S6M3: Friday Night Fever

Those meddling TV executives. Not content with superinflating the market to a position where utter dross now costs over £30m, they've decided to go full Mitchell & Webb and fill every day with live football. Not that I'm really complaining about that, but it does have certain consequences.

The first, as I discussed last week, is the pressure put on me to get me blog out a day earlier. That's fine right now, but it's going to keep me on my toes as my work schedule fills out a little. All I can ask folks, is that you bear with me whilst I try and work out how this is all going to proceed.

The second consequence is the early death of my Fantasy football team & my Super 6 predictions (admittedly less so). The early lock date for FF means I've now forgetten to set a team 2 weeks in a row. I missed 2 weeks in total last season on my way to a midtable finish. So I'm bowing out already of this year's FF as I clearly can't focus on too many things at once.

The third - and most troubling - consequence is the effect of the Friday night games on the Fink Tank's predictions. The website that had the back-end workings for this model has been taken down - which was always my back up if I couldn't see a copy of the Times. This puts the FT at a serious competitive disadvantage whenever there's a Friday evening game. That said, it's a little unfair on everyone else to score the weekend out of 9, or to scale the FT result accordingly. Ideas on a postcard please for how to solve this one.

On the pitch, Zlatan's landed with a bang on Planet Premier League. Pepe can do it on a rainy afternoon sunny Saturday in Stoke and Chelsea creak along with another late winner. Sunderland are still hopeless - but can't even win their derbies now, Liverpool are still Liverpool and Hull are this year's Leicester, which is fortunate 'cos last year's Leicester are doing a wonderful job of demonstrating Reversion to the Mean. Spurs fans are getting their "Mind the Gap" T shirts out of storage once again. I fear this is the year that they'll make it to May without being mothballed again. Finally, West Ham christened their new stadium-which-they-should-never-have-got-at-such-a-ridiculous-deal-and-yeah-the-Olympics-was-brilliant-and-overall-the-legacy-stuff-was-pretty-good-but-this-is-criminal-frankly with a win over Bournemouth, currently struggling through that tricky 2nd album.

Let's get statty:

27 people played
Most popular predicted result: Man Utd WIN (26/26 - no prediction from FT)
Most disputed result: Leicester vs Arsenal (6-10-11 split)

Highest odds: RDM 13598/1
2nd Highest odds: Josh Daniels 3156/1
Lowest odds: Steven Daniels 670/1

Best Predictor: Me :D 8/10
Worst predictors: Matt Abbott & David Brickman (3/10)
Average score: 5.3/10

Best predicted result: Man Utd WIN (26/26)
Worst predicted result: Hull WIN (0/27)

Everyone's result:

Sophie - welcome! Please let me know your surname for future graphs!

The Leaderboard will return next week...

To this week's predictions:

Spurs vs Liverpool - SPURS

Chelsea vs Burnley - CHELSEA

Crystal Palace vs Bournemouth - CRYSTAL PALACE

Everton vs Stoke - EVERTON

Leicester vs Swansea - DRAW

Southampton vs Sunderland - SOUTHAMPTON

Watford vs Arsenal - DRAW

Hull vs Man Utd - MAN UTD

WBA vs Middlesborough - MIDDLESBOROUGH

Man City vs West Ham - MAN CITY

Total odds: 1599/1

Good luck guys!

S6M2: Starting Again in 3,2...

Last weekend, I sat down with a nice bottle of beer looking at the sun setting over the Mediterranean Sea and contemplated the start of the new season. The blog was prewritten and autopublished (Pogba technically completed the day after it went live) and my overriding emotion was one of utter apathy - speaking with my Gooner hat on, it's been a summer to forget, which followed a season to forget with followed another summer to forget. It's hard not to feel that Bill Murray's gonna show up some day at the Emirates.

Fortunately, the vagaries of foreign TV meant I saw bugger all last weekend, other than highlights of Arsenal vs Liverpool and the 2nd half of Chelsea vs West Ham. I did see Gary Lineker in his shorts, which was a disappointing cop out. If Tom Daley can be on primetime TV in his budgie-smugglers, I think Lineker should have done the same. So relying on the written word of others, it sounds like Leicester - Ngolo Kante = porous, Guardiola has arguably his toughest challenge ahead in rebuilding a heavyweight side out to seed, Man Utd are really going to challenge this year and Costa is still a filthy animal who should have seen red for a reckless tackle on Adrian when already booked.

The bloke next to me in the pub enquired as to the accuracy of my spectacle prescription when I made a comment to the above effect, but he was a Chelsea fan (you could tell because he was racist and used the disabled toilets inappropriately) so his opinion is worthless on this matter. The let off was made even worse when some generous defending gave Filthy Animal all the space in the world to score a winner.

Ba. Let's go with childhood rules and say that the first round is just a practice and doesn't count...

For the first time this season, let's get statty:

Matchday 1:

This week, 27 people played
Most popular predicted result: Man City WIN (27/27)
Most disputed result: Burnley vs Swansea (10-9-8 split)

Highest odds: Feneley 14994/1
Lowest odds: Josh Daniels 1132/1
Average odds: 6624/1

Best predictor: Matt Abbott on debut - 7/10 - Well done Matt & welcome!
Worst predictor: Joe Miller making his return after 4 years! 2/10 - Welcome back
Average score: 3.89/10 - a good pathetic start to the season!

Best predicted result: Man City WIN (27/27)
Worst predicted result: Hull WIN (1/27)

Everyone's results:

No leaderboard until after Matchday 3 #oldskl

To this week's predictions:

Man Utd vs Southampton - MAN UTD

Stoke vs Man City - MAN CITY

Swansea vs Hull - SWANSEA

Spurs vs Crystal Palace - SPURS

Watford vs Chelsea - CHELSEA

WBA vs Everton - EVERTON

Burnley vs Liverpool - LIVERPOOL

Leicester vs Arsenal - DRAW

Sunderland vs Middlesborough - MIDDLESBOROUGH

West Ham vs Bournemouth - WEST HAM

Total odds: 832/1

Good luck guys, hopefully next week I'll have something to talk about! I'll also look to get the blog out on Wednesdays in future when there's a Friday game!

Season 6.1: repost because the blogspot app is stupid

Welcome back one and all.

Hope you've all had a lovely summer. Nice little break to whet the appetite before the Euros - then a glut of low-quality games before it settled into a regular diet of more meaningful football. Some great memories - the Icelandic thunderclap, the Will Grigg craze and of course, moths eating Ronaldo.

I was pretty upset at the final winners. I was watching the game at a BBQ with a bunch of French people, and obvs wanted the Arsenal boys to do well. I also can't stand Ronaldo and frankly, Quaresma and Nani also irritate me, so there's that. I think the overall feeling of wanting France to win in the Stade de France as some kind of cathartic episode for the year they've had after the attacks at the same stadium back in November was my primary driver though. Anyway, it wasn't to be and when Eder cracked one in from distance you knew there was no way back.

Transfers - Man Utd have gone contract crazy with a new manager and several big signings - still no Pogba which is a transfer that baffles me. He looks like a worldy, but also has games that completely pass him by. A transfer that's likely to surpass £150m when you factor in agent's fees, wages & bonuses just strikes me as a completely daft thing to do. You could easily buy 3 players for that money who might not reach the same peak, but would improve the squad and allow for a more consistent level of form. Think about that - 3 £50m players and what that'd buy! What if Pogba does his ACL in September? I know it's not my money but it just seems a bizarrely extravagant signing.

Managers & players aplenty have arrived in the UK - even with the £ dying and Brexit implications hovering darkly in the future. In particular, I'm excited by Middlesborough signing Negredo on loan (and Valdes!) and Gundogan coming to City, but the most outstanding transfer of the summer comes from Merseyside.

This man is back:



I know he's probably never going to play, but I'm as glad to see him back in the UK as I would be if we'd signed him ourselves. Eyal Berkovic & Samassi Abou probably disagree.

That's Alex Manninger for those who haven't followed the above - and that photo is about 18 years old so I'm just overjoyed that he's still playing!

One last order of business to attend to:

Congratulations to Dagmar for her maiden victory. Historical leaderboard etc now all updated.

To this season now, and a small change to the rules. To incorporate weeks with reduced schedules, the average points will be pro-rata to not penalise those who take part and reward those who tactically absent themselves. I will also be running a pilot of cumulative points (1 per correct prediction) throughout the season to see whether this correlates well with the current scoring system.

So, to the 1st week's predictions:

Hull vs Leicester - LEICESTER 
Burnley vs Swansea - BURNLEY
Crystal Palace vs WBA - PALACE
Everton vs Spurs - DRAW
M'boro vs Stoke - DRAW
Southampton vs Watford - WATFORD
Man City vs Sunderland - CITY
Bournemouth vs Man Utd - MAN UTD
Arsenal vs Liverpool - DRAW
Chelsea v West Ham - CHELSEA

A reminder that reminders are available by Facebook, Twitter, Whats App & email. Yo has died. Sorry to all affected by this. I'll be continuing with preferences from last season, but if you have any further preferences, please let me know.

Not much to say other than spread the word far & wide and let's make this the biggest & best season yet. It's always better with a bit of real life competition so drag in friends, family, colleagues etc. If you're new to the game, welcome, thanks for playing and be in touch with any questions. See the tabs at the top for an explanation of what to do.

Good luck guys! Try not to eat my dust this season....

Season 6: This year's my year

Welcome back one and all.

Hope you've all had a lovely summer. Nice little break to whet the appetite before the Euros - then a glut of low-quality games before it settled into a regular diet of more meaningful football. Some great memories - the Icelandic thunderclap, the Will Grigg craze and of course, moths eating Ronaldo.

I was pretty upset at the final winners. I was watching the game at a BBQ with a bunch of French people, and obvs wanted the Arsenal boys to do well. I also can't stand Ronaldo and frankly, Quaresma and Nani also irritate me, so there's that. I think the overall feeling of wanting France to win in the Stade de France as some kind of cathartic episode for the year they've had after the attacks at the same stadium back in November was my primary driver though. Anyway, it wasn't to be and when Eder cracked one in from distance you knew there was no way back.

Transfers - Man Utd have gone contract crazy with a new manager and several big signings - still no Pogba which is a transfer that baffles me. He looks like a worldy, but also has games that completely pass him by. A transfer that's likely to surpass £150m when you factor in agent's fees, wages & bonuses just strikes me as a completely daft thing to do. You could easily buy 3 players for that money who might not reach the same peak, but would improve the squad and allow for a more consistent level of form. Think about that - 3 £50m players and what that'd buy! What if Pogba does his ACL in September? I know it's not my money but it just seems a bizarrely extravagant signing.

Managers & players aplenty have arrived in the UK - even with the £ dying and Brexit implications hovering darkly in the future. In particular, I'm excited by Middlesborough signing Negredo on loan (and Valdes!) and Gundogan coming to City, but the most outstanding transfer of the summer comes from Merseyside.

This man is back:



I know he's probably never going to play, but I'm as glad to see him back in the UK as I would be if we'd signed him ourselves. Eyal Berkovic & Samassi Abou probably disagree.

That's Alex Manninger for those who haven't followed the above - and that photo is about 18 years old so I'm just overjoyed that he's still playing!

One last order of business to attend to:

Congratulations to Dagmar for her maiden victory. Historical leaderboard etc now all updated.

To this season now, and a small change to the rules. To incorporate weeks with reduced schedules, the average points will be pro-rata to not penalise those who take part and reward those who tactically absent themselves. I will also be running a pilot of cumulative points (1 per correct prediction) throughout the season to see whether this correlates well with the current scoring system.

So, to the 1st week's predictions:

Hull vs Leicester
Burnley vs Swansea
Crystal Palace vs WBA
Everton vs Spurs
M'boro vs Stoke
Southampton vs Watford
Man City vs Sunderland
Bournemouth vs Man Utd
Arsenal vs Liverpool
Chelsea v West Ham

Total odds:

A reminder that reminders are available by Facebook, Twitter, Whats App & email. Yo has died. Sorry to all affected by this. I'll be continuing with preferences from last season, but if you have any further preferences, please let me know.

Not much to say other than spread the word far & wide and let's make this the biggest & best season yet. It's always better with a bit of real life competition so drag in friends, family, colleagues etc. If you're new to the game, welcome, thanks for playing and be in touch with any questions. See the tabs at the top for an explanation of what to do.

Good luck guys! Try not to eat my dust this season....