Matchday 26 Results and Matchday 27 Predictions

Could this be the weekend that the status quo started to work its way back into a mental season. Routine wins for City and Chelsea, Man Utd doing what Man Utd do and an utterly mental afternoon occurred at the Emirates from which my voice still hasn't fully recovered. For an extended blog on my thoughts about the North London Derby, check back on Friday. To sum it up in 4 letters: GTFI!!!

Did Newcastle show signs of a wobble setting in? Have Stoke done some running repairs on the ramparts (oh yeah, alliteration) of Fortress Britannia? Why the b'jaysus won't a pundit call Gareth Bale a monkey-looking cheat? Is Kenny back as King now? All questions that won't be answered in this blog.

What will be discussed is how we all did at predicting this:

This week, 19 people played

Most popular predicted result: Man City WIN (as per usual) (19/19 or 100% concordance)

Most disputed result: Arsenal vs Spurs (7-7-5 split)

Longest odds: Sam Ruback 1970/1

Shortest odds: Me and my copycat brother 428/1

Average odds: 923/1

Best predictor: Euro Club Index (7/10)

Worst predictor: Ryan Wain & Doron Salomon (2/10)

Average Score: 4.58

Best predicted result: Man City WIN (19/19)

Worst predicted result: Newcastle vs Wolves DRAW & WBA WIN (2/19)

Villain of the week: Officially no-one (this rule is getting scrapped next year). Unofficially, I would choose Bale but 1) I blame Dean just as much and 2) I'm not gonna be cruel to an animal that's hurting.

One-off Hero of the Week: Giggsy. Ok, so he has a wayward moral compass, but living up north for all your life will do that to the most saintly of characters. What's not in doubt is that when he finally exchanges his Reeboks for slippers, he will be thought of as an all-time football great. 900+ games, all at the highest level is no mean feat and it's a testament to his professionalism and skill that he's been able to successfully reinvent himself as his physical attributes started to wane. Now for a shower to wash the dirty feeling off...

Everyone's scores below:

To the leaderboard, then. Not much movement this week, Nick and I shuffle up a few places and JT, Feneley & Will O'Doherty move down a few places. The "expert" Lawro is nestling somewhere in the middle, and for completeness and fairness, bisects the other professional predictors - WS.com & ECI. Obviously, the longer the season goes on, the less effect any single weekend has on the table, however with 12 games to play, a sustained run of good/bad form could see some major movements.

To this week's matches then:

Anfield sees a match that could turn the race for 4th into a 2 horse race, or keep it a 3 or 4 way contest. Ewood Park sees 2 of the sorriest clubs in the league lick their wounds and try and salvage some pride. St James' Park sees a generally apathetic derby... and Spurs roll over for their biannual belly tickling from Manchester's second side (OK...I'm looking for biters there...I seem to be getting more partisan this week)

My predictions are:

Liverpool vs Arsenal - ARSENAL

Man City vs Bolton - MAN CITY

QPR vs Everton EVERTON

Blackburn vs Aston Villa - DRAW

Stoke vs Norwich - DRAW

Wigan vs Swansea - WIGAN

WBA vs Chelsea - CHELSEA

Newcastle vs Sunderland - NEWCASTLE

Fulham vs Wolves - FULHAM

Spurs vs Man Utd - MAN UTD

Total Odds: 4399/1 (Paddypower)

Predictions in the comments as per usual, if you're interested in my take on the NLD then drop back tomorrow. Good luck!

Matchday 26 :Predictions on a reduced schedule

Liverpool's participation in the Carling Cup final on Sunday means that there are only 9 games in this weekend's round - I'll have to have a think about how that affects scores next week.

Without further ado:

Chelsea vs Bolton - CHELSEA

Wigan vs Aston Villa - DRAW

Newcastle vs Wolves - NEWCASTLE

QPR vs Fulham - QPR

WBA vs Sunderland - SUNDERLAND

Man City vs Blackburn - MAN CITY

Norwich vs Man Utd - MAN UTD

Arsenal vs Spurs - ARSENAL

Stoke vs Swansea - STOKE

Total odds: 428/1 (Paddypower

Obvious highlight is the North London Derby - and partly 'cos I'm an eternal optimist (of the borderline pessimist variety) and partly 'cos I can't believe we could be as bad as we were last week, I'm going for an Arsenal win. Clearly, Vermaelen will contrive to score an og before Bale scores his customary goal against us and I'll be held up for ages on the platform as the Police bring a gloating parade of Spud animals into a carriage and send them off back to their subterranean lairs.

On second thoughts, might have to change that optimist line.

Predictions in the comments as per usual, Good luck, and have a good week!

Matchday 25 Results: A handshake, a legend and a spanking

That lad Suarez - ever mother's idea of a perfect son-in-law eh? Far more exciting than the non-handshake (that's already been done to death) was Jamie Redknapp's insistence (even after seeing the video for the 50th time, including slowed down and zoomed in) that Rio didn't win the ball and should have been sent off - absolutely incredible and it only strengthens the belief that pundits don't actually watch the match and just regurgitate prepared lines.

Elsewhere - Thierry made me metaphorically cry, Yak's back, Chelsea continue to give us Gooners hope, Bolton are going down, Spurs - er...well yeah. City roll on and Norwich got a great result.

Something that got my goat was the Sunderland goal - I'm completely alone in this as far as I can see but I thought it was very unsporting to play on. Mertersacker went down under no pressure and clearly didn't slip - that's normally the sign of a serious injury. Even if McClean didn't realise initially, I'm sure there would have been a call from the Arsenal players, and the ref had enough time to size up the situation and blow up.

A head injury stops the game immediately, and I don't understand why any serious injury doesn't do the same. Mertesacker was stretchered off immediately and is awaiting the results of a scan on his ankle ligaments - which can be as serious as an ACL. Plenty of people feel Sunderland were within their rights to play on, but in all seriousness if it'd been the other way round, I'd have been embarrassed to have scored that goal.

I've also added another "professional" in this week - the Euro Club Index which gives % ratings for likelihood of results occurring. They join whoscored.com and Lawro as providing a benchmark for us to go up against.

To the stats:

This week, 22 people played

Most popular predicted result: Man City WIN (21/22 or 95% concordance)

Most disputed result: Everton vs Chelsea (7-6-9 split)

Longest odds: JT 24742/1

Shortest odds: Euro Club Index 838/1

Average odds: 7514/1

Best predictor: Joe Miller (7/10)

Worst predictor: Josh Daniels & Daniel Dexter (2/10)

Best predicted result: Man City WIN (21/22)

Worst predicted result: Norwich WIN (0/22) - that's pretty amazing...shows how good Swansea have been at home

Villain of the week: None this week I'm afraid - as I said before...I'm tired of the Evra/Suarez stuff.

Everyone's results:

To the leaderboard: Joe Miller extends his lead with a solid 7. Nick Collins is the other big winner, moving up with Lawro and myself falling back a little. The bottom half all moved up a little due to return of Ryan Wain who picks up where he left off - solidly at the bottom...

Check back later this week - I wrote a post about soft spots for other clubs and that'll be posted closer to the weekend when we have a little break for the FA Cup.

Have a great week guys

Clubs I like....

Football is a tribal business. The "Us against Them" mentality pervades from playground banter to hundreds of thousands of adults chanting at each other week after week because they're wearing a different colour jersey. It's why we refer to players by their first name/nicknames; why we talk about teams in the first person plural and why football is such big business.

Which genuine football fan hasn't allowed the result of a football match that they had precisely zero influence over to affect their mood in their real life? How many of us spend a sizeable percentage of our days reading, thinking about, watching or playing the sport?

The kinship spreads further however - the Us can be expanded to all football fans and the Them to mean those who just don't get it. My mum, my girlfriend, my housemate (male) amongst others look on bemused when We come back from a bad result, or sulk through an evening after a pathetic showing. They don't understand the adrenaline rush that comes from a last minute goal bringing that result you'd all but given up on. They feel assaulted by that surge of energy spread through total strangers that temporarily turns Us into a symbiotic, single being. They will never understand the close up of the teary eyed youth after a cup final defeat, or a relegation. For them, spending 2 hours in the cold, another hour on a packed train and then another hour watching highlights and analysis of events that you saw live only a few hours earlier is a foreign idea. To watch clips of skills or outrageous/hilarious goals again and again, and then try to recreate them is just a waste of time.

Let's be honest - football is a drug and we're all totally addicted.

It's because of this that I think that we all have soft spots for other teams. As a fan, you support your club. You then have those teams you hate - either through rivalry or just because. That's normal if you accept the Us vs Them theory. There are those you're indifferent to and there are those who you always look out for, for reasons that you may or may not be aware about. Teams from other countries who you'll "support" from afar. The great thing about these teams is that they are personal - you get a mix of life experience and glory hunting that our otherwise homogenous group (ie Arsenal fans) may not have.

I've listed my clubs below, and would be interested to hear about other peoples.

I'm an Arsenal fan. Fan being short for Fanatic, of the Hornby variety. I spend far too much time thinking about Arsenal and they are and always will be my first love (although right now we need to see a counsellor).

In the UK, I like Watford and Barnet as my local teams. I like Nottingham Forest (partly through the Arsenal connection) and Leeds and would love both teams to make it back to the big time.

I've always taken the side of Rangers over Celtic - havn't got a clue why.

In Europe, I route for Olympique Marseille (not sure why), for Ajax ('cos of Bergkamp...the one true God), for Werder Bremen (your guess is as good as mine), for Valencia (I love their orange kits, and the Las Fallas festival) although I have a dirty soft spot for Barcelona (Year 7 school trip to the Nou Camp - the Rivaldo, Figo, Enrique, Cocu, Kluivert etc era).

Portugal never grabbed me, but from childhood football Italia watching (Gooooooooal Accio), I've always loved first AC Milan (Rossi in goal) and then Juventus (my favourite match ever is the 3-1 win in 2002 in the Champions League - that was footballing perfection for me). The rest of Europe sort of gets passed over - probably never saw enough football from the leagues of Greece, Turkey and the Scandi countries.

I've always considered myself a Maccabi Tel Aviv fan (although I've been in the Red end of the Bloomfield on a fair few occasions too) because of Avi Nimni and Baruch Dego and somehow I've ended up with a Corinthians shirt from Brazil. I look forward to picking up a South African team in a few months, and plan to get to as many games in Cape Town as I can!

That's several teams that I have a fondness for and always look out for them, try to see them as much as possible and back in any game, unless they play the Gunners.

Let me know who you have a soft spot for - and a reason if you know why.

Matchday 24: Busy week if you're a football journalist...

'Arry - from following the reports coming out the courtroom, it was pretty clear to me that he was gonna be acquitted. To be overly simplistic, the key argument for me was why someone who pays a hell of a lot in income tax each year would try to fiddle the system for a few thousand? I also disagree with the argument that the £8m spent on the prosecution was a waste - ultimately, if HMRC & the CPS thought it was worth pursuing then that's that - you can't put a price on justice in my opinion. The problem comes when the police seemed to think that the case they had built was strong enough to press charges - clearly they were wrong by the failure to get a conviction at both trials. That is where changes need to be made, not in the finances. To impose some arbitrary limit on how much can be spent to investigate a crime seems ridiculous; I don't see how you could hamstring the police like that in future.

UPDATE: HMRC/CPS have stated that the total cost (to date) was £1.3m. Point still stands however

Capello - as a self avowed "give 2 hoots about England" kinda guy, I'm amazed how much I care. The FA have cocked this up big time - if they wanted to sort out the Terry captaincy situation, then it should have been done when the CPS first got involved, not 3 months later. I don't see how Terry could have remained as captain with this over him - that's not to prejudice the court case, but to be captain, you have to be a leader, be respected by the squad, be able to stand up and face the world as a representative of the team. Ideally, he would have stepped down himself, much as Chris Huhne (hahahaha) did to "clear his name". In reality, it's because being a leader in the public eye means you have to keep your life whiter than white - unfair, perhaps but that's how the world works.

I don't blame Capello for feeling aggrieved that he was undermined by the FA, and having read Marcotti's transcript of his Italian interview, I don't think that what he said was too bad - I think this was the straw that broke the camel's back and the media and the FA can pat each other's backs for getting rid of a manager better than England could have hoped for or deserved.

Finally, Man Utd vs Liverpool on Saturday - anyone want to predict how many fans are going to disgrace themselves by "defending" Evra or Suarez? Will they even shake hands? I'm pretty sick of the whole thing - my view is that Evra is a prick and undoubtedly provoked Suarez (hardly out of character) but Suarez clearly used unacceptable language and deserved a ban. He also has failed to apologise to Evra for that, and comes away from this with his reputation deservedly poo-brown. Dalglish and Liverpool's continued "Luis is the victim" shtick is tiresome and has lost them the support of the neutral.

Would be interested to hear anyone's views in the comments, through twitter or by facebook is anyone wants to reply.

Enough ranting - predictions:

Man Utd vs Liverpool - MAN UTD

Blackburn vs QPR - QPR

Bolton vs Wigan - WIGAN

Everton vs Chelsea - DRAW

Fulham vs Stoke - DRAW

Sunderland vs Arsenal - ARSENAL

Swansea vs Norwich - SWANSEA

Spurs vs Newcastle - DRAW

Wolves vs WBA - WOLVES

Aston Villa vs Man City - MAN CITY

Total odds: 15, 401/1 with Paddypower

Predictions in the comments below as per usual, good luck!

Matchday 24 Results: That'll do nicely...

Morning folks,

After a particularly heavy night on the couscous last night, I overslept and decided to give myself a morning off! I'd like to thank those of you who pay your taxes for funding my hours of self-directed learning. As well as spending hours on the phone to various medical institutions around the globe who don't pick up the phone (ever, seriously annoying), it's also given me the time to get a result post done on time this week!

Great results for Arsenal, Newcastle and Man City. Great game at Stamford Bridge. Great controversy at Anfield, Stoke and at Loftus Road. Due to the snow, I sacked off any half-arsed plans to go into town and watched MOTD at it's natural time for the first time in months, and actually enjoyed it for once too!

It was a pretty exciting finish to the game here too - those who follow the "live" twitter updates (@ccdaniels65) will know that the lead was yoyo-ing between several people on Saturday and Sunday. It came down to last night's game between Liverpool and Spurs to see who'd win this week - or whether we'd have a 4 way tie. Intriguingly, the game was split 6-6-6 but to find out who won, you'll have to wait a few more lines.

Honestly - I'm like Chris Tarrant for creating suspense.

One new addition to the blog this week - Lawro has taken a lot of stick over the years for his predicting skills, and by including him in this game, I've scientifically concluded that he's as shit as the rest of us. That's not to say he's terrible, or we're great - just that it's highly unpredictable. Obviously, 2/3 of a mad season isn't the strongest backdrop, but I felt that another control was needed.

Whoscored.com also offer a prediction for the outcome of each match, so from this week onwards, they too will be participating unknowingly. This means that we can test/compare ourselves to 2 "professional" predictors, and see how bad Lawro is compared to his peers.

Enough waffle. To the results:

This week, 18 people played

Most popular predicted result: Man City WIN (18/18 or 100% concordance)

Most disputed result: Liverpool vs Spurs (6-6-6 split)

Longest odds: Ryan Wain 16,220/1

Shortest odds: Doron Salomon 910/1

Best predictor (The moment you've all been waiting for...): Me!!! (7/10)

Worst predictor: In no particular order, Dan Davis, Naphtali Torrance and the new boys at whoscored.com (3/10)

Best predicted result: Man City WIN (18/18)

Worst predicted result: Wolves WIN (1/18 - well done JT)

Villain of the week: Technically no villain, but did anyone else like seeing Tony Pulis rant and rave over Huth's red card. A disease eh? Tell it to Ramsey, see if he cares.

Everyone's results:

UPDATE: Josh Daniels actually got 4 - my mistake. If I get your scores wrong, please let me know and I'll change it ASAP. This makes no difference to the leaderboard however.

To the leaderboard:

Joe Miller's lead at the top is cut, although the top 3 remain unchanged. Mid-table sees a lot of movement, showing just how close it is - 1 good week, (or conversely, 1 bad week) can make all the difference. No change at the bottom, but Ryan is due to return to the leaderboard next week, so the question is will he reclaim the bottom, or has he done enough in his absence to have moved up the board?

That's all for now. New post with the predictions will go up on Thursday. Have a good week!

Matchday 23 results: Not a bad midweek (objectively)

A week can seem a very long time without football, especially when you're in a downer. having missed the 2nd half of the comeback against Villa, my last experiences of football were not positive!

Thankfully, midweek games offered a chance to get some good vibes going - and all the more so when I got 4/5 on Tuesday night - only 1 City equalising goal away from a perfect start. Will O'Doherty and Joe Miller share my pain. Wednesday wasn't quite as good for me, but Andrew Feneley got all 5 spot on for a perfect night.

All in all, an average score of 4.53 isn't too shabby considering there were some unusual results, and having to take into account any last minute transfer such as the Lord of the Manor of Frodsham (QPR's no. 23).

The short turnaround time is a bit of a bugger tho. Apologies for the short notice!

Full breakdown below:

This week, 15 people played

Most popular predicted results: Spurs & Sunderland WINS (14/15 or 93% concordance)

Most disputed result: Blackburn vs Newcastle (5-4-6 split)

Longest odds: Ryan Wain (12698/1)

Shortest odds: Joe Miller (517/1)

Best predictor: Me! and Andrew Feneley and Josh Benson (7/10)

Worst predictor: Yanik Joshi continues his collapse (2/10)

Best predicted result: Spurs & Sunderland WINS (14/15)

Worst predicted result: Everton WIN (1/15 - Well done Josh Benson)

Villain of the week: No real villains - just some big team performances and an element of bad luck.

Everone's scores:

To the leaderboard:

Joe stays at the top, and Yanik in 2nd place, although he's pretty much dropped his title challenge for now. Lawro drops quite a bit and otherwise, nothing too exciting. Someone needs to go on a little run to challenge Joe methinks!

To this week's predictions:

Arsenal vs Blackburn - ARSENAL

Norwich vs Bolton - NORWICH

WBA vs Swansea - DRAW

Stoke vs Sunderland - SUNDERLAND

QPR vs Wolves - QPR

Wigan vs Everton - EVERTON

Man City vs Fulham - MAN CITY

Newcastle vs Aston Villa - NEWCASTLE

Chelsea vs Man Utd - DRAW

Liverpool vs Spurs - DRAW

Total Odds: 3112/1 with Paddypower

Predictions in the comments as per usual, good luck chaps!