Dan

That's my point. I know numbers, and I know that it's all probability at the end of the day. This isn't merely "top couldn't beat bottom how is that even possible" it's that the gulf is absolutely enormous, they're 43 points apart after 19 games, so they build up on average over two points a game between them with every game they play! It would make more sense to me if Girona had gone off at say 2/5 to win the game and just not turned up. It's just that the bookies pre-empted that outcome and I cannot for the life of me see how. It genuinely fascinates me. I'd love to have Tony Bloom's number. I want him to explain to me what's just unfolded.

It's one of those games that makes me question everything I know to be honest. It's less about it being a freak result and more being the bookies seemed to know that would be fairly tight. Frankly, Almeria were the better side and came nearer to winning. It's just how did they know, looking at those respective records that it would be? This wasn't just bottom vs top, this was a team on course for a Derby 2008 points tally against a team on course for over 95 points. It's crazy.

Genuinely don't know why I bother. How is it even possible to be this unlucky?

The worst thing about today is it's exactly the shot in the arm they needed to go on a proper run and get into the playoffs / possibly win them. Even if we'd just drawn it it would've at least killed their excitement a bit. You can always nail us on for at least one absolutely hideous collapse a season. I've had a feeling for a while Fatawu was going to get a red card and had a horrible feeling it would be today. He's a good player and a bright prospect, but he's a bit reckless. I actually don't think it's a red, but in the context of the situation, to fly in for a challenge like that after we've just had a contentious one go our way is naive in the extreme and I knew the minute he made it he'd get a red. Referee was absolutely woeful today. Embarrassing how a Premier League referee can be that weak. We will win the league, but I don't like our big game record, and it will bite us next year if we aren't careful.

Sensible man. In other news I'm half way to a win and it's my unlikelier leg that's done it. So we all know what follows here. Everyone get your life savings on Girona winning 0-1!

If you wish, you can add another selection tomorrow / Monday, or just go with that and cash in the £11 win!

Nah they aren't actually. It's a pub with a cinema-esque screen. But it's produced a good bit of wind up content anyway.

Please beat these idiots again. Make it as heartbreaking and painful as possible.

Almeria v Girona - I think anybody with any vague interest in football outside of England this season knows the story of Girona. Comparable to Leicester of 2015/16 if they were to go all the way and win the league. They sit 2nd in the league at the half way mark, level on points with Real Madrid, but I think the really impressive bit is actually the points tally of 48 from 19 games. So they have only dropped 9 points all season, coming in a loss to Real Madrid and draws with Real Betis, Bilbao and Real Sociedad. This means they have won every single game against teams sitting 8th or below. Almeria sit 20th in the league on just 5 points. They're every bit as bad as Girona are good and the fact the odds on a Girona win is 7/10 itself is remarkably overpriced. I think the odds of it being 0-1 are pretty low though and there's a good case to get on some handicaps. There isn't a single thing beyond "sods law" that I see stopping a comfortable Girona win here. I actually quite also like Girona to win & BTTS at 5/2, Girona -1 at 13/8 and Girona -2 at 4/1, all very palatable. Barnsley v Bristol Rovers - BTTS has paid out in 5 of Barnsley's last 6 home games, and all of Bristol Rovers' last 11 games in all competitions. So there is plenty of reason to think this will pay out. BTTS is 4/6 but eliminating the 1-1 draw as an option (granted risky) boosts the price a fair bit, and I really need a bit of money to come in on this so I'm taking the slightly riskier option. £10 returns £39.26.

WEEK 23 - REGRESSION TO THE MEAN WEEK 23 STATS Winning bets: 1/5 Winning selections: 4/9 Weekly forum position: -£16.08 (Ranked 12/23) --- OVERALL STATS Winning bets: 40/159 Winning selections: 137/299 Total forum position: -£310.75 Back for another (slightly) late update. Just five players again this week, and a slight loss after last weeks best. Starting with @Pyfish who returns a double losing selection on two pretty short priced both teams to score picks - though two games which I fancied for it myself, the Sunderland v Newcastle one giving me an early kick off curse. Sunderland fans' consensus is that they didn't play anywhere near their best and that they would've done better under Mowbray, which is quite damning. How Arsenal didn't score as well was quite remarkable, another selection which cost me a bet over the weekend. @CaaC (John) falls victim to the same game as Sunderland's no-show means it's nothing for him this week, following Tottenham's late win over Burnley. The only winner of the week is @Stan who picks two pretty well priced selections of Championship sides winning at home to lower league in the FA Cup, with the goals flowing. His first win in a while and nearly cancels out his £25 loss last week. @RandoEFC is pretty unlucky this time out, being let down by an extremely short priced game in Falkirk where the slightly vague information online tells us the game only saw 3 corners when 7 were needed in their 1-0 win. Inter came in. I for the fourth time have dropped a fairly short notice selection in early, and for a fourth time have been burnt as Bologna failed to deliver the goods against Genoa at home. They went behind to an early free kick and pretty much from that point I knew it was done. I watched the game and I don't think it could've gone any more how I expected it to from that point - Genoa park the bus and Bologna, a good and improved team but not quite good enough yet for this scenario, could only break it down with a last gasp equaliser, meaning the stats are skewed laughably in their favour. They probably ought to have won, but I did fear that exact game could play out. Back to league action this week with pretty much all of Europe returned.

Moving it to Cardiff or Southampton just totally defeats the objective of this competition.

A little torn but think I'm for it. First of all I was amazed at how old he was. I had it in my head he was about 23 so I've clearly stuck him in some sort of time freeze from the day he joined Inter. He joined them very highly regarded but it hasn't really worked out. I think in terms of style he appears to be a good fit in that he's very comfortable on the ball, he's another technically proficient player that you would like to think, like Winks, would thrive where he's struggled before. He's also out of contract in the summer and isn't on that mammoth a wage, so it isn't actually that expensive a deal for us - somebody saying £2.5mil and current wage of £35k a week. That's very reasonable really. It's another link that makes a mockery of the league we're in as well to be honest. The big catch is the injuries. We've had terrible injury issues in the last few years and his record slots right in here for all the wrong reasons. Now in fairness, we've gotten a proper run out of Ricardo Pereira again for what feels like the first time in about four years, so maybe we are learning to manage it better. I think however we may come a cropper with these things in the Premier League. It is easier to manage injuries when you're this dominant in that you can rotate more effectively and we're not chasing after teams because we have 70% of the ball every game. I'm for it though. He could easily be another Winks - a technically savvy, quality midfielder who needed the right environment, and it's not actually that expensive a deal either so it's not really that big a risk.

Hull have got something decent going. Fair play.

Our draw is the most TV avoid draw I think we've ever had. But I'm not unhappy with it. We were due a home tie (12 of our last 15 have been away) and we'll be favourites. I want a run.

Cheers. That's very unlucky. 3 corners seems like hardly anything in a game where one team was 1/5. A good win for you as well by the way. Nice to see I'm back miles off 8th again!

To be honest the Azaz one is fair enough. The Cundle one is particularly brutal as they're not even selling him to Stoke, just another loan. Two key players gone and they won't see a penny for it. For that to happen once is hard but twice is sickening, just after the manager goes and it looks like now they'll probably have to sell Morgan Whittaker to Brentford too, I'm guessing that's to finance replacements for the other two, as well as Whittaker himself now. I think any club worth their salt shouldn't be scared to lose people, but when you're losing that many and not even taking any money in a couple of instances it's a bitter blow and it could derail them a bit I fear. Hope they survive. You just know their one away win this season is going to come at Stoke.

Can't find the stats on this on flash scores - going to assume it didn't win as you would imagine that the game being level is when you'd get more corners. But obviously that isn't a given.

Only four new grounds in that for me and two of them are still not yet even through. It'd be nice to get Maidstone away but the thought of being the victim of a famous scalp would worry me slightly. Wrexham away for me. Never been there and very winnable. I'm very much in the camp of going for it. We're 1/66 to get promoted with the bookies. We would have to produce a once in a generation level of drop off to blow it and I think it would be good for us to get tested by a Premier League team in a competitive game later down the line - to gauge where we're 'really' at.

Looks like I've done it yet again. Genuinely next week might just stick a couple of banker games as over 0.5 to see which ends 0-0.

Fairly short notice one, but pick one is Bologna tonight at home to Genoa at evens.

It's far quicker I think. You can pretty much just get anybody you want gone, gone. Nobody is ever running a contract down again under my watch!

The great fightback of Vitoria de Setubal part 2 Each tier of the Portuguese system seems to have a particular quirk. In the fourth tier you had a split after 26 games and a group stage to confirm your promotion, so a 32 game season, potentially a 33rd (which we did play). The third tier's system had 20 teams in it. These were split into north and south leagues, so two leagues of 10, you would play 18 games before it splits as the top 4 of each go into the promotion league and the bottom 6 of each go into the relegation league. We are placed into the southern section and will face the likes of Sporting B again and I fully expect both of us to get into the top 4 given the level of dominance we demonstrated in the fourth tier. I continued the seemingly never-ending overhaul of the squad and brought in some... interesting shall we say players. Islam Slimani catches a few eyes, once of Sporting Lisbon, once Leicester's record signing, just off the back of a 20 goal year in Brazil aged 36 but clearly on the wane and has come to us. Henqirue Pereira (left winger) and Habraao (centre back) are coup signings, as well as young winger Goncalo Martins who we beat a couple of second tier teams to sign. He's got very big potential so it's a real coup. We make no mistake in the first half of the season and we finish 2nd behind the ever relentless Sporting B, who are the only team who beat us (doing so in both games). Academica Coimbra and Sporting Covilha join us from the southern section to go into the promotion league, along with Porto B, Vianense, Lank FC Villaverdense and Vitoria Guimaraes B. The fact there are three B teams is a bit of a concern to me, seeing the way Sporting have blitzed their way through the last 18 months. I fully expect them to win the league. There are 2.5 promotion places - the top two go up, and the team in third will face the team third bottom of the second tier over two legs to determine who plays in the second tier next season. I bulk the squad further in January, the signing of Pedro Santos is another real coup on the right wing and he's a player I see going pretty far should he develop well. We have a strong squad and I think we can push the top two, but it is going to be tough. We make virtually no errors at all and fly up as champions. We're presented with what was in my opinion our biggest game as the opener and we beat Porto B 3-0. I considered this the biggest as I believed Sporting B would win the league and that 2nd was probably going to be between us and them. I wasn't miles out, but there was a surprise in the league. Vianense claimed a shock promotion. They were ranked as literally the weakest of the eight teams and they seemed to find this horrible style for teams to play against. They were the only team to beat us in the championship group as you see there, and they pipped Porto and Sporting B against all odds to 2nd spot on the final day. Porto B did actually unfortunately manage to get promoted and I say unfortunately because I'd rather less B teams flew up the leagues. There will be three in the second tier next season which is a shame. Never have liked the idea. Lots of the players who delivered for us in the fourth tier stepped up with ease. Patrick was the story of the season as for the second year running he forced his way into the team late on and couldn't stop scoring. Slimani was actually a huge disappointment on the whole but clearly tailed off massively during the season after an impressive start. I fancied a lot of the players who had come in to step up to the next league up, with our strength undoubted being out wide as Pereira, Santos and Martins were all players who belonged at a higher level. I gave myself a five year mission to get to the top tier. We've made it to the second tier after three despite flunking the first season. So we have two years to get back to the top tier. With yet another generous relative wage bill that was comparable to what 7th in in the second tier spent this season just gone, I felt we could look up the league rather than down, although this would be a bit trickier than the last two years.

I have to say the hire an intermediary is my favourite feature on this game in years. It's both realistic and so convenient to me.

The great fightback of Vitoria de Setubal part 1 When I took these over at the start of the game I made a target to get back to the top flight in five seasons. Blowing promotion as favourites in the first season is a massive knock to my chances here, but I think I knew the root of the issue and it's that in these leagues there is no forgiveness for blowing important games. You can't simply accrue too many points for the others, you have to do this and deliver in some big matches. It was the latter where we failed. I totally overhauled the squad, releasing all bar around eight players and bringing in those above to pad out the squad. Highlight signings were Rouai (winger), Diogo Gomes (holding midfielder) and Paraskeva (goalkeeper). A concerted effort was made to ensure that unless they had an ability that vastly exceeded the division we were in, nobody who has an aversion to playing in big matches would be signed. I simply cannot risk having players who will bottle it. I need reliable heads. It's hard to measure your progress in this situation as we'd delivered such a comprehensive domination of the fourth tier last season, but fell when it mattered. A good start however was having the same opening day fixture as last season in Oriental Lisboa at home, and this time winning 7-1 rather than drawing 1-1. We did however lose our 3rd and 4th games and I realised that I needed a bit of a tactical switch, that our system while capable of producing pure obliteration was vulnerable to the counter attack and created ding-dong games which we would occasionally lose. We went on to get a record of 21 wins, 1 draw and 4 losses from our league. The highlight being an extraordinary game away to second placed (at the time) Lusitania Acores where we would go down to 9 men and still remarkably pinch a winner in injury time. Another of note was a 4-2 win in the cup over second tier Varzim - a massive test of our credentials passed, and we took Sporting Lisbon to extra time in the next round at home but did crumble during it. To my mind, we were operating already like a side who could push 2nd/3rd tier teams and we were far too good for this league. So back we went into the play-offs to be put into a group alongside Tirsense, Beira-Mar and moneybags Lusitania Lourosa. We went into the group on the back of a 10 match winning run and we kept it going for most of the group, dropping points just the once to secure promotion. We would then face Sporting Lisbon B on a neutral ground in the play-off final. A game simply to decide a champion rather than any promotion. Their record was even more dominant in the league than ours was - a record of 25-1-0 and scoring 90 goals, simply a team far too good for this level of football. We lost the final on penalties after a goalless draw that saw Sporting pick up two very late red cards. I was happy with the performance against a side that was better than us but a bit gutted to take no silverware. I fully expected that both teams could make a promotion push the following season as well. The best XI and subs for the season. Seven of the first XI were new signings. Heliardo delivered after a poor first season for me. Pedro Graca was the player I had to concede I'd made a big mistake on. He didn't feature much in the first season and he was absolutely instrumental throughout. We had become a well functioning team, a solid unit and I thought providing the wage budget wasn't too unkind to us, we had a good foundation to go up again next season. More to follow.