RandoEFC

Most sympathy for Kimi who would have led into turn 1 with that start. Been poor at times this season but also frequently unlucky. Magnussen fastest now on slicks.

How is Alonso still running? Full on took off

Disastrous start that. Hard to pin blame anywhere.

Not that keen personally but also why are people even that arsed to be up in arms about it like some are?

Expert sand bagging from Ferrari and Seb sticks it on pole. Both of his Q3 runs were fast enough. Mercedes beaten by Red Bull as well, good for the championship.

How is getting married forcing it down other people's throats? I know this isn't the thread but if two guys down the road start dating and/or shagging it has absolutely no effect on my life. If they later decide to get married, it still has no effect at all on my life. I've never understood why quite a few people think there's a line to be drawn between the two situations unless you have religious beliefs that say so.

It's one of those lazy crowd-pleasing Teams of the Week. In fact it looks as if it could be based on fantasy football points? Either way, the fact that they've picked a full back line of defenders that scored means you can probably conclude that whoever picked it has done it based on some sort of stats or fan ratings rather than observing the football themselves.

Am I the only one that finds it pretty bizarre that we have members who only exist to log in and do the prediction leagues but never make a post anywhere else in the forum?

Agreed. Woy did well at West Brom, misjudged nearly everything he did at Liverpool then did bang average with England and actually staved off the inevitable "last nail in the coffin" dire loss at a major tournament longer than most of his recent predecessors, a list which includes some decent names. This isn't an unreasonable appointment even if it is really fucking boring.

Koeman has done a good job of reminding everyone it's not his team and the squad needs a lot of investment which people have accepted and therefore sort of given him a pass in his first year or so with us. Yesterday was different as Baines was the only player starting the game not signed by Koeman and it also happened to be our worst performance of the season. In the opening league and Europa games, we didn't look good apart from the first half at home to Split, but we got results so people were like "okay, we're looking a bit average but we're getting results and it'll only get better when the players gel". Yesterday was completely shite though and the worst part was that Spurs are a better side than us but they didn't have to play at their top level to brush us aside because we were nowhere near as good as we should be ourselves. So it's the first real time questions have to be asked of Koeman. I think it's healthy for him to be put under a bit of pressure and if he wants to develop as a manager he'll accept that pressure and try to answer the questions about his selections, tactics and ability to motivate his squad, rather than doing what he's done to date which is deflect the pressure onto the board or onto underperforming players (e.g. Barkley).

Said pretty much this when the whole thing started dragging on and he handed in the transfer request. I understand Liverpool pushing back when it was Suarez and they were so heavily dependent on him but Coutinho, while arguably Liverpool's best attacking midfielder, isn't Luis Suarez. Even moreso when you see how irrelevant Mane and Salah have made him look in the first few games of the season.

Not about luck for Verstappen today @Cannabis, his foolish mistake after another unnecessary risk. He needs to calm down in the car because looking at Ricciardo 's drive Verstappen had the car for third place if he managed to drive a clean race. His problem is that he is learning his trade in a top car, like Hamilton in late 2007-8 and Vettel in 2009-10, where both made plenty of mistakes in high pressure situations. Verstappen will get there too. A good start to the race, but not that exciting overall. Ferrari need to respond in Singapore or the title will be gone soon. Raikkonen disappointing again today, Stroll and Ocon impressive all weekend.

Boring boring boring. There's literally no point in having the full wets anymore because they won't go on track until it's ready for the intermediate tyres. Absolutely pathetic. We had races in conditions like Fuji 2007, Silverstone 2008, Monza 2008, Korea 2010, and people crashed but guess what, that's part of F1. I wouldn't blame the drivers or call them talentless as the ballsier ones will be sitting there getting fucked off that they're the best drivers in the world but the powers that be decide they're not good enough to handle these conditions. However, the younger drivers will become a product of this situation, like Grosjean has whinging that they should never have gone out in these conditions, because they'll get so used to not having to drive in the rain that they'll think it's an absolute disgrace if the FIA and Charlie Whiting decide one day that they can't hide behind the red flag.

Whatever anyone says about Van Dijk, I refuse to accept that having a couple of good seasons for Southampton not even in Europe makes you work a kabillion pounds or whatever the latest fee was. People ended up believing he was worth that because Liverpool and City seemed willing to pay it and he acted like he was far too good for Southampton when in reality he's only quite a bit too good for them.

This rings true on a few levels. It's a shame that people like Varys, Grey Worm, Podrick are barely even characters anymore but needs must after they gave themselves 7 episodes instead of 10 (which I still don't really understand) to advance the plot. Also agree on the ridiculous amount of plot armour this season. Littlefingers number was up but the amount of unconvincing death fake outs this season were lame. Jaime not drowning, Bronn not drowning, Jon, you guessed it, not drowning. Not to mention dragon ex machina and Benjen ex machina joining Jon's list of death fake outs to go with his actual death, his "got hit by three arrows by Ygritte" fake out death, his "fell off while climbing the wall" fake out death, his two Battle of the Bastards deaths (One where he faces down the horses, one where he gets trampled under his own men) which were eventually prevented by Sansa and the Knights of the Vale ex machina. Needless to say if the Night King hits Jon with one of his javelins and clearly slices him up into little pieces and feeds him to the undead dragon I'll still believe he somehow survives.

FTFY

I believe this is called "The Kenwright Special". Time to swap the #WengerOut banners for the WHERE'S THE ARTETA MONEY banners.

@Cannabis reading loads of football biographies just so he can post in the "What are you reading?" thread and feel really smart for doing so.

No way Tyrion turns, absolutely no way, especially not now that Jaime has deserted her. I know the show is the show and the books are the books but Tyrion going back to Cersei's side would be an even bigger character assassination than having Stannis burn his own daughter. A lot has been made about his 'look' when Jon and Dany were getting it on. Honestly I think he is only concerned about Dany's heart ruling her head and letting her feelings for Jon get in the way of doing what needs to be done to beat the Night King and then take the throne. Others have commented that he doesn't want Jon's overly honourable outlook influencing Dany's actions more than his own more pragmatic outlook. The Tyrion loves Dany jealousy theory, while I wouldn't buy that either, does have some weight behind it potentially given the 'I believe in you' and 'the most important person in the world' comments in earlier episodes, but nah. There's a complex theory that Tyrion agreed with Cersei off screen that he'd convince Dany to make her unborn Lannister child the heir to the throne because she can't have kids herself and that's why Cersei agreed to the truce but again, this falls down immediately with the fact that Cersei was lying about sending her armies North. Besides, I know the writers seem to have made Tyrion pretty dumb the last two seasons but not dumb enough to think he could convince Dany to name Cersei's child her heir. My guess is that Tyrion tries to convince Cersei to help so that Dany might let their child be born and live to inherit Casterly Rock or something along those lines, she pretends to agree, then her actual intentions are what she tells Jaime later about the Golden Company and letting the Starkgaryen alliance and the army of the dead destroy each other in the North. Any deal Tyrion might have made with Cersei doesn't matter anyway as soon as Jaime turns up and tells them Cersei double crossed them and he left her to come and fight on his own. Therefore there's no dramatic pay off of us going "oh shit that's what that look Tyrion gave was about" in the context of it messing up his deal with Cersei. Conclusion: the only likely explanation for them to show us that look from Tyrion is to portray his concern that Jon's honourable, idealistic approach to life will rub off on Dany and get her killed like it did Ned, Robb and Jon himself, or his concern that Dany's feelings for Jon will cloud her judgement and lead to her risking her life (let's be honest how long is it until Jon charges alone into a column of 500 wights with no hope of escape besides Dany swooping him away on dragon back again?).

The last season is very open to prediction. I hope the Bran = Night's King has nothing to it, and I certainly hope the lesser known Jon = Night's King is just nonsense as well. I'll be interested to see how they handle the conflict in the North and the conflict for the throne. Seems the way things are set they'll defeat the White Walkers in the North then go South and finish fighting over the throne but it seems wrong if the war against the dead is finished in 3-4 episodes then the rest is the "silly" war over the iron throne when one of the morals of the story is that the squabbling for power between families is less important than the threat from the North.

This was me until three years ago. Watched Season 1 Episode 1 and got so addicted I managed up to the end of Season 4 within ten days. "You have to see to understand."

Not posting spoilers because people might not have seen it, but that was a good episode and some of the scenes here explain a lot of the complaints people had earlier. Will comment later In more detail.

Baelish has to go, masterfully causing political chaos and weaving his way to the top of it only to lose it all possibly to the supernatural force of Bran seeing the past is a satisfying end to his story. Like someone else said, the game of thrones itself has to take a back seat when the war for the dawn begins so LF becomes redundant in the next phase of the story. Also from Sansa's perspective, learning everything from Baelish then getting shot of him and using those skills to keep his army and the Northern lords on side is what her story is ultimately about.

Really dull race which is a shame as I love Spa and it usually delivers, that one could have done with some sprinkles of rain. Hamilton and Vettel doing as expected. Bottas the big loser today, was unfortunate at the restart but any slim chance of him staying in the title fight will slip away from him quickly if he doesn't bounce straight back in Monza.

No surprises, pretty much any English player who can hold down a first team spot in the top 13 or so Premier League teams is enough to be in the top 30 English players these days which is why the likes of Maguire, Chalobah and Livermore are in the squad whereas players like Sturridge, Smalling, Hart and Welbeck just stay in the squad because there's nobody to replace them even though they've done fuck all recently. I expect this lot to play better as a side than the Golden Generation but the end result will be the same for another 3-4 tournaments at least.