Dan

Yet another wasted triple captain season. How has Haaland picked up just 10 points from those two fixtures. Wanted far more than that.

Don't get me started on FPL. Beyond a joke. Jota a total waste of time and triple captain wasted on a 10 pointer.

Sort of game that makes me think Arsenal just don't quite have the credentials to go all the way. Porto can be tricky but you frequently saw Liverpool putting this sort of game to bed with ease. I think they eek through this and then fall to someone like Inter.

You've got to hand it to them really. Agree with them or not it's nice to see some principles.

To be fair they looked like they were going down to me. It is a shame to have to abandon it this early but in those situations you have to be decisive and sticking with somebody who is clearly not working isn't the way forward.

Knew the risks. I'm surprised how many actually got through because that was a ridiculously bad set of fixtures. I don't have much luck against Almeria do I?

Managed to get Rotherham at 12/1 to pay out earlier - however made the error of sticking Southampton in as one of the other teams

Ipswich as spawny as ever but that's a good night for us. In a week where a few results that you'd expect could put us in a far more precarious position than people realise, I'm delighted to see Southampton slip like that. Gives us some breathing space.

I didn't even realise it was this season he'd been sacked by Rangers. His collapse has been quite spectacular.

WEEK 29 - USUAL SERVICE WEEK 29 STATS Winning bets: 2/7 Winning selections: 6/13 Weekly forum position: -£16.19 (Ranked 16/29) --- OVERALL STATS Winning bets: 48/193 Winning selections: 164/365 Total forum position: -£416.99 A fairly average week this time out with no substantial wins but enough to keep things semi respectable, particularly compared to some recent weeks, albeit it is still a loss - we've played 29 weeks and we've lost on 19 of them, with myself contributing a remarkable 28 times. @Pyfish makes a return to the league with a win, landing the smallest odds winner of the season on one selection (which came quite close for comfort actually) but padding it out with a good pick in Solanke to score at Newcastle, for a steady 1.5 point win, and just under a £50 gap to second placed @Lucas who came extremely close to taking top spot in spite of this, putting together a pretty ambitious bet builder and as often seems to happen on them, is let down by what appears on the face of it one of the safest legs. A real piss-take. @...Dan returns with a loss having picked two duds in Zwolle and Pau - although looking to the stats tells me Zwolle were victims of a smash and grab. Pau were 2 down quite early on though in what's a fairly low scoring league. @Stan comes mightily close to a good win himself, missing by just one corner on the Sydney Adelaide game while Portsmouth v Reading pays out a home win with over 2 goals being scored. That exact fixture ended 7-4 in a Premier League game in 2007, so it was never in doubt. In-fact Stan and Lucas wins would've taken us to nearly our biggest win of the season. Fine margins. @RandoEFC is the only change in the table this week following a remarkable late turnaround in Holland and then a very safe winner in Rangers and under 5 goals. He leaps ahead of @CaaC (John) who's Monday picks produced a double blank. And as ever, we finish with me losing. This is genuinely embarrassing at this point. How is it even possible to lose 28 times out of 29? For some context, that rate of return implies that I should've been taking bets pretty much at two 5/1 teams per weekend, but I certainly haven't been doing that. Incredible. Absolutely abysmal. As for the bet freeze. On Sky now you have the option to 'freeze' a team when they go ahead so essentially paid out as a winner. You can do this up to five times in a week, the bet must have 5 teams or more in it, and the maximum stake on the acca is £20. But what I've started doing, and have managed to land in my fourth attempt having 'frozen' Bochum to beat Bayern (albeit pointlessly as Bochum ended up winning anyway), is picking four fairly safe picks (easier said than done granted) and then one big outsider to freeze on the off chance that they go ahead at any point in the game. So basically, you are getting the 8/1 odds that Bochum were to win the game changed to 8/1 on Bochum to have the lead at any point during the game. I won £92 from a fiver and I honestly think at the rate you this happens, you're surely going to profit. I've seen people on Twitter winning thousands doing it. Somebody landed Vietnam going ahead against Japan at 125/1 for a little more context, I did it earlier on Moreirense v Sporting, backing Moreirense at 8/1. They lost 0-2 so it didn't matter, but I happened to notice in play, Moreirense were 3/1 to score the first goal at 0-0, so you are basically getting enormously boosted prices - bear in mind the possibility of Moreirense going behind and then ahead again means the 'real' odds are actually probably something like 11/4, and you can get it at 8/1 if you're alert enough to freeze the selection. I've done 7 bets in total, lost 6, won 1, but I'm £57 up. Going to do it with fivers until I get to a few hundred and then up the ante. Will keep you posted how it goes, but I'm convinced there's good money in this.

Absolutely ridiculous. No team capable of over 100 points in the Championship should be dropping to a point every two games in the Premier League no matter who they are. He has taken them backwards since promotion.

I read a pretty detailed article on his time at Roma and they had something like the 3rd biggest wage budget in the league yet never once got close to qualifying for the Champions League. But I suppose this is sort of how the game has changed and probably not for the better either - he has tangible success with them but in the league he has underachieved. He's a cup manager now I think. I'm a fan of his and think he's become way too disrespected but it was probably the right time to part ways. Never going to be a popular decision though.

Not doubting you or saying you're making it up but who is saying this at this point? He's been probably the worst manager in the division this season. He looks frankly absolutely miles off it. Anderlecht wasn't a success for him either. So other than taking the best team in the Championship up (albeit very convincingly) he's been a pretty poor manager. Objectively worse than the likes of Gerrard and Lampard.

We go there in a fortnight so this is annoying - had that as a banker win under Beale but think under a different manager it's trickier. He's turned out to be a huge dud and frankly an odd bloke.

Sheffield United and Burnley's points tallies this season need caveating by the fact they're in a league with each other. Two of the worst sides I've seen at this level. I expected it from Sheffield United who weakened themselves over the summer frankly but Burnley have been a disgrace for a side who got over 100 points in the Championship. Very few have done that and tanked like that. Kompany getting away with it big time for me.

Extremely unlucky Lucas. Has anyone heard of the SkyBet freeze trick? I've started doing it. Honestly I'm excited at the upside of this. I think it's absolutely mental and I think they're going to end up closing this loophole soon.

I agree on Millwall. They look like they're going to me. 1 point from 7 games and it wasn't even that bad a run of fixtures either. While QPR and Sheffield Wednesday have been basically performing as 12th-15th level sides since Rohl and Cifuentes came in. The fact they've already rolled the dice on a new manager too.

Those games fall within separate weeks sadly.

Honestly, how do I never, ever win?

Just like that there's a decent chance next weekend that our lead at the top is wiped to 6 points. This isn't yet over. I think we'll do it, and I'm not going to go too hard on them over today, but the form of the others means despite our ridiculous form, there is still a race going on here. We blew some ridiculous chances in that game today but we didn't help ourselves. Maresca's subs today were really bad. I felt like we were getting right on top of them and then stuttered our own growing momentum with bad subs. Cannon on the wing?

Would be even more sods law if the penalty was the 3rd minute. Anyway mine this weekend, a bit more drab but I'll take Derby (19/20) and Peterborough (19/20) to win. Both are decent prices in my eyes, both have tricky by League One standard home games which is factored into the price but both of their opposition have their own issues going into it so I think it's worth a go. £10 returns £0 £38.03.

1.11 gonna have to dock you £100 if that loses.

Let the winning machine continue. 80 points by mid February would be frankly ridiculous.

Instinctively went to go against whoever Granada or Almeria had and of course, it's each other. I'm gonna play on the edge here because this is quite frankly one of the toughest rounds I've ever seen for what is an opening week. I'm going to go for Granada.

Cheltenham of course have won both games since I picked them.