Matchday 34 Results & Matchday 35 Predictions: One thing less to play for

Well, where to start? Why not at the top? Man Utd were afforded the chance to seal the title by a 6 minute meltdown from City at White Hart Lane, and it was a chance that they gleefully took, to win their  20th championship in significantly less thrilling a manner than the conclusion to last year's effort. Not that they'll be complaining, I'm sure. So congrats to them.

Sunday's other talking point came at Anfield when Uruguay's favourite headline hogger stole the spotlight in the second half. The good - a delicious clipped assist for Sturridge and a deft header to equalise deep into injury time. The bad - a rather brainless handball to afford Hazard the chance to restore the lead. The ugly has been spoken about at great length, and not much more needs to be said - it's clearly ridiculous, unacceptable and a little bit screwy at the same time. Evra's post-title chomp on a severed arm showed a level of comedic genius generally unassociated with footballers (other than Jason Bent). However, the best reaction came from the Red & White Kop Liverpool fans forum. Twitter account @RAWK_Meltdown is a whistle-blower on some of the best comments made there (as far as I understand, please correct me if it's genuine parody).

Here is a selection of my favourites...some funny and some stupendous in their utterly blinkered defence of the indefensible.

All I have to add, is that Mrs RAWK Meltdown is a very lucky lady. 

(Disclaimer: This is not an attack on Liverpool football Club, all fans of Liverpool FC, Scousers in general, Liverpool the city, the baffling architecture of their cathedral or Blood Brothers the Musical, before I get misquoted.)

At the wrong end, QPR are all but mathematically down, as are Reading. It looks like the 2 'races' left will effectively come down to 2 playoff games - those between Chelsea & Spurs, and Aston Villa & Wigan. More on that in future weeks.

Let's get statty:

This week, 21 people played.

Most predicted result: Arsenal WIN (20/21)

Most disputed result: Liverpool vs Chelsea (8-5-8 split)

Highest odds: Josh Daniels 11,369/1

Lowest odds: Sam Ruback 2521/1

Average odds: 5748/1

Best predictor: Martin Keown (8/10)

Worst predictors: Jonathan Chernick & Tarek Najm (2/10)

Average score: 5/10

Best predicted result: Arsenal WIN (20/21)

Worst predicted result: Spurs WIN (1/21 - EuroClub Index with the narrowest of wins).

Villain of the week: Sometimes, the law is an ass. It may be the case this week, as the villain cannot be the obvious culprit, but instead must go to Mancini for the baffling failure to hold out against Spurs.

Everyone's results:

To the leaderboard:

Movement at the top is rather lacking, but it's extremely close between the top 3 with 4 more matchdays to play! This is in stark contrast to last year when Joe had effectively won with ages to play - seems reality and Impossibilitee have swapped places. I've finally leapfrogged my brother, which is deserved because I say so and 2 good weeks from Doron (sorry about missing you out last week) see him leapfrog Tarek, who had a week to forget.

To this week's predictions then:

Man City vs West Ham - MAN CITY
Everton vs Fulham - DRAW
Southampton vs WBA - SOUTHAMPTON
Stoke vs Norwich - STOKE
Wigan vs Spurs - SPURS
Newcastle vs Liverpool - NEWCASTLE
Reading vs QPR - DRAW
Chelsea vs Swansea - CHELSEA
Arsenal vs Man Utd - DRAW
Aston Villa vs Sunderland - SUNDERLAND

Total odds: 5644/1 (Paddypower)

Thanks for your comments last week guys, will deliberate for a bit and we'll have a vote and a re-clarification of the rules over the summer before the new season. Good luck!

Matchday 34: Poor scores on a reduced card

This week has brought a conundrum in my mind. I'm in two minds as to whether to repeat this scenario again in future weeks. A few weeks ago, I decided not to play a round of matches due to only being 6 games. This weekend saw 1 extra game, but a rather low bunch of scores. Obviously, the consequences of being wrong in one match of 7 are more significant that one in 10. Therefore, I think for the future, we need to come up with a solution. The options are as I see it:

1) The full round is predicted and the result counts for whenever the match is rearranged. Obviously, this disadvantages those predictions as you lose the knowledge of form, injuries etc that you make for short-term predictions.

2) The round is played with however many matches are played at that time (Status quo). This means that some weeks count more significantly than others for the calculation of averages.

3)Weeks with a number of games below a threshold are ignored

4) As point one, but delayed games are given a reduced weighting as to be less disadvantageous.

These are just a few ideas - there may be others, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the best way forward.

To this week's football:

This week, 21 people played

Most Predicted result:  Arsena & Everton WINS 21/21

Most Disputed  result: Newcastle vs Sunderland (12-6-2 split) (no predo from SC)

Highest odds: Will O'Doherty 192/1

Lowest odds:  Me 36/1

Average odds: 103/1

Best predictors: Tarek & Feneley (5/7)

Worst predictor: Hesham (2/7)

Average score: 4/7

Best predicted result: Arsenal & Everton WINS (21/21)

Worst predicted result: Reading vs Liverpool DRAW (1/21 - congrats Feneley)

Everyone's results:

And to the leaderboard, where there was literally no movement whatsoever!

This week's predictions:

Fulham vs Arsenal - ARSENAL
Norwich vs Reading - NORWICH
QPR vs Stoke - QPR
Sunderland vs Everton - EVERTON
Swansea vs Southampton - DRAW
WBA vs Newcastle - NEWCASTLE
West Ham vs Wigan - WEST HAM
Spurs vs Man City - MAN CITY
Liverpool vs Chelsea - CHELSEA
Man Utd vs Aston Villa - MAN UTD

Total odds: 3202/1 (Paddypower)

Good Luck guys

FA Cup Semi-Finals & PL Matchday 33: 2 Games for the price of 1

Lots to get through in this blog, so I'm not going to discuss last weekend's football...not that I think there's much to say anyway. We have the FA Cup semi-finals for all those involved in the FA Cup game, and a decent selection of PL games to play too. I hope those who are not regular predictors stick around for the PL games too!

So, without further Adu, let's look firstly at the results from the 6th round of the FA Cup:

15 people played
The most popular result was Man City WIN (15/15)
The most disputed was Millwall vs Blackburn (7-8 split)

The best predictors were Josh Gaon, Charlie Rawson & Hesham Zakai
The worst predictors were Yanik Joshi, Andrew Feneley (& Mother Feneley), Tarek Najm, Danny Hakimian and Sam Ruback

The best predicted result was Man City WIN (15/15)
The worst predicted result was Wigan WIN (1/15 congrats Charlie Rawson)

Everyone's scores:

And that leaves a leaderboard looking rather interesting...

Josh Gaon is more or less guaranteed some money, but it's a pretty close fight beyond that. The City vs Chelsea semi-fnal looks like being the decider of who ends up in the money slots.

For the sake of fluency, I'll do the PL Matchday 32 results now too, and all the predictions at the end.

This week, 18 people played
The most popular predictions were Arsenal, Liverpool & Chelsea WINS (17/18)
The most disputed predictions were Norwich vs Swansea & QPR vs Wigan (7-5-6 & 5-7-6 splits respectively)

Highest odds: Doron 10,979/1
Lowest odds: Euro Club Index 1362/1
Average odds: 4401/1

Best predictors: Me, Andrew Feneley & Eli Daniels (7/10)
Worst predictor: Doron 2/10
Average score: 5/10

Best predicted result: Arsenal & Chelsea WINS (17/18)
Worst predicted result: Liverpool vs West Ham DRAW (1/18 - well done Eli)

Everyone's scores:

And to the leaderboard, and loads of movement this week. Nick Collins continues to show all the bottle of the England Cricket team throughout the 90s and finds himself overtaken by Lawro. Sam Ruback leapfrogs Stevie D, who's early season pacesetting is but a distant memory now. Josh Gaon's poor week costs him 2 places, whilst Feneley overtakes my baby brother, who now rests only 0.01 above me. For those of you who are not familiar with this concept of sibling rivalry, this is pretty much it. Chernick's return...er, the less said about that the better!

So, to some predictions:

FA Cup Semi Finals (for those who play the FA Cup game)

Millwall vs Wigan - WIGAN
Chelsea vs Man City - CHELSEA

And PL Matchday 33 (and for those FA Cup game players who don't normally play, why not have a bash?)

Arsenal vs Norwich - ARSENAL
Aston Villa vs Fulham - ASTON VILLA
Everton vs QPR - EVERTON
Reading vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL
Southampton vs West Ham - SOUTHAMPTON
Newcastle vs Sunderland - NEWCASTLE
Stoke vs Man Utd - MAN UTD

Total odds: A rather pathetic 36/1. The difference between 10 games and 7? Or just playing it safe? (Paddypower nevertheless)

So, hoping for loads of participation and some great scores! Good luck!

Matchday 31 results: Give yourselves a big pat on the back (& Matchday 32 predictions)

Guys,

I think the old maxim is finally ringing true. Practice really does make perfect. Matthew Syed may well write a follow-up book to Bounce (excellent, go read) about this game in a few years time, because we may finally be improving! Of course, one swallow and all that guff about chickens hatching, but for now, I'm revelling in the fact that this was an incredibly successful week for all of us!

5 is normally a score that's acceptable to good...over the course of 2 seasons, only a handful have managed to breech the 5.00 mark on the leaderboard. When, out of 21 players, the lowest score for a full 10 match weekend is 5....well I'm just bursting with pride.

Let's not dally, let's get statty:

This week, 21 people played
The most popular predicted result was an Arsenal WIN (21/21)
The most disputed result was West Ham vs WBA (8-8-5 split)

Highest Odds: Doron Salomon (of course) 4347/1
Lowest Odds: Steven Daniels (718/1)
Average Odds: 1500/1

Best predictor: Euro Club Index (9/10)
Worst predictors: Josh Gaon, Menachem Grunewald and Tarek Najm (5/10). Feels bad to have this line this week.
Average score: A game record 7/10 (6.76). Give yourselves all a round of applause. The previous best was 6.33, so this is a demolition frankly.

Best predicted result: Arsenal WIN (21/21)
Worst predicted result: Southampton WIN (1/21 - Tekaboo Sam Ruback)

The long overdue villain of the week: Rafa for (correctly) prioritising the FA Cup over the league, but in the process, robbing ECI of a chance at the perfect 10.

Everyone's score:

To the leaderboard, and WhoScored.com regain the lead whilst Jonathan Chernick's no-show on freebie week leaves him adrift at the foot. With only 7 games to go, that could prove terminal (though not Wain-esque levels of terminal for those who played last year). Most people in the table have a rival or two for their position, and so it's good to see that we still have plenty to play for as we round the final bend.

To this week's predictions:

Reading vs Southampton - SOUTHAMPTON

Norwich vs Swansea - DRAW

Stoke vs Aston Villa - ASTON VILLA

WBA vs Arsenal - ARSENAL

Liverpool vs West Ham - LIVERPOOL

Spurs vs Everton - DRAW

Chelsea vs Sunderland - CHELSEA

Newcastle vs Fulham - DRAW

QPR vs Wigan - DRAW

Man Utd vs Man City - MAN UTD

Total odds: 7278/1 (PaddyPower)

Let's keep the run going guys. Good luck!