in this round? First, a few bonus points were garnered from the 'wildcard' fixture, which was randomly selected as match #4, the 1-0 at Molineux which in hindsight should probably have had 'decided by the odd goal' written all over it. Elsewhere, wins for Rangers, Brentford and Roma all proved fruitful. Although victories for Brighton, Saints, Forest and Arsenal plus the aforementioned score draw in the Lisbon derby produced more of a mixed bag of picks, none of the scorelines were outrageous this time, which certainly helped when it came to bumping half the field up into double figures.

10 hours ago, Carbomb said:

There's already inconsistency between Scotland and the rest of the UK anyway, surely? It's had its own legislature and frameworks for centuries, some of which differentiates from that of England & Wales.

It lost that between 1707 and 1999, but kept its own judicial system and less hierarchical established Church, and managed to set up a different education system in the middle of that period even without a Parliament.

But devolution isn't proper decentralisation anyway. Power devolved is power retained. But the media has successfully made voters in this country have an instant negative reaction to the word 'federal' despite federalism apparently being good enough for Canada, Brazil, Australia etc. 

Worst of all, the issue on which the Tories have chosen to break the 24-year settlement isn't even a unionist vs independence one. They've struck down a law which was agreed upon by the SNP, Labour, Greens and Lib Dems – and which the Conservatives would've backed 6 years ago too under Davidson, before they tactically decided trans people were to be the target of choice for fearmongering, bigotry and hatred in the latest round of culture wars, in order to convince enough people to carry on voting against their own interests. This won't end well.

3 hours ago, Frankie Crisp said:

Who's avatar 

Al Snow? 

Premier League

Brighton & Hove Albion 3-1 Liverpool
Everton 0-1 Southampton
Nottingham Forest 1-1 Leicester City
Wolves 2-1 West Ham United

Brentford 2-0 Bournemouth 
Tottenham Hotspur 0-0 Arsenal 

FA Trophy Fourth Round
Solihull Moors 3-0 Barnet w/Tilde

Scottish League Cup semi-final
Aberdeen 0-3 Rangers (@ Hampden)

Serie A
Roma 1-0 Fiorentina 

Primeira Liga
Benfica 2-2 Sporting Lisbon

===

I'm up to 51 points for the round in the Fantasy League, which is still showing up as above average but that could change overnight. Don't think any of my players will be getting bonuses added on. Andreas and Mitrović both scored 5, the first of which doubles up to 10 since he had the armband. The two Chelsea defenders only scored 6 points between them from 360 combined minutes.

I definitely made the right decision to stick Leno in goal and should've captained him as it turned out, what with him getting a whopping 14 from 2 matches. From my Arsenal trio, however, only Saliba stood out from the pack on 7 points. Worst of all, my vice-captain Jorginho didn't play against Man City and didn't start tonight... but then he came on for 34 ineffectual minutes at the end, which means I didn't get the 16 points from Kane whom I'd left on the bench. 

All of that leaves me below the magic 1,000-point mark with half the season officially gone. Somehow still in the top half of players overall, but down in most private leagues, static in two and up in none.

For the next Gameweek, which starts tomorrow night, I've sacked off two Chelsea players and nabbed Andersen from Palace plus Spurs' Højbjerg instead. Both have got a double round coming up, albeit with two tough-looking fixtures each. For that same reason, Lloris (freshly retired from international football) is restored despite Leno's great performance last time.

In the outfield, the Fulham duo plus Leeds' Struijk have outlived their usefulness for the moment and therefore drop to the bench. Rumours are the latter would've had a double round this coming week if they hadn't ended up with a replay against Cardiff. Kane comes back in as captain, alongside Cancelo and Gündoğan, the former of which is vice-captain this time.

Still gonna wait until after the west London derby to make a full Fantasy League update, but in the meantime, a tip for those of you who might not have noticed a very recent bit of rescheduling: by mid-afternoon on Saturday we already knew Man Utd were through without the need of a replay and Palace were out. The former are the only English team who have to play in Europe twice next month, whilst the Eagles are one of a handful of sides who had two games called off in September.

So, their first league meeting of the season has been hastily arranged for next week, and it'll count to towards the next round. That means if you've got at least one free transfer then you might want to use it on a player from one of those teams since they've got a good chance of earning points from two separate matches. 

=== 

The Predictions League, meanwhile, continues apace. The results went into the initial post on Sunday evening and the table was updated soon after that. With no bonuses available this time out, scoring was out of 57 across the board, and given that, it was a little on the low side. In fact there were just 5 points between the best and worst performance for the round.

Top scorer Stinky is now firmly ensconced in the chasing pack, which could be important as we now have a bit of a title race once more with MVP RULZ' lead cut down to 5 points. In the bottom half, Shy Dad again leapfrogs Rory, but even more incredibly, we're over halfway through the season and Nicko and Vegeta are joint last with identical records. Usually absolute ties in the standings are gone by about Week 3 or 4.

If it ended like that I'd probably invite them to guess the Champions League final result as a kind of play-off to avoid the wooden spoon rather than have it decided on alphabetical order. But it surely won't come to that... ?

Anyway, plenty of shocks do help to explain the low scoring this time. Forest, Rotherham, QPR, Burton and (memorably, live on prime time Saturday night BBC1) Newcastle all succumbed to the classic Third Round weekend narrative – the first two of those by an alarmingly hefty margin which basically kills any chance of three-pointers.

Speaking of which, nobody foresaw things would go quite so smoothly for Man City on Sunday either. Incredibly, Nice also fell at the earliest possible hurdle in France which produced a dud outcome. Progress on the road for West Ham and Rennes proved tough to guess beforehand too.

On the other hand, teams with tricky-looking banana skin ties such as Fulham, Brighton, Sunderland and Stoke did avoid embarrassment after all, and in the case of the clashes at The Riverside and nearby Victoria Park, emphatically so. Those caught a few people out.

Even though pickers expected them to win, nobody got the exact score from Celtic or Toulouse's overwhelming victories. I think you need scorelines like that to remind you just how unlikely upsets sometimes actually are, mind.

Replays are back, but I've got accustomed to not betting on any draws for Cup ties in recent years. So, as exciting as the score draws at massive underdogs Boreham Wood, Cardiff, Chesterfield and Liverpool might have been, they weren't of much use to me or most other participants. Obviously the favourites will coast the rematch in all 4 cases.

Right, back to normal next time. It's an EPL-dominated set of 10 for the first time since late October. And, since I mentioned we're now into the second half of the season and it's still ages until the FPL Cup quarter-finals, it's time to get on with some second-choice D2Ds to keep things interesting. That'll go live at the top of the thread shortly.