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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 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.

It's not. It's just senseless and stupid.

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.

Pretty sure Cardiff fans when they came round to Anfield in 2022 got a lot of praise, judging by LFC twitter. So I doubt your fans would have done any poverty chanting to get that praise. Having said that, looking at places like Luton, Leicester, Nottingham, etc... those cities having their own issues with poverty isn't really enough to stop large segments of their support from engaging in mocking poverty if Scouse teams are their opposition. But I don't think Cardiff fans coming to Anfield would be met with lots of praise on social media for their support if Cardiff fans were chanting "feed the scousers" in their thousands like a lot of other clubs do. I think the fans that engage in that sort of behavior are absolute dickheads... but weirdly, it leads to Everton and Liverpool fans directing their anger towards making donations to food banks in those cities. So rather than feed the Scousers, the Scousers feed them. Maybe it's just fucked up reverse psychology to get some extra help with their own poverty issues. But regardless of any accidental positive reactions these chants bring... I can't help but feel like mocking those who can't afford basic necessities - especially now as the UK is suffering through a cost of living crisis - is just a remarkably pathetic thing to do.

Dan describes it perfectly here: Man City are objectively the worst club in football because of this investigation hanging over them, the completely plastic nature of their standing in the game and their immoral owners. It's impossible for most people to conjure up that sort of animosity though because they don't know an insufferable Man City fan whereas everyone knows half a dozen Man Utd fans and half a dozen Liverpool fans (and they're not all like this by any means but) who boast as if they're invincible in moments because they've got safety in numbers so you've got to poke fun at them when they get a knock-back because those are just the rules. The decent Man Utd and Liverpool fans who didn't boast that much in the first place just end up caught in the crossfire but it goes back to the whoppers in your fanbases who bring that upon the rest of you because they don't know the meaning of humility. That just isn't there with Man City. Yes, they should be the most hated club but if you don't have that day to day interaction with their fans then you're just not going to be as arsed.

@Pyfish @Rucksackfranzose @Bluebird Hewitt @Viva la FCB @Tommy @nawoo @CaaC (John)

Correct. Will always be a significant fixture to me even if I will give it barrels about how much they've fallen off. Not a rivalry per se it's just everyone knows a Man United fan in the way they don't know a Man City fan. Liverpool is similar.

Honestly Forest cannot go down quick enough, the owner is a nightmare and their buy every player under the sun recruitment philosophy is a terrible way to run a club. I don’t think they’ll do it but for the sake of the league I hope Luton stay up.

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.

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

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

Thank fuck for that. Could not bare the thought of them potentially being a game from a trophy. United absolutely woeful again. If there was ever a game where a win deserved a sacking it was that. I can't believe they're going to persist with Ten Hag. Absolutely rank football and pure individual quality has saved them all season. But thanks for saving humanity. The icing on an already great weekend.

This has been a bang average matchday for us. Matchday 30 1) Michael 9 points 2) Bluewolf 7 points 2) CaaC(John) 7 points 4) Coma 6 points 5) Rucksackfranzose 5 points 5) Stan 5 points 5) Viva la FCB 5 points 8- Tommy 4 points Michael doubled his lead. Table after 30 matchdays 1) @Michael 189 points 2) @Viva la FCB 182 points 3) @Bluewolf 181 points 4) @Coma 178 points 5) @CaaC (John) 177 points 6) @Stan 176 points 6) @Tommy 176 points 8- Rucksackfranzose 152 points 9) @londonerlilie 127 points 9) @nawoo 127 points