Dan

On the board!

Yeah this is a bust. Fuck sake.

This is likely bust already. Unless England just run riot in the second half which is possible but I wouldn't be surprised if we took the handbrake off a bit. Poor bet though and pure luck if it wins from here.

Absolute fluke. If it wasn't then do it again.

State of France. That's a shitter.

First pick I'm taking Ireland v England, 2nd half to have the most goals. Usually reserve this market for tense games where both teams really need a win, but just think with the nature of how these two play each other. It's usually a dog shit game (Ireland are one of the only teams I think that are consistently duller than England) but I can see England eventually breaking them and beating them pretty soundly. 2.10 the price. I'll do tenner. Potentially going to add a second if I find anything I like.

Touchline shouts are a bit crap though to be honest. It's one of those features that should be there but they've just done it really badly. It's either "fire up" or "encourage" for what's basically a 10 minute morale boost and anything else just seems to puzzle everything. I've seen people playing it before and they just hit that as a bit of a button bash if anything. It's a really badly executed feature. I've tried international management and just can't do it. I managed Australia on FM once along with my own job and I thought at the World Cup I'm going to take this seriously enough to track the whole tournament properly and watch the 90 minutes, play it properly. Couldn't do it. Think I managed one half and went back to extended commentary. Went out in the groups. It's just one of those things that'll never be particularly enjoyable although I don't really understand why you would take the option away either.

You know as much as I'm loving winding up Forest and Everton fans online currently I do think they need to completely bin this and compensate those two for last season somehow. None of us should've ever been docked anything. God knows how we've managed this though. Highly embarrassing for the Premier League that we've managed to slip through like this. I'll be watching the officiating in our games closely

Updated table. Lots of movement with nobody retaining their place from last week - obviously @Pyfish has only just entered, and by coming straight in at 3rd despite a loss it's the good element of this game in that you can win the league without having to play throughout. Although he was ridiculously unlucky to not have a pretty good shot of doing this anyway after what panned out. The pick of the entire game so far in Haaland's hat-trick at 16/1, but let down in extremely unlucky circumstances by the shorter leg being bust due to Clarke only getting 10 minutes on the field. He did manage a shot, but it was off target according to SofaScore. @Smiley Culture is the new leader after a 3rd win in 4 weeks. Bacon saved somewhat by Birmingham's late winner. As mentioned elsewhere, although the stakes are only £5, £10 and £20 I've made an exception here to allow a £15 stake due to the selections coming separately with £20 and £10 stakes so I thought that was the fairest solution. In truth though I wonder if there's a case to just allow any stake up to X amount but maybe something for others to think about. @RandoEFC picks up a 2nd win in 3 as well but unluckily is knocked off the top. Very fine margins here. Leverkusen are finally beaten but they still managed to win a half of their game. Bayern won 2-0 with a goal in either half. Ideal really. I'm back with a loss and as per every time I've picked an early game ready for another at the weekend I've been bust by it. Missing by the skin of my teeth too as Leicester scored a 4th from 25+ yards in injury time. @CaaC (John) isn't having a good season so far with another pair of teams losing. @Stan's ever reliable Gateshead pick comes up trumps again but the double is blown by a goalless game in Northampton. @...Dan's £20 stakes are backfiring so far, with a third loss from three leaving him bottom of the table. The September international break next - probably my least favourite weekend of the season. Way too early for a break and very little to bet on either. But I shall find an angle. And probably lose.

It's this sort of thing as well. How does a club of their stature get away with it like this? Just improbable decline. Old Trafford sounded quite toxic earlier but still deserved worse. I think that crowd is way too lenient. Ten Hag keeping his job was hilarious. They weren't just underwhelming last season they were lucky to be even 8th. It's just more of the same. Ten Hag is a fraud.

Stan I lost something like 30 weeks in a row. That will genuinely not be beaten. I need to stop trying to be clever with some of these picks I think. My second pick this weekend genuinely was going to be score draw from Ipswich Fulham which is annoying, that Winks goal has cost me a good win. I'll forgive him though.

I can't accept just getting hammered at Palace. They've started badly and I don't think a point is totally beyond us even if I do expect we'll probably lose. The big one is Everton, we've got to beat them. Arsenal is a total write off. Bournemouth at home afterwards, not easy but they've got vulnerability in them as well. Southampton we need a result at. If I had to revise one thing from my preseason so far it's that I'd have Southampton 20th - they're complete garbage. In 2022/23 we were a talented side with an absolutely abysmal mentality, a checked out manager and just generally hateful. This time around I think people can resonate a lot more. I'm a lot more sympathetic to the team - they're working their bollocks off, they're giving all they have, but it's just simply not a lot. We're just an honest but poor team now. Which is pretty much what I expected under Cooper. Cooper's negativity is a real problem. There was a time where it was considered negative to play two defensive midfielders at home and we're now pining for that as some sort of attacking solution. This Ndidi attacking midfield thing is just ridiculous. People really need to look up the word pragmatism when they're describing what Cooper brings. Playing a destroyer as an attacking midfielder isn't pragmatic, it's cowardice and frankly it's stupid. It's not like we don't have the bodies. Buonanotte has been fine, two goal involvements, probably our best player in the Spurs game too. You simply have to get one of him or El Khannouss in the team for Palace. Agree Mavididi simply has to come back in and it was a missed opportunity to get him against their inexperienced right back early doors. Ayew has done OK but he's just simply not a one v one threat like Mavididi is. That's before we get to the Ricardo omission. It's hardly like Justin has played well. The two things that really annoyed me about Coote beyond his lack of control were the free kick for their goal and the penalty incident. How if their defender got the ball has it then ended up being their throw? The free kick for their goal should've been on the half way line for Okoli fouling off the ball rather than the Skipp tackle. I don't think they execute that free kick routine from the half way line, although I can't excuse that defending either. My general gist is this is just an honest but poor side and it won't be enough. I don't think Edouard's going to make a huge difference either.

In our position I think it was very much scraping the barrel so I had very little expectation. This is a concern though. I really think we lack presence up front. The game mostly bypasses Vardy nowadays even if you can generally trust him when he gets chances. I don't give Edouard loads of hope in this side on this anecdote. I'd have liked Adebayo from Luton but I'm assuming money - something I think we could've done had we gotten our business sorted a bit earlier.

His last ever tweet. Blimey.

It's just absolutely surreal. That's three either players or managers that I've witnessed plenty of for Leicester die in the space of a month. Bamba himself very much linked to Sven as well. His favourite manager. What a massive shame. RIP.

Referee in our game was a disgrace. One of the worst I've seen in years. It's more of what I expect from us - we will be competitive in games but hardly win any of them. No disgrace in the result but ultimately achieves nothing. We need 4 points from Palace and Everton for me. I bet we get 1.

You can, I didn't make clear on the first page that you can just have two selections at different times, can convert it into a double if you want. Every single time I've done this though I've lost on my earliest pick. Such as this week. Unsure what stake to put yours as given you put £20 earlier in the week and £10 here. Given I didn't make it clear I'm doing to probably just make this a one off £15er.

Oh that is genuinely gutting Clarke comes on with 10 left and has a shot off target.

Should be less seeding in general. I can't help but think this is just further deliberate sabotage as an excuse to bin this off down the line. Make it so shit that nobody will miss it.

I'm genuinely quite sympathetic to you for these opening two results. You finished last season in a way that reminded me a lot of us in 2018/19 - you could tell we were on the cusp of being quite good and we ended up the following season in a position where we should've actually finished in the top 4. To lose two games you'd have fancied 4 points minimum from is just a massive letdown and even though Brentford was unlucky it feels like you've opted to cash in rather than actually go for it.

4-0 in the 90th minute. We're back. Another early pick dies on me. Another back against Leicester falls against me.

I'm going to stick my first selection in here for tomorrow night. Leicester v Tranmere - Leicester to win and under 3.5 goals. Odds are 13/10 (2.30). Think that's a very generous price. Gets 1-0, 2-0, 3-0 and 2-1 wins on board. Can see any of those. Tranmere's results so far: 0-0, 0-0, 1-0 win. We aren't going to be a particularly strong attacking team this season, pretty dysfunctional, I think we win the game but I don't see much in it for us either. Just think given we're 2/7 to win the game this is a pretty generous boost, I really don't envisage us hammering them even though we ought to be able to. We beat them 2-0 in this round a year ago as it happens.

They offer a decent take on the whole, think football only bettor from Betfair is along similar lines. I probably prefer the latters format to be honest. They probably overanalyse quite obvious outcomes on matchbook when they're often having to focus on their chosen four PL games. Huge revelation - we think Liverpool will beat Brentford at home. But I reckon it's probably worth a few points a season on bets and predictions to give them a listen. Contrary to popular belief I am actually quite interested in how we're perceived and analysed from outsiders too which led to me listening to not the top 20 podcast last season and I really rate that as a podcast. Genuinely informative and knowledgeable on all 72 clubs and I often agreed with their takes on us - you could tell they did their research. They do a betting show themselves on Thursdays and I find like the others that's worth a few points a season. Though the problem with NTT20 is that their cases are often good enough to push me into betting on the EFL and I really do think it's such a minefield, there's much better value out there and the teams really are much of a muchness for the most part.

My earliest table in quite a while. Must be bored. Must have nothing going on. Must be some sort of reason that I've actually gotten it together early no? I pick up my first win in 10 months. Despite playing every single week possible in that period. A truly pathetic record but at least the monkey is off my back. Both teams won their games and neither rained goals, to collect the biggest win so far this season and take me to 2nd - an all time high position, but not quite high enough to steal top spot. @Smiley Culture compounds a very tight top three with another win, again, matching my total number of wins ever, in just three attempts. @CaaC (John) loses both picks again in a pretty optimistic double. @...Dan's safer on paper pick had the same outcome. Think the unluckiest player this week is @Stan. Seem to be noticing a theme of you backing goals in Gateshead games, might have to look into this. They deliver no issue, and two of the three aspects of the Villa/Arsenal bet pay out, but there are only 5 corners meaning its a loss - one that would've otherwise left him top of the league. It's three loss making weeks so far, but at least we're not in the sort of territory of last week and as we know the margins are very fine.