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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.

Ref is a Luton fan.

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.

Honestly, we’ve been mediocre since the start of the year, but this past month has been a new level of shit for us. I’m fed up of the lot of our team. Save for some of the younger lads and players like Diaz, Endo, MacAllister, the whole lot of them have been a disgrace. Fed up of seeing VanDijk throwing his arms in the air everything we concede, like he’s never at fault for any of them. Konate has dropped off big time the last month or so, and that midfield that starter were useless. Salah looks on his holiday & Nunez has no finishing ability and barely a footballing brain in his skull. Wouldn’t mind seeing a mass clear out, even if it meant a transitional season next year. Think that some of these players aren’t good enough for the first team anymore.

Well, our daughter has stuck to her guns and adopted another cat, a female, 8 months old, so that will even it up, 4 cats, 2 male and 2 female, her mate had to get a place for her cats as she was moving to a place with no animals allowed.

The conclusion being that @Rucksackfranzose is a bot...

I trust Michael Edwards.

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

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

Dortmund will struggle to improve their consistency under Favre, since Favre isn't their manager anymore, for whole a while now.

Piraeus, Greece. Early 1900's and 2020's

Called it to a tee. Didn't lay a glove and Leicester cruised it. Wouldn't have called five admitedly but it just looked and felt like it was a match up perfectly suited for Leicester to exploit.

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.

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?

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

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

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

Tapas. Spend double the price in the UK and get half the flavour. You just need a good culture of people wanting that specific food to get it right. Even something as bland as British food, if you go to Australia they cannot serve a fry up, roast dinner or fish and chips to save their lives. The fry ups are generally lacking in quantity and quality, the roasts just lack quality and they don't serve chip shop chips with the fish, always fries or steak cut. Obviously you don't go all the way to Aus to eat like you're in the UK and instead take advantage of the great meat and produce they have out there. But yeah, unless you have large communities from a specific area then the food just won't be that great. Obviously there are large groups of Brits in Aus, but we're shit at cooking anyway so they're never going to get the things we end up doing mildly well lol. Living in London I would never really go for Italian food tbh. But you can find good food from across South Asian communities, great Turkish restaurants, Caribbean food and really good African cuisines too. I generally find the difference between these types of restaurants and say an Italian is that these restaurants will attract people from their ethnic background in the local community, so the food has to be good, but a lot of Italian restaurants or Spanish will likely attract more Brits than anyone so the standards don't have to be so high. I think if you're after a good Italian in London you're best heading into East London where you will likely find restaurants that come from old Italian communities. Interestingly, and maybe @Stan has some insight, Bedford is meant to have a big Italian community that settled after the war.

What is wrong with them!? I can't believe how many people I'm seeing on social media agreeing with them and praising them for "sticking up to the officials". I'm all for questioning the standards of refereeing but what Forest have done, questioning the integrity, is very different. Staggering how many people think Forest are "taking a stand" and not cynically trying to create an unconscious bias in their favour by applying this much pressure on PGMOL.

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

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/world/middleeast/iran-israel-attack.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lU0.Qh1Z.vo2fz-PMOCWM&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&ugrp=m if this is true, the Israeli government are really stupid lol

Wow. That Morata one on one bottle job took me back.

Nagelsmann extends until 2026.

Ridiculous decision made with only the 'elite' clubs in mind who moan about having to play the extra games when they can't get the job done in the first legs. Replays in the FA Cup have provided lower league teams with chances to go to stadiums they wouldn't usually get to see their teams play at, they've provided lower league teams with chances to go on magic cup runs, and they've brought in revenue for the lower league teams that helps them stay afloat in some cases. Why were the Premier League consulted but not the EFL?

Send them my way, and I'll call them pinche gringos.

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

I really don’t care for this sort of shit. Anyone that thinks food is a static idea that can’t or shouldn’t change with the people, ingredients, location, and times is just a food fascist masturbating to themselves on the idea of what something ‘should be’, it’s the same as people that bully or shame food based on their class, culture, or religion. Yeah, American cafes butcher the flat white coffee, who gives a shit? It’s all just a variation, extrapolation, riff, modification of something else. You want food purity? Go eat some unprocessed grains and a hunk or burnt meat in a cave. I do agree it sucks paying money for a shitty facsimile.

I dont know quite where to put this but Bill Burr answering the web's most searched queries about him. Hes just such a genuine guy, love him. I know @Tommy will enjoy this one. I