Dan

How do you have one win and one push every single time without fail. It's mental. Looks like a good week in here. I'm getting cut adrift now.

We've still not let in two in a league game this season which is really impressive, but I do think that is going to fall soon, quite possibly tomorrow as well. We don't look quite as tight. Faes doubtful as well which doesn't help at all, not been convinced by Coady.

If I was going to have a second this weekend I would've gone for Plymouth beating Stoke. Just bonkers how they can be the underdogs. 16 home points to Stoke's 8 away points. Plymouth basically got promoted, and are likely to survive on their home form. I think a decent long shot is Plymouth -1 as well, as every Plymouth win has been by 2 or more goals, and Stoke have lost six games by 2+ goals. Not a banker by any means but definitely value for me.

Yeah they got the early goal and I thought it would sail in. To be fair, Antwerp had chances too but how the hell Shakhtar didn't score again is beyond me. The one where he rounded the keeper and just hit the defender. This is getting really annoying now

Has anyone got this on I'm genuinely jinxed. I'm actually speechless.

I do think from what he was saying that he would've probably gone with that even if Oxford hadn't lost Manning though because his theory was very much that they've run hot going forward, they're scoring lots of goals from low quality chances and that Cheltenham have picked up a lot more than people realise from a side that didn't score a single goal in their opening 11 games. Not the top 20 betting show on a Thursday is the podcast, it's one of those picks that if you listen now it justifies listening to the podcast full stop and I think I'd have likely had Oxford myself if not for what he'd said. It was interesting stuff anyway. It's not really much of a change at all, it's just based on timings. I've found one I really like tonight (Shakhtar) and I'm going to have that as one of the legs of my £10 bet for the week - it's just you can choose to convert that into a double later in the week after it's settled if you wish, although like I say if it loses it's pointless anyway as you're bust. Nothing stopping anybody having one of your games tonight and another at the weekend - even if you pick the weekends game after your midweek one has settled. If Shakhtar pays out I can either convert it into a double with another game this weekend, or just cash in a single for a £15 win. Probably not a bad shout in my situation. That's my sort of research that is albeit I haven't really delved that far down and into those sorts of specifics. Some nice picks though, I firmly believe there is value out there. There's no way the bookies can be that on top of everything beyond an algorithm. I went college with a Tamworth fan years ago and he used to tell me he'd frequently win on non-league simply based on knowledge he had that they didn't. Another who works at a bookies said they're very lazy on a lot of leagues too.

I'm going to do something I don't think anyone has yet done, and you're actually well within your rights to do this, but I've found something I like tomorrow. I'm going to have this selection and then potentially a second at the weekend, but I haven't decided what yet. That being said, if I don't have another and tomorrow nights does win, I can also opt to just not have another and go with that. Nobody has yet done this but there's no reason not to - granted I suppose if you do lose on your early one then it's over and there's no point making a second. Tomorrow night, I am taking this: I think that's a frankly unreal price. Antwerp are on 4/4 losses in the Champions League this season, only 5th in the Belgian league following their title win last time out. They've shipped 14 goals in their 4 games, and their only way of staying in Europe this season is to win at Shakhtar and beat Barcelona while swinging the goal difference by 10 goals. Putting it simply, they are finishing 4th for sure, they have virtually nothing to play for. Shakhtar beat Barcelona in their last 'home' game and won 2-3 in Belgium in the reverse fixture, while knowing that a failure to win here could likely end their hopes of qualifying. I think it's two teams that will have to go for it, so if Shakhtar win, I don't really see it only being 1-0. The price offered is really juicy, I really don't get how it's that big.

WEEK 17 - LONDON BUS LEAGUE TABLES WEEK 17 STATS Winning bets: 3/8 Winning selections: 10/16 Weekly forum position: -£10.25 (Ranked 7/17) --- OVERALL STATS Winning bets: 32/122 Winning selections: 109/232 Total forum position: -£251.75 To be honest, I look through this weeks and think we really deserved a bit more than we actually got. I think to post a loss, albeit not a particularly damaging one, given we landed 10 selections out of 16 is really unlucky, one of those weeks where doing £5 singles would've undoubtedly landed us on a better overall score, but such is the nature. @Pyfish is back after a couple of weeks off but is let down on his short priced Friday night double by Leeds' failure to beat Rotherham. A surprising result but I have to say having seen the odds I actually had a fiver on Rotherham to win, 9/1 for a home side in the Championship! The bookies really do seem to rate Leeds, probably above even ourselves based on the game to game prices you see. PSG beat Monaco 5-2, no errors made there. @Machado is back in classic fashion. Marcelino having a dream debut as manager of Villarreal by beating Osasuna 4-1 meaning the double chance was absolutely comfortable. Squeaky bum time at Lyon v Lille as Lille scored two early goals, but that's all that happened and the under 3.5 pays out. He moves above @CaaC (John) who becomes the second member of the top three to lose on a result I'm happy to see play out for selfish reasons. Having landed from my holiday I was delighted to see that not only had we won, but Ipswich had lost at West Brom. Ideal weekend for us, not so much for John. @Storts returned to the game this weekend with a double in the Championship. Birmingham delivered, Middlesbrough didn't. A frustrating one. @RandoEFC is the form player of the game at the minute. For the third weekend running he wins one of his -1.5 picks and has the other win by a goal meaning he gets a small win. Slow and steady seeing him creep up the table with his sixth win in eight weeks, although the last three have only seen him net £11.90 profit. Zilina were a team widely tipped in circles I follow and they only won 1-0, but Slovan Bratislava did the business, winning 0-2. @Stan makes it 10 losses in 11 weeks. Winning on Chesterfield's game with Eastleigh but being let down by Oxford at Cheltenham. Interestingly on the football league podcast I listen to, one of the presenters is an Oxford fan and his long shot bet of the weekend was Oxford to lose to nil, a fantastic pick. @...Dan finally lands a double on the European scene and moves himself back off the bottom. Racing Santander beat Villarreal B 2-0 in a fairly comprehensive looking display, while Heerenveen made light work of Fortuna Sittard, winning 3-0, two of them penalties. I'm back on the bottom, 1 win in 17 is absolutely abject. This is one of the really unlucky ones as well. Fortuna Dusseldorf won their game 5-3 so I was definitely right to take the over 1.5 goals angle on that one rather than under 4.5, but Southampton chucked it late on at Huddersfield and drew 1-1, costing me what would've been a pretty healthy win. I'm happy enough to drop one on Southampton dropping points to one of the leagues worst sides though, so swings and roundabouts. Another week commences, should all be back to normal service this weekend. European action, and FA Cup replacing most of the lower league schedule for the weekend, though there is a full EFL fixture list midweek as well, so loads to choose from, and no excuses for not finding two who can win! (He says with '1 win in 17').

WEEK 16 - THINK BACK WEEK 16 STATS Winning bets: 1/5 Winning selections: 1/10 Weekly forum position: -£36.75 (Ranked 10/16) --- OVERALL STATS Winning bets: 29/114 Winning selections: 99/216 Total forum position: -£241.50 Think back to the international break. Having spent a week in Cape Verde, escaping the reality and having a break from having to face this league table, I think back to a better time, when I sat in the top 8 of this league. Only five players made selections this week and only the one landed a winner, in what has to be collectively one of the weakest weeks we've had with only one selection actually winning entirely. The wise ones were those who either didn't play, or played with Asian Handicaps. So just @RandoEFC, who takes home another little profit after Castellon ran out 4-2 winners over Atletico Baleares - a 95th minute goal meaning we didn't have another blank. Dumbarton could only manage a 1-0 win, so it was void. @CaaC (John) loses on both picks, Wales failing to beat Armenia, but unfortunately takes the wooden spoon award for having Switzerland in their failure to beat Kosovo at home - which is the shortest priced loser of the season at 1/4 (1.25). The other three players, me, @Stan and @Lucas all overlapped with our fixtures, but nobody managed any success. Stan did pick two winning teams but both could only manage 2-0 victories, not enough to get the over 2.5 goals. Lucas quite funnily took the exact same selection on Stockport but at shorter odds. He also drops it on Chesterfield's loss at Southend - another laughable one I can add to my own list. I need to compile the amount of teams I've killed the form of this season. The Salford pick didn't pay off either. A week to forget, and thankfully, I think most of us have done.

Lille were an absolutely class price. They're profiling really well on the numbers and I'm not fooled by Lyon based on one freak game last week. I did have money on Lille. I think if I'd had a proper delve into things rather than picking two sides I liked I'd have gone with that but never mind. Intending to get two weeks of tables up this afternoon.

That's one of those losses that I can probably accept given who it's cost but it's the usual crap luck on this all the same.

Don't forget to get yours in for the week if you're playing @Lucas @Pyfish @...Dan @Machado @Stan . Assume the table update is usually a reminder but as stated, not had the facility to do it this week. Should have last weeks up on Sunday. Mine this week. No big description, but simply two teams I think will win with a slight tarting up of the odds via likely goal outcomes

Another absolutely corking double from me.

Frankly peanuts in comparison but true. I think the point you raise is right though - this is just going to open one big can of worms, one big game of who did what and lots could well follow this. The precedent has been set. This is one of those things that at first looks interesting but the road it'll lead you down is going to be extremely boring for all involved.

I'm all for Leicester, Leeds, Burnley and Southampton hammering the Premier League to be honest. Can see it all being more trouble than it's really worth mind.

As much as everybody here deserved it last season we must have some sort of case here. We've been relegated at the expense of a side who were deemed worthy of a points deduction for their dealings. It's no longer a hypothetical.

I delve to the lower leagues of England for round 17. Southend v Chesterfield - Chesterfield to win @ 17/20 (1.85) - With the greatest of fear given what seem on the face of it fairly generous odds I'm going for a Chestersfield win here. Chesterfield have won 14 of their last 15 in all competitions, including beating League One Portsmouth in the cup and also flying Barnet in their last two games. Southend have picked up somewhat after a pretty sketchy start to the season, but it's quite hard to not get on board with Chesterfield here. Gillingham v Salford - Salford to win @11/4 (3.75) - What bodes well is they are the same odds as what Hoffenheim were the other week. I've very much stolen this one from Not The Top 20 podcast who have gotten on board with Salford here, something I did in preseason off the back of their knowledge and have been left disappointed up until recent weeks. Salford's season appears to be on the up while Gillingham's is very much going the other way, and the change in manager hasn't really done them any favours, it's a bit Rooney at Birmingham-esque with a pragmatic, yet clearly fairly effective manager being replaced with somebody here to bring more expansive and attacking football, but it isn't really working. Salford given what they were saying are a really decent price to win this in my opinion. £10 returns £69.37.

As feared we completely bottled it. Santarem (h) - Drew 1-1, Zequinha misses early penalty, Santarem score from their first shot of the game, sit back and we equalise fairly late on. Largely the better side but another instance of our profligacy and the fact our keeper never actually makes a save anymore. Camacha (a) - Lost 1-0, set up differently, went behind early, dominated the rest of the game without scoring. I'm pretty much already convinced it's done. We are flunking it, nothing has changed. O Elvas (h) - Won 3-2, the worst performance yet, yet the one we actually won. Complete mess of a game, 0-2 down late on, went for some stupid 4-2-4 system to wreak havoc and we somehow ended up pulling it off. Camacha (h) - Drew 1-1. Another game we had about 80% of the play, Camacha score from their first chance of the game in around the 70th minute. Elvas proves a false dawn. Another total bottling. Santarem (a) - Lost 2-1. One goal up, tried to tighten it in the second half, conceded immediately, and then again with 5 left. We now need to beat Elvas away and hope that Camacha don't beat Santarem, who are already promoted. O Elvas (a) - Won 2-4, the best performance in a while and we still managed to nearly throw away a 3 goal lead we held with 15 left, although we hit them on the break for a late 4th. Camacha beat Santarem and finish ahead of us on head to head. So basically, it was absolutely everything I feared it would be. Just simply more of the same. Can't keep a clean sheet, can't take our chances, seems to take us about 10 shots to score a goal while it takes us 2 to concede one. As much as anything I think we just didn't have the nerve. We have a squad of players who notoriously cannot handle a big game. Given we can't circumvent having to play these crunch games by getting promoted automatically, this was always likely to bite us, so just like the first ever Andorra season we flunk it and my plan going forward is to totally overhaul the squad, focusing a lot on the big game mentality, as I think that above all is what cost us. The warning signs were there in the season.

I think the problem as well though is that I had Rennes to win and over 1.5 goals, so their likeliest win therefore becomes 1-0 as well. It's just more abysmal luck but it's pretty much all I've had in here all season so far. I'm saving my shittest picks of the week for this thread almost exclusively it seems.

WEEK 15 - THE WRONG SIDE OF FINE MARGINS I think a look through week 15 shows us we've encountered probably the collectively unluckiest weekend of the season so far, with every single person landing at least one of their selections, yet only the two claiming wins and of those, two of the smallest of the season (outside of @Machado). @CaaC (John) is the winner of the week, calling on what is on the face of it a fairly safe double in Man Utd and Ipswich. Two truly predictable scorelines as well in my opinion, said as somebody who had a 1-0 home win on the prediction league, and has quite regularly pushed a theory that Ipswich win every home game 3-2. John doubles his money. The luckiest player of the week however has to actually be Machado. Not based on the betting point of view by any stretch - he just happened to have exactly the same bet against his team in a derby that I had on the opening day of the season, and it produced an identical outcome. I had Leicester to not beat Coventry and we scored 77th and 87th minute goals to win the game 2-1. Machado backs against his team in the derby with Sporting and Benfica remarkably produce 94th and 97th minute goals to win 2-1. Is it the Gyokeres connection? I wouldn't wish to speak for him, but I'm quite safely going to assume he would take the Benfica euphoric victory over this weeks hypothetical £13.50 win - even though it would've been his biggest of the season. Which brings me to the average odds column. I've not bothered to go back through this yet, but I will eventually be updating this to see who is shooting for the stars and who is playing safe, although I think we can guess this here! Back to the bad luck. @Stan made an understandable choice in Bayern to slaughter Heidenheim but they produced a relatively conservative 4-2 win over a side who are averaging over 2 expected goals against per game - which are remarkably bad defensive numbers. Bayer Leverkusen's win was totally obvious, and frankly their odds were mental for me, it's their 10th win of 11 in the league so far, and Union Berlin remarkably have now lost 9 in a row in the league. @RandoEFC claims the only other winner of the weekend but can probably feel a bit aggrieved that it wasn't a full win, particularly given it has paid out in the last six meetings in Turin. Cagliari's consolation goal means he takes the smallest win of the season. Arsenal made no mistake beating a hapless Burnley. @Lucas puts on the opposite of a brave face pretending that Leicester losing has upset him, a result that directly works in Leeds' favour and courtesy of a Leeds player scoring for Middlesbrough. Stockport seemed a completely obvious pick at extremely generous odds, remarkably their 11th league win in a row which is three off the all time record. Leicester failed to bounce back, although we did have the chances at Middlesbrough - it was our first loss against them in 15 games. The really bad luck though I think is reserved for the bottom two, which is no surprise, we've seen this all play out before. I specifically avoid picking games that concern my own teams fortunes at this point because of how convinced I am of a curse, and after Aston Villa sailed in with a 3-1 win over Fulham, I can now add coaxing this dreadful Lyon team to their first win of a season to my list as they take three points at Rennes, in a performance seemingly totally unconvincing, and one that assures you they would've lost if Rennes hadn't picked up a red card after 'six' minutes. It was no better either for @...Dan who turned back to Ligue 2 this weekend, having landed the Paris win, he was robbed in the 94th minute by a Pau equaliser at Angers to draw 4-4. This would've put me back bottom though - so every cloud A pretty dismal week on the whole, given the number of selected wins it's pretty incredible how little money we took in. But not to worry, we only have a limited selection of lower league games and a sift through which international games have something to play for to know what angle to hit the final international weekend of 2023 with. Speaking of which, there will be no week 16 table this week as I'm going to Cape Verde on Saturday for a week, so I will get it together along with week 17. Best of luck. This is going to be testing. WEEK 15 STATS Winning bets: 2/7 Winning selections: 8/14 Weekly forum position: -£37.60 (Ranked 10/15) OVERALL STATS Winning bets: 28/109 Winning selections: 98/206 Total forum position: -£204.75

The first part of the job is done, we're into the playoffs after winning our league alongside O Elvas. We have been placed into a group alongside them, Camacha (2nd in Prio A) and Uniao de Santarem (2nd in Prio C) so we've got a quite kind draw really being put alongside three sides who came second. Infact if you ranked all 8 teams who have made it, they have the 6th, 7th and 8th best tallies - so it's a really good draw. We have shown a few signs of wobbling though. We finished terribly. The results below will explain all. We were carried early doors by a sensational run of form from loanee midfielder Juan Herrera. The biggest issue for me has been the really mediocre form of the two supposedly key players in Zequinha and Heliardo. Heliardo picked up a bit late on but has been pretty poor most of the season, Zequinha got a bad injury half way through it but wasn't really pulling up many trees beforehand. We've let in far too many goals for my liking, particularly during the dismal run in March. But the truth as well is we have been really quite unlucky. We've run cold in front of both goals all season. We are underperforming xG at both ends of the pitch - we apparently should've conceded 7 less, and scored 5 more. I think this tells you the system is working but some of the players are letting it down, at face value at least. I don't really have many long term plans for any of these players though - pretty much anybody can go for me, although I do like my young winger Diogo Sequeira. We are in my opinion the best team out of the four, but I don't think it's a guarantee at all that we pull this off. The biggest red flag for me is that we lost both games to our local rivals Barreirense and this tells me this is a side that isn't very good at handling a big occasion - although we did give top tier Moreirense a good game in the cup and beat 2nd tier Torreense, so maybe I'm wrong.

My first save on FM24 is Vitoria de Setubal of Portugal. Fancied a lower league job in a tricky system. If you remember my Andorra save on FM20 I found the lower leagues a struggle, but seriously satisfying to come through once all was said and done. I wanted a similar experience - a battle through a tricky system, and this took me back to Iberia where they seem to enjoy putting the lower league sides in prison, never to get out. I was scouring the fourth tier of Portugal and found a name I recognised. Vitoria were in the top tier just three years ago but ran into financial difficulties that saw them relegated straight to the fourth tier in 2020. They were promoted in the midst of a reorganisation in 2020/21, going unbeaten, but floundered in the third tier and remarkably last season dropped back into the fourth tier. The structure of this system is there are four leagues of 14 teams each at this level, so 56 teams in total. In each league (or prio), the top two teams over the 26 game round robin will go into one of two groups of four teams. There will then be essentially a group stage, with the top two in each group gaining promotion, with a play-off final as well for the two group winners to decide the overall champion. So in short, 4 teams out of the 56 are promoted. It's tough. The margin for error is very small. Luckily though we are very much one of the big hitters and I think even despite the small margin for error, we have a strong chance of getting promoted. Our wage bill is ranked 4th out of 56 (Vitoria Guimaraes B and Maritimo B two of the sides above us too), plus having looked around the overall level of our squad is a bit higher. Our star players are called Zequinha and Heliardo. Zequinha is very much an icon of the club, starting his career at Vitoria in 2002 before moving to Porto. He moved to Greece but returned to his home team in 2013 for three years, before then coming back again in 2018 and commendably sticking with the club despite the three league demotion, so he should in theory be far too good for this level and therefore has to be a pretty pivotal part of the side - even if he is in his twilight years aged 36. Heliardo is a Brazilian striker who again, for me, just wouldn't look out of place two leagues up. The key for me is building a system to get those two involved, I think we will simply overpower teams. The players contracts are pretty much all up in a year so this is very much going to be a wheeling and dealing save, my traditionally very busy second summer will see probably as many as twenty new players I'd imagine regardless of division. I have a five year plan to get into the top tier. I think we will be too good for this league, I then want two years in the third tier, and then should budget allow, two years again in the second tier. It's ambitious but this is a club that have been wronged, they are out of place, they are a three time trophy winner, they have no business in this division. Time to make amends.

In fairness though, you are managing a good side at that level, for some context below they're doing even better on mine. It's mad how bad Elversberg are doing on mine compared to yours - that's a bit of a problem I've noticed at times, 3 points from 20 games FFS. If you're pushing say European places next season I will concede it looks a bit too easy.

Rennes red card after 6 minutes can forget about this then.

Covering my arse here on the off chance Fulham do come back (which they're extremely unlikely to), the top one pays out as I did it on Bet365 as a bet builder so the 2-0 payout has already come in.