Leaderboard

I'm well behind on this again but here is confirmation of the final scores for this round. 9 points (6 correct picks + 3 bonus points) - @Storts 7 points (5 correct picks + 2 bonus points) - @Michael, @Lucas, @Stan 5 points (4 correct picks + 1 bonus point) - @Tommy 2 points (2 correct picks) - @6666, @Pyfish 1 point (1 correct pick) - @nudge, @Viva la FCB, @CaaC (John), @Rucksackfranzose 0 points - @RandoEFC, @Bluewolf, @...Dan, @Dan, @Redcanuck, @Rick I will get the French round started for next weekend. There are only 4 sets of fixtures left. If we're being honest, there's a very good chance we'll all manage to be eliminated in that time but if not, we'll decide that round with tie breakers in the last weekend. I'll get that started tomorrow.

Week 36 Results Kaiserslautern 1-1 Wehen Aberdeen 3-3p Celtic Leicester 2-1 West Brom Man City 1-0 Chelsea Lyon Women 3-2 PSG Women Perth Glory 3-4 Western United Houston Dynamo 0-1 Austin FC Coventry 3-3p Man Utd Union S-G 1-2 Club Brugge Real Madrid 3-2 Barcelona Round-up A total of 39 goals across 10 fixtures - goalfests despite two matches only having 1 goal in them. Two others were cup semi-finals that ended in penalty shootouts after 3-3 draws after extra-time, and in Australia there was a 7-goal thriller. The weekend rounded off with a 3-2 win in El Clasico - only @CaaC (John) got this as a perfect score, helping to solidify 2nd place. @Rucksackfranzose did well to get 13 points and that meant he overtook @Bluebird Hewitt and is now level with @Viva la FCB. @Tommy is just behind them and one good week could propel him up further...

Results - Chinese Grand Prix This week it was @The Palace Fan's turn to go AWOL so no points for him. I know I'm not helping by posting predictions on Wednesday or Thursday, especially with so many of the races so far being overnight for those of us in Europe. I'll endeavour to get back to posting predictions on the Monday of race week. Onto those that did predict, everyone once again went for a Max Verstappen pole position and bagged 5 points. I think I've seen enough now to change this prediction to a Pole Position without Verstappen. Even if there's chances for other people to beat him on a Saturday, those chances are so slim that there isn't an incentive to take a risk, so for the foreseeable future, we will change the pole position prediction to one excluding him. Also resolved on Saturday was the bonus question. @Stan and @Tommy both backed Haas to get a car into Q3 and Nico Hulkenberg duly delivered on this again. Kudos to @Whiskey who backed a Q3 appearance for Sauber even before seeing their form in the Sprint Shootout and Sprint Race. Bottas bags him 5 points as well. Onto the Podium Minus Max, this week's result was Norris, Perez, Leclerc. Hilariously, everyone who predicted this week went for a combination of Perez and the two Ferraris here, so nobody gets any points for Sainz. @Stan and @nudge made the best fist of this, with Perez and Leclerc in the exact correct positions bagging them 10 points. @Coma, @DeadLinesman and @OrangeKhrush take 7 points each for their PER-SAI-LEC combination, while @RandoEFC, @MUFC and @Tommy have to settle for 4 points each. Finally, Yuki Tsunoda's retirement made it impossible to give any points for this week's random driver prediction. If anyone had put 19th, I'd have given points for that as he was the second car to retire from the race but I'm not giving consolation points for a driver who retired apart from that scenario. Here's what it does for the table: @The Palace Fan shows the cost of a missed week as he drops from 1st to 8th, but in terms of the points differential, still has 19 races left to recover a 12-point deficit to the top spot. @Stan is this week's "Driver of the Day" with an impressive score of 20 that also takes him to the top of the standings with a decent 5-point lead. Single figure returns for @RandoEFC see him lose ground in the standings and @MUFC remains behind his team-mate despite completing one race more - ouch! In the Constructors' standings, @Whiskey's return to the fray saw Ferrari bag this biggest team points haul we've seen so far this season, and they can begin to eye Mercedes up in the battle to get off the bottom. McLaren's lowest score of the season sees their narrow lead in the standings disappear, while Red Bull leapfrog both them and Aston Martin with a very strong score of 29 points this weekend.

I don't know what age group you're in but most posters here are around the early 30s sort of mark so most of us went to school with a number of Man Utd fans during Ferguson's era who had it way too good for way too long and had to put up with no end of gloating from them when they won everything and beat our teams because it was all they'd known and they thought it would last forever, so it will never not be funny when they get a(nother) comeuppance. And it is embarrassing I'm afraid mate. Man Utd could probably field almost a full eleven of players who individually cost more than Coventry's entire squad, bench and annual wage bill put together and they were a marginal offside decision away from blowing a 3-0 lead on 70 minutes against them in a cup semi final. You'd be loving it too if it was Man City or Liverpool.

@Rick lol don't tell Gasperini the only person who linked him to the job was me

Week 35 Results Sydney FC 2-1 Western Sydney Atletico Madrid 3-1 Girona Birmingham 3-0 Coventry Motherwell 1-1 Hibernian Torino 0-0 Juventus DC United 2-3 Orlando City Braunschweig 0-0 Hannover Tottenham Women 2-1 Leicester Women Clermont 1-1 Montpellier Vasco De Gama 2-1 Gremio Round-up @CaaC (John) now occupies 2nd spot and overtakes @Viva la FCB in the process, whilst @Tommy top-scored with 15 points and 2 perfect scores. @Rucksackfranzose also got 2 perfect scores, with one of them being the 0-0 draw in the Turin derby.

Tacos in a holder & rice and beans in a burrito = bullshit Mexican food

@Tommy, @Viva la FCB, @6666, @Michael, @Bluewolf, @Coma, @nawoo Your weekly reminder!

Please let it be half of the starting 11 for Hansa Rostock.

I was lucky enough to get to watch them kick off the season

My gripe with Italian food outside of Italy isn't so much the "creative license" with cooking. It's that going to an Italian restaurant outside of Italy means paying a premium for an inferior product, that you're typically being told is authentic (when it isn't). I can understand when a restaurant substitutes something that is harder to find outside of Italy with something easier to find (for instance, using pancetta rather than guanciale - because guanciale is difficult to get outside of Italy and if that's really what you want, you may have to pay a premium). I can understand when places want to put their own "twist" on something traditional, after all - fusion foods are popular for good reason and they do make the culinary world more exciting and interesting. But paying a premium for food that is lower quality than what it's trying to be, because we're told it's fancy and difficult to make... when it isn't - that's something I struggle to justify. Especially when I've eaten very good food in Italy and paid reasonable prices. It blows my mind to pay what I would pay for a 4 course meal in Rome... on a pasta meal that's ok at best. It honestly is infuriating. For me, going out to a restaurant - I'm either looking for: 1.) something I can't make well myself, 2.) something that if I can make it well myself, I want it to be made for me better than I can do it. For Italian food outside of Italy... I think anyone except people who are possibly the most useless people in the kitchen, can cook a better meal than they can get in a restaurant. There's this Italian bloke living in Australia, he's got a great youtube channel (Vincenzo's plate I believe is the name of the channel)... he's been a life saver for me. Because I like cooking, I love Italian food, and eating Italian food at restaurants has been a massive disappointment. Shit he's taught me, aside from traditional recipes, has been so useful at me putting my own twist on certain meals... and it just has completely removed my desire to ever go out and get Italian food here. And that's great for me, because I feel like I'm not getting ripped off if I'm eating Italian food and I'm not in Italy. So I don't think of it so much as "food purity" so much as I think that (most) Italian restaurants outside Italy (and in my personal experience, all of the ones I've had) are just ripping off customers and providing a comparatively low quality meal in the process. I don't think it's being a food purist to think paying over $20 for a carbonara using cheap spaghetti and substituting guanciale with bacon is an absolute ripoff... when you can make the same thing at home for less than half the price using slightly better spaghetti and substituting the guanciale with pancetta. That's just preferring better ingredients and paying a more reasonable price for a better meal. Neither are "traditional" or "autentico" - but the cheaper one not made at a restaurant using better ingredients is going to get you a better result.

I think this is the best title battle we've had heading into the final round as past champions @nudge and @Viva la FCB, along with @6666 and @Michael, are separated by just 2 points overall. With a maximum score of 7 available in the final round, it's almost mathematically impossible for anyone to come from outside the top four to claim the title.

Neutrals wanting the outsider to win is very usual and has nothing to do with hatred for Man Utd, and Coventry were massive underdogs.

Matchday winner Bluewolf with three perfect scores. Prediction of the matchday is Viva's correct Union 1-5 Bayern prediction, though. Matchday 30 1) Bluewolf 13 points 2) 6666 8 points 3) Michael 6 points 3) Stan 6 points 3) Viva la FCB 6 points 6) Tommy 3 points 7) CaaC(John) 2 points 7) Coma 2 points 9) Rucksackfranzose 1 point Now we've got two people leading the table again. Nothing lost for their hunters yet, since the table is pretty tight on the first 6 spots. Table after 30 matchdays 1) @Stan 212 points 1) @Tommy 212 points 3) @6666 209 points 3) @Bluewolf 209 points 5) @Viva la FCB 208 points 6) @Michael 205 points 7) @Coma 184 points 8- Rucksackfranzose 165 points 9) @CaaC (John) 157 points 10) @nawoo 149 points

Leverkusen just won't lose will they

Man the Bayern Arsenal tie was one of the most boring as it turned out Idk Im not really confident in our team these days but the competition just seems so open. All these teams are fairly beatable that are left.

Good luck with getting Wirtz! He extended his contract, his agent and father said he wants to and should stay at Leverkusen for at least one more year; and the asking price is allegedly 150M Euros.

I think because Norris lost time when he went off track. This is the reason his lap time wasn't deleted.

Also CNN pretty much has a livefeed of what Israel is doing. Most of it's just photos of dead children, I'd say that's pretty critical.

Those google workers were fired for defacing the google cloud offices and shouting threats at their coworkers, more than they were fired for protesting. Columbia University had to send in riot police because pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protestors were kicking off and the school had to close it's campus because it couldn't guarantee safety of students. The commencement speakers thing is probably the most egregious of those 3 things... but really is a graduation ceremony the appropriate avenue for making highly political statements on an issue that's incredibly divisive? Either way, none of those examples demonstrate anything the US is doing because 1.) google isn't the US government, 2.) Columbia and USC aren't the US government, 3.) even the state funded universities in the US aren't the US government - they're funded by the states they reside in. Is there any limit to the sort of bad behavior the zealots amongst the "globalise the intifada" crowd will tolerate for their cause? Is it not enough to call for perpetual bloodshed in the Middle East?

So Martinez got a second yellow during the shootout but apparently there's a special rule where it doesn't count as a second yellow in a penalty shootout. What a random and bullshit rule!

It's almost as if fixture congestion isn't actually their concern whatsoever and that what they really want is to clear out low-paying domestic games from their calendar to make room for even more money-spinning UEFA fixtures...

Just read news, I'd missed when they were more highly current. Leading AFD politician is brought to court for "using symbols of unconstitutional and terroristic organisations" because the infamous SA slogan "Alles für Deutschland" (translates to "Everything for Germany") in a public speech. Thought that might interest you @OrangeKhrush since you said there were no fascist tendencies in the AFD whilst repeatedly calling the governmental parties Nazi without any calms. PS: In case you don't know who SA were, just google them. You can colour me surprised, if the English speaking first research site wouldn't suply them given foreigners obsession with that part of German history.

No. They are just folded.

I still eat pizza here. Well aware it isn't the same as having it in Italy but it isn't like you can't have what's generally a nice dish that's quite hard to get completely wrong. I'll always unfortunately be a sucker for that greasy meat feast pizza. Probably explains quite a lot. Very much on the anti pineapple bandwagon though. Just thoroughly unpleasant.

Both play in white, but only one of them is a big enough club to be located in Birkenhead and not have historic ties to fascism and match fixing - so Tranmere > Real Madrid.

Not pulling for Bayern, have to say comparing them to City is very disrespectful, though. Just a reminder City are state-owned, and oil-money doped, still got the glorious total of 1 European cup, as many as German 2nd tier club HSV, while Bayern are member-owned and have 6 CL titles to their name. Or to do compare Tranmere Rovers to Real Madrid, as well?

I can tell you really hate burritos from this picture

Also, genuine apologies for missing a few rounds. My wife has been pregnant (had a son 12 days ago) so yeah, life.

As much as it's not technically what the OP is asking I guess, after eating any Italian food in Italy and then eating it anywhere else is worlds apart. I know that eating any dish in its home country is different but seriously, you're not eating pizza in England.

We have really good tacos here that cost around 2 bucks each.

Not in my experience, at least with burritos I've had in Mexico. Granted I've only had them in one city and from 2 different places. The burritos I've had in Mexico were in Tijuana and they were very different to the burritos people would typically picture. They're much thinner and the only filling was meat. Thought it was a bit strange and between tacos in Mexico or the types of burritos I've had in Mexico, tacos win hands down. In Southern California and Texas, I think rice and beans are just filler to make burritos look fatter, cos gringos love big fat burritos. It's why the California burrito took off, adding chips to the burrito was a low cost way of stuffing a carne asada burrito to look much fatter without actually adding more meat. You go too far north in California and the burritos start looking like absolute monsters but that's because it's 80% rice and beans and barely any of what it's actually supposed to be - these burritos are absolute bullshit. In San Diego if you see a burrito with rice & beans, it's a bullshit burrito and you shouldn't get it. But Mexico's a big country and culinary styles change from region to region in any country, and Mexico is no exception, so I'm sure some Mexicans do put rice and beans in burritos. But most people worldwide when they're thinking of burritos, they're thinking of Tex-Mex style burritos. And a lot of those do have rice and beans in them. But too much of that and I think it's absolute bullshit just to inflate a burrito and use up less of the more expensive ingredients.

Home dominance for the latest two. A 6-0 thrashing for Chelsea in Game 123, the first of those in the 13th minute: 2 points. Half the goals for Southampton in Game 124, but first goal was later in the 19th minute 1 point 2 points Plus 1 point for @Toinho for his 21st-minute choice. Table after Game 124: @6666 is now leading the way once again, overtaking @Devil-Dick Willie. @Redcanuck is up to 7th place, and @CaaC (John) goes to 9th despite picking up 1 point.

She looks like someone deprived of both tacos and burritos.

Taco ahead by 1. 4-3 and in the lead. Currently @Mel81x, @Tommy and @Coma can shove their burritos up their arses.

@Michael, @Viva la FCB, @Bluewolf, @Coma, @Tommy, @londonerlilie, @nawoo Your weekly reminder!

Australia isn’t in the Middle East, fuckhead

Ive been to a couple of the higher tier Italian restaurants here and actually found the quality pretty good, relatively speaking. I mean I dont care what they say you cannot import tomatoes that taste like that for example. The one major difference for me was price though. A couple of the best meals we had where probably half the price including desert and a bottle of wine and thats even with our Canadian dollar being shite to the euro. I get it though theres alot of "italian" restaurants that are just whatever, that just arent even remotely the same. Pasta isnt really pasta and your bolognese example rings so true

Stroll is genuinely almost as bad a driver as Sargeant nowadays. He used to have decent moments but he seems to have regressed.

They have massively dropped the ball there haven't they. What makes me laugh is, how are the Premier League dictating that replays can't be played in the first two rounds which PL clubs don't even participate in? You're talking about 20 clubs in the PL,(and realistically, you can probably narrow that down to 6-8 clubs), who have managed to get this change enforced at the spite of over 700 over clubs that are allowed to particpate in the competition. Madness. The fact that the EFL were not even consulted also is shocking. The only solution to me now would be drastic action. In a show of solidarity lower league clubs should withdraw from participating and throw it into absolute chaos.

@Tommy you have more to add to the clan.

Depends on tomorrow's results. Still if Liverpool and West Ham go out, especially the latter at the hands of Leverkusen that ship has sailed for the Premier League.

I can get more use out of a strawberry than I can having @Whiskey as a teammate.

Exactly same for me. More preference of what and how much goes in!

You know you’re getting some gringo ass shit when your tacos come on a holder.

Most people in Iran don't want war with the US or Israel. People are fed up with the ridiculously bad economic conditions and the negative sentiment surrounding the government from that human rights movement that led to mass imprisonment and executions hasn't gone anywhere. There's a huge portion of the country that views their government as the enemy (cos they are) and the rumblings of war as nothing more than something to distract people to keep the government firmly grasping to power. People haven't forgotten that the shadow of the war with Iraq led to the IR consolidating its power and purging out dissenting and more moderate voices post-revolution, they know how the IR operates when it is at war. When you've got football crowds chanting "marg bar diktator", "marg bar Khamenei," and "marg bar jomhooriye islami" (death to the dictatorship/Khamenei/the Islamic Republic) every week, it really does give a finger on the pulse of how ordinary people in Iran feel about their government. There's obvious division in the country though. In the more rural communities, support for the IR is strong. Amongst the elite of Iran, unsurprisingly because the reason they are elite has to do with their close ties to the government (if not being actively involved in governance), support for the IR is strong. But in the cities among normal people, I suspect the feeling is more common to what you see in the streets of Tehran or in the football stadiums of the clubs of the big cities. The increasing sentiment that the IR is not a legitimate government and one that only has its "mandate" to lead by the brutality they inflict on their people. All you have to do is look at Iranian posters on twitter/instagram, look at the ones that are actually coming out of Iran... and take a look at what they have to say about their government and sepahis (members of the IRGC). You might have to run it through a translator, but you can see the Iranians that are using their VPNs to express their thoughts to the outside world absolutely hate their oppressors. And you can't really blame Iranians for not having any appetite for a war with Israel. First, there's a huge number of people that have bitter resentment towards Palestine. Iran's economy is in dire straights and the government funnels money to Hamas and Hezbollah in the name of ending oppression of Palestinians. A lot of Iranians think that money would be better spent on Iran. Inflation is out of control in Iran - tens of millions are struggling with the cost of living, wondering if they will be able to afford their homes & buy food at the same time. This escalation, which now is likely to bring further US sanctions as well as a military response from Israel, is the last thing Iranians needed in this difficult time for them. The US sanctions have been largely ineffective because while they tank Iran's economy... it really only negatively impacts normal people. The elite keep their money flowing by using Russian and Chinese networks to skirt sanctions as well as simply selling oil on the black market. So further economic hell for the people living in Iran, along with the ever present threat of Israeli strikes. It's why I find the calls from non-Iranians bellowing for Iran to throw itself into full blown war with Israel so offensive, tbh. These are already struggling and suffering people, to call for them to put their lives on the line to end the "oppression" of people other than themselves, while the international community largely sat back and didn't give a fuck about Iranians pleading for the international community to end their own oppression... it's just insane. Iran has it's own problems and it's own oppressors to worry about before going to war with anybody else. And like Israel, is surrounded by countries that are either openly hostile or full of people that think less of them because of their religious beliefs and ethnicities - so the prospect of a greater regional war is the prospect of Iran going headfirst into an existential battlefield. Anyone with any interest in peace and stability in the region should be against this conflict escalating to Israel and Iran's cold war truly heating up.