RandoEFC

Results - Canadian Grand Prix A bit of a "same-y" and low-scoring weekend but let's dig into it. Mercedes threw a major spanner in the works this weekend by being actually good, with nobody's McLaren or Ferrari picks for non-Verstappen pole able to overcome George Russell on Saturday. The Bonus Question was also a blowout in qualifying with not a single person backing Lance Stroll to make it as far as Q3, so 0/10 across the board from Saturday. In the race, a double retirement on an absolute flop of a weekend for Ferrari destroyed nearly everyone's podium predictions. @RandoEFC, @DeadLinesman and @Stan were hit worst by Ferrari's joke of a weekend after they put both Leclerc and Sainz in their top three. A number of people can also consider themselves rather unlucky not to get anything from Oscar Piastri, who featured in the top four for the majority of the race but ended up just outside the non-Verstappen top three. Everyone picked up at least 2 points for putting Lando Norris in their top three, but the big winners were @Tommy and @Whiskey who put him in 1st place after Verstappen was removed from the results. The prediction of the weekend goes to @MUFC, though, who is rewarded with 5 extra points for putting Hamilton in 3rd, the only person to react to Mercedes' impressive pace in FP3 by predicting some Mercedes success. This week's random driver was Max Verstappen, and @Stan, @Tommy, @nudge, @Whiskey, @The Palace Fan, @Coma, @DeadLinesman and @OrangeKhrush all correctly played it safe by predicting the Dutchman to win the race and pick up 5 points apiece. @RandoEFC and @MUFC miss out here after having far too much faith in F1's recent ability to see someone else win for a change. The end result here is that all but 3 competitors score 7 points. Here's what it does to the table. As we approach the season's midpoint, @RandoEFC's worst weekend of the season sees his lead slashed from 7 to 2 points ahead of @OrangeKhrush. With the rest of the field largely cancelling each other out, @Tommy is the only one who gains a position in the Drivers' standings as this week's joint-highest scorer, jumping to joint 4th ahead of @The Palace Fan. I have amended the Constructors' standings so that every week where one driver has failed to predict, the Team has been awarded some extra points, equal to 1 point less than the lowest score that week. This hasn't affected the positions but has closed the gaps a bit to make it more fair. In some cases this "insurance" score was as little as 1 point! This is the best way I have to keep the Constructors' championship somewhat competitive in the event of a no-show without rewarding the team an equal or higher score than what someone who actually predicted scored! Anyway, there is no change in the standings after Canada. Most notably, McLaren's first single-digit haul of the season sees their lead reduced from 17 points to 12 points at the top.

Literally every single word of this is just so vastly incorrect and easily disprovable that I can't even be arsed.

I just think you'll see more and more of this now. Wolves have just had a clash with one of their supporter groups already this summer as well about ticket prices. It's going on with Everton too. All the talk is that even though the new stadium will be bigger, the club will have to reduce the number of season ticket holders as well as increasing the price of them "so that we can compete financially". I think we have the highest percentage in the league at the moment of match tickets being season tickets. The problem from a commercial perspective is that season tickets are cheaper per game than the seats that go on general sale. In the past you could have been loyal to your fanbase and sustained losses if your owners have enough money or if you can find investment. PSR now means that clubs are going to have to squeeze every last drop of income from what they've decided are "legitimate" sources such as match-day income and merchandising, so welcome to the era of loyal, match-going fans being priced out of seeing their team play and buying kits for their kids. It'll take a lot for Villa to get remotely close to even Spurs' global following and branding, let alone the rest of the rich clubs. Same with Newcastle. I don't even think 2-3 years of qualifying for the Champions League again and again would necessarily bridge the gap. Every time a new team enters that "global status" group, there's less of the market left for any new clubs to get a slice of it. Man City and PSG are the most recent ones in there to crowd the market, there's only so much "space". How Villa or Newcastle are supposed to sustain a few years as a top four club under the current rules is beyond me though. It is a closed shop as long as these rules are in place. The PSR rules, in theory, are fine. Nobody wants to see Newcastle buy their way from battling relegation to winning trophies in 3 years in a totally plastic fashion like we've seen in the past. The problem is the things that are allowed to count towards your PSR calculations massively favour those global clubs and mean that Man Utd and Chelsea can afford to waste hundreds of millions in the transfer market every year while the likes of Aston Villa or Brighton can get good value out of almost every transfer they make and still be a thousand miles away from competing financially. The types of income that allow the elite clubs to spend loads of money can't be attained without building a football club in the first place and if you're not already making that level of income, the rules don't permit you to spend the money you need to build the club. If they just massively limited the amount of sponsorship and merchandising income that those clubs make that counts towards your PSR profits, then Chelsea and Man Utd and any other rich club would actually face sporting consequences for being run like a circus and there'd be room for Aston Villa, Newcastle or whoever else to move into the top 4 positions and stay there as long as they continue to earn it each year. It's not that difficult to fix. It's just a matter of motivation.

This is the natural next step to PSR. If you want to spend money to compete then you have to make more money. How do football clubs make more money? Bleeding their fans even more dry is one method.

I've just finished rewatching the first series. I'd forgotten how good it was to be honest. I'm quite happy that I've forgotten even more of what I knew about the story because now I can go into this season not really knowing what to expect. The trailers look really good so hopefully the standard remains high. Always a nice change to watch a series that comes out once a week as well to build the suspense between episodes.

No they didn't. Reform are polling lower with some polling companies who give the options of Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem or Other. After you choose Other, you can choose from Green, Reform, SNP, etc. Other polling companies offer more options in the first phase including Reform. More people are choosing them in these polls, generally speaking. Over the years, polling has generally actually exaggerated support for Brexit Party/Reform because a lot of their voters are "very online" and therefore end up over-represented in polling which is mostly conducted digitally now rather than over the phone. In the past, that's seen them end up with a vote share of about 8% when polling was showing them as 11%, for example. Polling companies always have and always will use slightly different models and every poll has a margin of error. Nigel Farage was crying about this the other day as well because a couple of polls came out that had his party on 20% or so and then a couple of other polls came out putting them on more like 12-15% and he didn't like it. It's all in the methodology, how they weight undecided voters based on past patterns, and the dates and method of the fieldwork. There isn't a conspiracy so the term whistle blower is inappropriate. I'm sure this is something you've seen on some alt-right YouTuber's latest video. Just remember that these people can say whatever they want on these platforms without consequence. When they make out that the "mainstream media" are covering something up, they're probably lying, and the reason the "mainstream media" are saying something different to them is because they're held to account by Ofcom and other legal requirements to at least be somewhat factual in what they publish. These far left and far right social media accounts that claim to be telling you "the real truth" are actually just saying whatever you want to hear because they know it'll make you click on their next piece of content and nobody will ever challenge their falsehoods.

Suddenly?

Yeah it has been a while since we behaved like a big club to be fair haha.

Who's said that last bit?

Everyone wants to buy us suddenly

So the clubs that were rich at the start of the 1990s or financially doped themselves before these rules came in should permanently be allowed to spend way, way more than everyone else regardless of how poorly they're run in perpetuity? Football is a sport. These aren't FTSE 100 companies we support. Man Utd have performed absolutely awfully relatively to their budget for well over a decade now. I get that people get all emotive about oil clubs and can't separate the ownership from the fairness of the rules so let's look at Aston Villa instead of Newcastle. Spent a bit of money, nowhere near as much as Man Utd, spent it better than Man Utd, finished well clear of Man Utd to qualify for the Champions League, they'll have more income from prize money than Man Utd. Villa will have to sell players to comply with the rules this summer. Man Utd will have a net spend of probably hundreds of millions. All because Man Utd sell more merchandise and shite than Aston Villa. This is not a sport. This is a two-tiered anti-competitive system. I get why you want these rules to stay if you support a rich club. You're basically saying that under the current rules, the richest clubs should just stay the richest forever and no matter how well clubs like Villa or Brighton do, they should never be allowed to get to a position where they'll have the same budget as Man Utd or Arsenal. For me, football is supposedly a sport and that should be a meritocracy. If you think clubs' chances to succeed should depend on how much merchandise they sell and how much they built their brand up 30 years ago then you're entitled to that opinion. Personally I think the clubs who actually do what they do well should flourish and clubs that are run like a circus like Man Utd and Chelsea should slip down the pecking order. I know that's dangerous talk to some people who have been conditioned to think that football should actually be all about marketing and spreadsheets because it means that they can confidently look forward to their club being able to dominate the sport for literally the rest of their lives.

About right unfortunately.

Calvert-Lewin for Broja would be a horrific deal from our perspective. I've not seen any proper sources reporting on this deal yet though.

This assumption seems to hold but it actually doesn't. Fans love it when Man Utd struggle and Leicester win the league. Sponsors absolutely do not. Man Utd being awful hasn't been great for business at all. One of the Premier League's biggest brands away from the global spotlight of the Champions League at the expense of the likes of Aston Villa and Newcastle? They can't be having that. It's incredibly naive to link at all what fans find entertaining to what the league will prioritise. There are hundreds of millions of football fans across America, Asia, Africa who tune in to the Premier League just to watch Man Utd because of what they are as a brand. The people running the Premier League want those clubs to be front and centre. Inorganic progress is a daft phrase to use. There's nothing organic either about Chelsea and Man Utd being able to spend hundreds of millions on players every summer when they're both among the worst run professional clubs in the entire country. Villa and Newcastle have spent a bit and are now forced to balance the books. Chelsea and Man Utd will never have to. It's a two-tiered system.

By the way, looks like Ferrari just picked this weekend to get all of the "Ferrari" out of their system. Absolutely terrible in just about every way. Perez is performing as badly as Sargeant, Zhou and Magnussen at the moment as well to be brutally honest.

Cracking race to be fair. Don't mind Max winning if there's good competition and action.

That is some annoying bullshit.

Tagging everyone who took part in the Last Man Standing League this season, but everyone is welcome, as always. @nudge @Viva la FCB @6666 @Michael @Pyfish @CaaC (John) @Lucas @Storts @Stan @Tommy @Bluewolf @...Dan @Dan @Redcanuck @Rick @Rucksackfranzose @Whiskey @DeadLinesman @N U F C The rules are as usual for Last Man Standing. Pick a team to win, if they win you progress, if they don't then you're out. Last Man Standing wins. Tournaments have been a bit awkward in the past when we've got to the semi-finals or final and someone has already used all of the teams that are left. We've never really found the balance in the past so I'm going to try something different again. This time, as soon as we reach a round where any remaining survivor has used all of the teams still in the tournament, everyone will get a clean slate to choose from. When we get to the final, if we've still not found a winner, then we'll use the usual tie break picks (Anytime Goalscorer and Time of First Goal) to determine a winner from the Final. Be aware that throughout the tournament, we'll see one Gameweek start a day after the last one ends on a few occasions, so keep an eye on your notifications! Below are the fixtures for Gameweek One. Good luck! Germany vs Scotland Hungary vs Switzerland Spain vs Croatia Italy vs Albania Poland vs Netherlands Slovenia vs Denmark Serbia vs England Romania vs Ukraine Belgium vs Slovakia Austria vs France Turkiye vs Georgia Portugal vs Czechia My pick for Gameweek One is Portugal. Good luck!

Can't wait for all of the very clever tacticos, football hipsters and data analysts on Twitter to not shut up about this guy all season and pretend they've known about him for years despite never mentioning his name until he landed a Premier League job .

What is going on this season? Looked like Red Bull would win every race until the middle of the Miami Grand Prix and there's every chance we'll see a 4th different team win in 4 races tomorrow.

The mad thing about the second Red Bull curse is that if you put Albon back in that car and Perez in the Williams then I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Albon would be out in Q1 and Perez would be in Q3.

Ferrari . RIP to a lot of people's predictions.

Yeah that contract extension for Perez is a really strange one. Mystifying really. They could have gone for Sainz surely. Better for the Constructors without a serious chance of badly ruffling Max's feathers.

@MUFC you need to choose someone else for 3rd place because it's the top three without Max. I'll let it fly if you can correct that before Q3 starts.

Increasing noise in the direction of Sainz signing for Williams and Haas going with Ocon and Bearman.