RandoEFC

1-0 up at half time. Really solid half apart from a cagey 5 minutes at either end. Don't think the handball was a penalty but Young arguably did get away with one earlier. Forest have been really poor though which has surprised me. I thought they'd be licking their lips after our performance on Monday. Massive 45 minutes coming up now. A win here puts us in a much better position than both Forest and Luton.

I agree to a point. Luton were always bringing a knife to a gun fight and Sheffield United were always going to struggle after losing Ndiaye and Berge and not really replacing them. Burnley dominated in the Championship and invested in the summer though, I think they're more of a case of under-performing than never having a chance to bridge the gap. No excuses for them really not to be pushing Everton and Forest really hard with their deductions. I agree though that this season has shown off the gulf really badly when you look at how the relegated clubs have smashed the Championship apart from Ipswich.

There was more jeopardy of reliability failures in the past but we get tricked by highlight reels into thinking that there was always a battle for the lead or a close championship fight. In the past where I was properly obsessed with F1, I'd sometimes torrent full seasons from the past and watch them to get my fix. Honestly the majority of races you'd get down to 4th or 5th on the grid and the gap to pole would be over a second, outside the top 10 would be 2+ seconds off the pace. Then the races you'd have one guy leading by 40 seconds and lapping everyone outside the top 4 or 5 cars. Modern F1 could be a lot better but the 70s-90s F1 aren't the answer either. Honestly the era I got into it in the 2005-2012 years was my favourite. Most years were competitive between 2-3 teams and overtaking was possible but not too easy.

Stroll is genuinely almost as bad a driver as Sargeant nowadays. He used to have decent moments but he seems to have regressed.

First leg wins 1-0 ️

We lost 6-0 on Monday and our goal difference advantage over Luton has still improved since the start of last weekend . That's a great result for us. Luton have to go to Wolves and West Ham where I doubt they'll get much. If we avoid defeat down there it's probably enough to see them off as long as we win our home game against Sheffield United. Obviously prefer us to win tomorrow which would probably see us safe on the balance of probabilities.

Brentford 4-0 up now and Burnley 4-1 up at Sheffield Utd. Burnley have scored 37 goals this season and 9 of them have been against Sheffield United. Nearly a quarter of their league goals.

Mengi is Minguy now as well . Hope you get a couple more.

Brentford leading at Luton. So far Paul Merson has referred to Wissa and "Wilisa", Lewis-Potter as "Potter", Damsgaard as "Danguard" and Mbuemo as "Mbumber". Joey Barton must be furious out there somewhere that a pundit can't even pronounce names?

Shame after an eventful sprint qualifying that Red Bull go back to looking completely dominant again. I actually happened to wake up at 3.40am so I watched the Sprint. Some good racing. Again left thinking how DRS just makes the fastest car returning to the front inevitable. You know it's bad when Alonso and Hamilton don't even put up a fight against him. Q3 was good with the close fight between Alonso, Perez, Mclaren and Ferrari. Again, if only Max/Red Bull were 3-5 tenths slower, what a spectacle we'd have.

£10 > £35.50

@The Palace Fan @DeadLinesman need to predict. Hopefully the last race in a while where you can't rely on leaving it to Saturday morning to get it done before quali.

What happened? Norris had his time deleted then reinstated?

Ver Per Lec Sai 11th RB

It's almost as if fixture congestion isn't actually their concern whatsoever and that what they really want is to clear out low-paying domestic games from their calendar to make room for even more money-spinning UEFA fixtures...

The Premier League, the FA and English football at large are a disgrace. Let's just be honest here. A small handful of Premier League clubs have been gagging for this for years. They cry about "fixture congestion" despite having the biggest squads, the biggest budgets, and the best medical and sports science technology ever to aid in players recovering between fixtures. No problem playing two legged ties in Europe or introducing extra European tournaments or bigger group stages, but we don't want to have to play a return fixture if we're unable to beat a League One side at the first attempt whose squad costs 1% of the "second string" we've put out in that fixture. All the while, clubs throughout the pyramid facing the threat of administration, points deductions for financial problems, could have their running costs paid for 2 years if they could earn a replay at Anfield or the Emirates and get 50% of the gate money that those grounds pull in on one matchday. English football has been trending this way for a long time but there's been a clear acceleration since the botched Super League breakaway. The threat of losing their biggest cash cows has seen the FA and Premier League cave once again to the whims of a minority of clubs. The FA and Premier League are pathetic, spineless cowards, and the clubs who have pushed for this for years because FA Cup replays are a minor inconvenience for them in the grand scheme of things are an absolute disgrace. And yes, if it transpires that my club have lobbied, voted or pushed for this as well for whatever reason then I absolutely include them in that.

Predictions - Chinese Grand Prix I'm not touching the Sprint stuff this weekend, partially because I've posted this on Wednesday and Sprint Qualifying will start in less than 2 days (-ish). So your deadline is Saturday qualifying as usual. Bear in mind that that's still early on Saturday due to time-zones! @RandoEFC @Stan @MUFC @Tommy @nudge @Whiskey @The Palace Fan @Coma @DeadLinesman @OrangeKhrush Pole Position - Which driver will post the fastest lap in Q3? [INSERT DRIVER] Podium - Which drivers will finish the Grand Prix in the top three positions AFTER MAX VERSTAPPEN IS REMOVED FROM THE RESULTS? 1. [INSERT DRIVER] 2. [INSERT DRIVER] 3. [INSERT DRIVER] Random Driver - Predict the finishing position of this week's random driver, Yuki Tsunoda. [INSERT POSITION] Bonus Question - Which of the "bottom five" teams will get a car into Q3 - RB, Haas, Sauber, Williams, Alpine or None? [INSERT DRIVER]

Results - Japanese Grand Prix It was a close one this week aside from another no-show from @Whiskey - let us know if you want to drop out so I can stop tagging you. Everyone else predicted a Max Verstappen pole position and started the weekend with 5 points. After China, I may well adapt this prediction to become a "without Verstappen" prediction to spice things up further. Onto the race, @Stan, @MUFC, @nudge, @The Palace Fan and @DeadLinesman all secured 9 points in total, for various combinations of Perez, Sainz and Leclerc on the "non-Verstappen" podium, all with one exactly correct and the other two the wrong way around. @OrangeKhrush also chose the correct three drivers but none in the exact spot, meaning he bags 6 points. @RandoEFC and @Coma both score 7 points for getting one driver bang on, one driver in the wrong place, and a McLaren that didn't make the top three, while @Tommy scores 4 for putting both Ferraris in the top three but neither in the right spot, also let down by a McLaren taking his third spot. @The Palace Fan bags an extra 5 points as the only person to nail Pierre Gasly's exact finishing position of 16th, a great differential for him this week that leaves him as the highest scorer on 19 points overall. @OrangeKhrush also keeps 5 points to himself for the bonus question about which driver would outperform their pre-race Championship position by the most places. Ocon's 15th place was an improvement of 3 places on his championship standing. Albon's failure to finish and Hamilton and Norris both out-performing their championship position by just 1 place left everyone else empty-handed here. Here's what it does for the standings: A top-scoring week sees a new change in leader as @The Palace Fan moves into a 3-point lead ahead of @RandoEFC. @Tommy loses ground with his single-figure score with similar scores across the rest of the table limiting any movement this week. McLaren just about cling on to the lead in the Constructors' championship with Aston Martin moving within a single point of the lead. I'll have to consider how to proceed if @Whiskey doesn't want to continue so that @Stan and Ferrari can still have a fair shot at the Constructors' title.

Need Brentford to win and get themselves on the beach by the time they come to Goodison. Whatever happened since Christmas, we've been the 18th or 19th best team in the league since then. We could have got away with it based on our first half of the season but the points deductions have taken that off us. Forest and Luton will both be licking their lips at the prospect of facing us in the run-in. Need favours from elsewhere again.

MSP have decided that they'd rather just get their £160m loan repaid late than activate their option to become the majority shareholders of Everton. £160m is more appealing than owning a Premier League football club because of the mess that football club is. Encouraging for our future prospects. I honestly can't see how this ends in anything other than us going into administration and languishing in the lower leagues or going bust entirely.

Difficult one with Dyche now. Can't sack a manager who's taken a team who finished 17th last season, lost a few players, had the team patched up with a few loans, freebies and Beto, and racked up 35 points and certain safety pre-deductions with half a dozen games to spare. But can't defend a manager who has 1 win in 15 in the league and tries to play a high press away to Chelsea with Palmer, Mudueke and Mudryk counter attacking against Coleman, Tarkowski and Mykolenko after setting up for a 0-0 and hoping for a set piece or lucky goal at home to Burnley. Everton in complete limbo. Tonight at 5am UK time, the deadline for one American investment consortium to repay another American investment consortium who leant us some money to prove to the Premier League that they have the money to complete the purchase of the club runs out. We might wake up tomorrow and see that MSP are the new owners of Everton. We might wake up and find out that the purgatory continues as we potentially drift towards administration. The off the pitch nonsense often makes the 6-0 defeats and the turgid football look like the fun part of being an Everton fan.

Probably was a foul by Doucoure. After he gave the ball away as well. Sums up his form since returning from injury earlier this season. Not that it's made a difference.

Switching off now but this game can't be allowed to pass without mentioning the fact that one team here has been deducted 8 points and plunged into the pressure of a relegation battle for spending too much money despite making a net profit on player transfers and selling almost all of their quality players in the process, and the other has spent £1bn on players in the same time frame and been allowed to get around the same financial rules because their owner sold a hotel to another company he owns for £70m+ and that's apparently fine. Best league in the world and all that.

The commentators don't even know . VAR have gone home for the night as well by the looks of it. Palmer scoring four in a match will get them more interactions on Twitter so they probably haven't bothered checking it.

Corpse of a performance from a corpse of a team representing the corpse of what used to pass for a football club. Fitting that we perform like this the first time Moshiri has turned up in over a year.