Dan

I know the feeling, it's infuriating. Had an actual treble tonight. Mansfield, Bolton & Dorking's game BTTS. Missed by the skin of its teeth.

I'm going to get mine in now actually, quite early. It's a Friday night double where I go to Europe - frankly, I do better on Europe than I do England. Harry Kane's is really self explanatory. Bayern seem to absolutely romp whoever they play on the opening day each season and I'm going for Kane to hit the ground running on his debut - though at the same time there's a part of me that sees them losing 1-0, he seems to be a bit cursed. I'm going to back him though. He's going to hit 2 of their 4 first half goals. The other is a slightly risky angle but one I believe will pay off. Backing Antwerp and over 1.5 covers every Antwerp win except 0-1 (I advise one of you to probably back Antwerp to win 0-1) but Leuven are a bit of a mess. They are our sister club and I do track what their fans on our forum are saying - they're extremely unimpressed with their manager and it bears some real resemblence to Rodgers a year ago. Their three games so far have been drawing against a team who had 10 men for 80 minutes, losing at home to a newly promoted side, and losing 5-1. They're bad, and against the champions Antwerp who've just got themselves in order with a 6-0 victory over Kortrijk, I'm backing them to take a victory.

I mean if last week was a nightmare then this was simply insomnia while in prison. A collective effort of £80 lost throughout the 8 players, with just 2 of the 16 selections coming off. @Stan remains in profit due to his £10.40 win last week, his on paper safer picks not paying off this time around as MK Dons and Tranmere only produced 1 of the required 3 goals, and PSV produced possibly the narrowest ever victory in the Eredivisie with a 2-0 win over Utrecht. @CaaC (John) enters the league 2nd out of 8 by pure default. His longest of long shots not coming off, though I did happen to notice both games had 4 goals. It's a good argument for not playing when you see how this has panned out. Then we have @Pyfish and @...Dan who I've decided to put 3rd and 4th on the basis they both did actually land a selection. Pyfish comes in as probably the unluckiest player of the weekend as De Bruyne's early injury forced him off in a game they won comfortably, and it took Haaland a mammoth 4 minutes to get off the mark for the season. ...Dan did come very close as well, but Anges, who came down to 1.45 prematch couldn't find a goal as they only drew at home to Annecy. Bordeaux found one in their win over newly promoted Concarneau tonight in the 97th minute. @Storts was disappointed to find I'd taken his idea before he managed to post it, but he needn't have worried as neither team could win, though neither lost. @RandoEFC suffering the double whammy of backing his own team and them losing (I make that three people already to back their own team to win a game they were favourites in and not win), and Manchester United couldn't win by more than a goal, though they were unbelievably lucky even by their standards to win at all. @Lucas is put at the bottom of the table on odds difference I'll call it, picking the shortest priced double to land no winners, as the Championship minefield collects its latest victim, with Southampton and Watford both failing to win home games in which they were favourites. It's been a pretty abject start so far with only one player in profit (don't spend all 40p of it at once!) and the forum collectively is well down. Week 3 starts from now. There's plenty to work with this week - starting with a full round of League One / Two / National League games tonight, Champions League qualifiers, and the final of the major European Leagues (Bundesliga, Serie A) returning this weekend. We simply cannot get worse! WEEK 2 STATS Winning bets: 0/8 (0%) Winning selections: 2/16 (12.5%) Weekly forum position: -£80.00 OVERALL STATS Winning bets: 1/15 (6.6%) Winning selections: 6/29 (20.7%) Total forum position: -£129.60

Felt this thread was an appropriate place to share this think it's the quickest one of these has ever landed.

Jesus this is fucking pitiful stuff not a single selection has won!!!! No tell a lie - Pyfish had Bournemouth West Ham draw. Even still, we're already relying on a 920/1 double. Abject stuff so far!

It's a tricky one for me - I think there's a case for it but it does then become too much about which bookie you use rather than your selection. I'm torn. I'm tempted to allow it. We've not had a situation crop up with it yet but it's almost certainly going to. Maybe the fairest way is to just have a blanket rule that any side you pick who goes 2 up pays out. Dunno though. I'll see what some others say.

Just on the Man City pick - I'm actually totally willing to allow boosted prices like what Bet365 offered tonight on Man City win being evens. Not things like 2 goal payout, but boosted odds is fine with me.

Bloody hell hahaha. I took De Bruyne out of my team very late on, wondering why so few had gone near him. Paid off thankfully.

If you were going to have it anyway then I think it's fair enough. Yours is a slightly riskier pick, Mbeumo is coming up as doubtful on FPL (which is fucking annoying in itself as I've planned for weeks on having him in) but I think even if you're not down on Spurs in general, you're in with a decent chance of a defeat this weekend. Bournemouth are a side I have a good vibe about and West Ham the total opposite, 17/10 is just madness to me, probably my favourite price all season bar Southampton last week. Ah yeah so it's just essentially a handicap. The pro gamblers I follow often have asian handicaps with the focus on "protecting the pot" so they play cautiously. I know it's essentially hedging your bet but I'm still not entirely sure what pays what. People can have them if they wish but I will definitely have to clue myself up on them a bit more. --- Some decent selections going in. Don't forget - anybody can join at any point during the season so don't feel like you've missed a deadline.

That bottom one is tasty. Haven't quite worked out how I'm going to stick asian handicaps in the spreadsheet yet but I'll find a way - what will that selection pay out if Man Utd win by one goal?

Nothing stopping you having it as well.

It does that on 365. I've found the odds for these (Southampton 1.83, Watford 1.70) but in future, just for help are people OK to drop the odds of each selection as well please? Cheers. The boost on 365 actually goes up with each selection, think it's 5% for a treble, 10% for a four fold etc... actually makes it worth throwing in the odd 1/16 providing the league is covered.

One for Bet365 users - Man City been boosted to evens to win tomorrow which is enormous.

My two... I'm taking Bournemouth and Brentford to win this weekend. Bournemouth are the team I think I rate the most compared to the bookies, who generally have them floating about 16th/17th and I personally think they'll be well clear of it. I think their recruitment has been low key pretty decent in 2023 while West Ham seem to have just totally buckled, and that's on the back of looking pretty dog shit for large parts of last season too. Although they did win this fixture 0-4 not all that long ago, their away record was generally poor and they'll field, I think, zero signings in their opening game while being short of Rice. Bournemouth's manager is also pretty highly rated in Spain. West Ham will start buying, it's just not happened yet. The fixture has come too early for them, home win. Brentford are very good in these games anyway, did well against Spurs last season picking up 4 points and have shown that Toney isn't actually as important to them as many believe. Kane clearly isn't going to play, and Postecoglou did start pretty dreadfully at Celtic too. His methods, while effective, make take a while and I think this is about a bad a fixture as they could open with relative to how well it could play out later in the season. Home win. £10 returns £74.20 - if you took it on 365, including their 2.5% bonus it would be £75.85 but for arguments sake I'll go with the former and use the latter for info incase anybody wanted this. Others to consider, I think we're actually a quite generous price against a side we normally always beat away, Doncaster in the circles I follow are being ranked as very overpriced to win at Newport. Not enough data to go off for the foreign leagues yet for me so I'll leave them until probably 5/6 weeks in. France, Portugal, Spain and Turkey are all underway this week.

For now, I'll keep it how it is, but I'm not ruling this out down the line. We'll see how people find it like this. If it isn't clear though - you are well within your rights to double a game on say, Tuesday night and then another at the weekend. That's fine.

Each week will run Tuesday to Monday due to football being the dominant pick and Monday night football being a thing here and Europe.

And we're off again after around 4/5 years of absence, and we're back with a.. well, less a bang and more a clap, if even that in all honesty. @Stan delivers the only opening weekend winner, with the two shortest priced picks of the week proving to be the way forward this time. Sensible picks on the whole as Celtic were always likely to win and you could never trust a Rodgers side to keep the goals out. Dorking were probably the best team in the country for goals last season and they've started this season in the form of last season, with a 4-3 defeat at Chesterfield which actually sells the bet almost short in a way. I did the same thing last week for Hamburg v Schalke, I won on over 3.5 and it paid out with a 5-3 could've gone much higher. Coventry City have blood on their hands for the whole balance of the forum, as their collapse at Leicester cost @Storts a very big win (talk about killing two birds with one stone), and their failure to even hold onto a draw cost me too. But as I have stated I think three times now) I think I'm going to take the hypothetical money loss over dropping points to them at home in our opening game, so once Southampton had delivered, I was going to win in some form. Storts' pick of Ipswich to win at Sunderland is the weeks best selection - with just 4 out of the 13 in total winning, which is a slow start. @...Dan's teams were both beaten, Bordeaux thumped 3-0 at Pau tonight in a genuine surprise result, and KV Kortrijk couldn't back their decent showing at Genk with anything here after losing 0-1 to Sint-Truiden - a team who in my experience were the low scorers of a high scoring league. @Lucas matched this with another two comfortable losses. Wycombe going down 0-3 to Exeter, 2 of them coming in the first 4 minutes, and Oxford losing to a depleted Cambridge 2-0. @Pyfishdid at least manage to avoid defeat with one of his two picks, but his double whammy comes by the fact he picked both of his teams to win at home and neither managed it. We wrap up with @RandoEFC making what I believe was a schoolboy error to take Man City to win the Community Shield at a pretty low price. I annoyingly backed Arsenal to win in 90 minutes so I got the same outcome though ultimately. Rando picking the shortest priced team, and the odds of the selections picked is how I've ranked 2 to 7 if you noticed, although that can't really be stuck with as a sorting order and in truth, it's just 6 baldies fighting over a comb anyway. 1 winner out of 7 4 winning selections out of 13 The forum collectively loses £49.60 this week, it cannot be dressed up as anything other than a shocker. But well done to Stan. Week two begins tomorrow so get your selections in!

You are unless somebody comes in at the last minute today and has something on a game tonight. I have my doubts though. I came extremely close but I lost in the best possible way. Full table coming later.

This better not bloody win but you can have this if you wish

If I had no horse in the race I'd be absolutely livid to lose like that. However I couldn't be happier.

Stan claims the first winner.

No to be honest I genuinely think this is the kind of reason I set this thread up for - you've clearly got some insights into this that the vast majority are going to miss, that's half the point of it for me, it's good having people spot a bit of value out there.

Looks like things are happening again for us. Casadei is going to join now by the sounds of it, we definitely want Rak-Sakyi (two signings I'm really happy with), Seb Nanasi from Malmo another. On the flip side - Harry Souttar might well be off. Clearly not fancied by Maresca. I feel for him a bit because I don't think he's done a load wrong in the few times he's played but if he isn't fancied then I'd rather cash in now than piss around and let it drag on for years. I'd sooner Vestergaard went than him personally.

I'll pass this one, sorry, I've got way too many games on already this year so something has to be dropped.

I do very well on Belgium. Not quite sure what it is - think last year backing Genk and Union St-Gilloise wins were safe most weeks and it seems, looking at the early prices that the bookies are being quite generous on them again, with USG on 2/2 wins both at around evens and Genk somehow being 9/10 to beat a newly promoted side on the opening day. I find the league quite a fun one to bet on. Might even get on Kortrijk.