RandoEFC

I have a bet on this one as well! Feel like I'm missing something stupid. But I took draw no bet for Leganes at evens and it's closed in to 1.83 so people must be backing them.

United's malaise will never be entirely unfunny but it's also just a bit boring and embarrassing now in a way. That club is absolutely broken. It's not a coincidence that every player that goes there that's actually good or has massive potential either ends up shite or with "attitude problems". Even Bruno Fernandes, who I don't like and at least features regularly for them and contributes goals and assists, looked like he'd go on to be an elite player when they first signed him and he just seems to have plateaued and stagnated. I saw the end of last night's match and Ten Hag's interview while I was waiting for the quarter final draw which was supposed to be shortly after it finished. He has no ideas left, you can see it in his body language and hear it in his voice. He probably came to Man Utd because you can't turn Man Utd down and he will have convinced himself that he could make the changes they need, but now he's realised he's walked into a footballing graveyard and he hates his job. Whether Man Utd leave Ten Hag in post for another decade or keep chopping and changing every 1.5-2 years, nothing will change. The only thing that fixes that club is a change in ownership (a proper one, none of this minority shareholder with seats on the board shite) or someone like Pep to come in with the authority to change the entire culture at the club, but a manager like that will never go to Man Utd because they won't get allowed to do that.

Yeah my picks this week were a bit stinky. I thought Juventus would win but they haven't been battering teams and I got suckered in by the stereotypes with the Brighton game. Brighton haven't been in the best of form and had Thursday night syndrome to contend with while Fulham have been scraping a few results despite being incredibly poor. I actually had a tiny stake on Fulham to go there and beat Brighton that I put on a week or two back because they were about 5/1 which I thought was decent value on the off-chance. To summarise, you can tell I was on holiday and not in the mood to research or think too hard about it this weekend .

Betting in general is one thing but if you're betting on a match you're involved in out of the thousands of games you can bet on each day, you're not doing it because of a gambling addiction, you're doing it because of cheating/corruption. It's funny how this one seems to have been resolved so quickly while the Lucas Paqueta one which seemed to be absolutely beyond any reasonable doubt, seems to have gone totally quiet.

Brighton -1.0 vs Fulham @ 1.89 Juventus -1.0 vs Verona @ 1.55 Double pays out @ 2.93

It depends what Emery wants. If he just wants to manage a big club and perhaps get paid more then giving up Villa for Man Utd makes sense, but if he's interested in winning things, unless there's a drastic change in the way things are done at Man Utd then I really don't actually think there's a huge difference. Man Utd aren't winning the title or the Champions League any time soon because the club is a circus where it has become basically impossible for any manager to succeed. It's domestic cups and the Europa League for them and on the current trajectory, Emery could be forgiven for thinking that he could achieve that at Villa. The one way in which their ceiling differs is that a good manager, even in difficult circumstances, could have Man Utd as a regular top four team but that's probably a stretch too far for Villa. There's not as much in it as there should be because Man Utd's ownership and structure are such a debilitating factor.

I wouldn't give up my job at Muangthong United in Thailand (even if it was real and not a figment of Football Manager 2017) to manage the shitshow of real-life Man Utd so I doubt Emery would leave Villa to go there. What an absurd comparison. When Moyes moved to Man Utd they were defending champions and he was moving from an Everton side where he'd taken them to a glass ceiling with a relative shoe string budget after 11 years.

I doubt we'll get a points penalty either but after the Premier League have ticked off all of our transfer business for the last 18 months or more, told other clubs publicly that we didn't have a case to answer, to then turn around and brief against the club to the press like this within 24 hours of the club mourning the death of the chairman is sly and frankly corrupt. I have no idea what they're playing at to be honest because Everton must have so much written correspondence from the Premier League saying you're fine as long as you bring in a big fee by July 30th 2022 (Richarlison), signed off on us spending the money on Onana, etc. There's rumours that the charge actually relates to a tax issue regarding the funding for the stadium. I'm no expert on these matters but to apply a competitive penalty like a points deduction instead of a fine or something makes next to no sense if that is indeed the nature of the breach.

12 points is a lot. I wouldn't be shocked if none of those four teams mentioned scored higher than about 35 points but Everton would still then have to get nearly 50 to survive, and so far we've got 7 points from 9 having played Fulham, Wolves, Bournemouth and Luton at home and Sheffield Utd away. It is a maximum suggested punishment and I'll be surprised if the actual punishment got anywhere near that but for the Premier League to have the gall to call for that now after telling Leeds and Burnley to shut up in 2022 when they complained about our accounts, and having signed off on all of our paltry business since, and having done nothing about City's 100+ alleged breaches, etc etc, is quite rich to say the least.

Also not enough can be said about the disgraceful nature of this being published not 24 hours after the death of the club chairman. Disgusting.

"Setting a strong example". The only example they'll be setting is that if you're Chelsea or Man City then you can do whatever you want and spend whatever you want but if you're not one of the teams upon which the Premier League brand depends then put a toe out of line and they'll use it as an excuse to hammer you in an attempt to create the illusion of these rules being enforced. Moshiri and his pal Usmanov should never have been involved with Everton. The way the club has been run, owners like these should never have been able to pass any fit and proper owners test. But who's going to end up feeling the impact? Not Usmanov who managed to have his finger in the Premier League pot through a proxy owner, not Moshiri who has cut a deal to sell up, but the fans, staff and coaches who are already left picking up the pieces of the disaster that those two and Kenwright have caused over the past decade. I'd understand it if Everton had spent more than we were allowed and overtaken a bunch of clubs that had done things by the book but we haven't. Any overspending, if it has actually happened, is part of the bigger picture of ridiculous ownership that has hamstrung the club and left them unable to spend a real transfer fee for nearly 2 years. And if the rules were breached, it was clearly 3-4 years ago by now because the penny pinching has been going on since Benitez was only able to spend £1.5m on incomings in the summer of 2021, so where does that leave the Premier League when they shut Burnley and Leeds down over their complaints about Everton's spending in 2021, and Leicester who would be a Premier League team today if this penalty was applied to us last season? If our finances were fine in 2021 in terms of FFP, which the Premier League assured us was the case publicly, how can they not be fine now? The whole think stinks. Financial "Fair" Play has been a joke since day one and if it didn't favour the clubs that the Premier League and TV rights holders wanted to be front and centre them we'd hear a lot more about it. Everton whose summer incomings were Ashley Young (free transfer), Jack Harrison (on loan), Beto (somehow convinced Udinese to take £0 up front), Danjuma (loan with a £3m fee) and can't afford to play Dele Alli because they'll have to spend Spurs £10m after a few more appearances getting done on financial fair play while City are allowed to win trebles with 100+ breaches hanging over them and Chelsea are allowed to spend £1bn in 12 months. Well fucking done, Premier League.

+£7.25 Slow and steady .

I'll have Barcelona -1.0 vs Athletic Club tonight and Tottenham -1.0 vs Fulham tomorrow. Can't log in to bet365 so apologies for the clunky screenshots. Barcelona -1 @ 2.15 Tottenham -1 @ 1.725 Double pays out @ 3.71

Portugal 4-0 up before half time and Poland did the business so looks like a +£15.70 for me.

Poland on Thursday, Portugal on Monday.

Atleti refund. Leicester win. £10 > £18.40 I'll take that.

Going a bit punchier this weekend.

PSG couldn't even nick a win with 21 shots and 2.5 xG the cunts. Ah well.

As someone who works in the industry I can assure you that education in the UK is on for total collapse. We are right on the brink now with the number of employed teachers struggling to cover the bare minimum of what's needed to keep schools open. The state of school buildings is yet another symptom of an under-funded education sector. Unless there's major change soon we'll get to the point where kids across the country can't access a state school because there aren't enough adults employed to safely supervise them. I don't know if that'll be in 2, 5, 10 years but that's the trajectory we're on. At that point the government of the day will have their hand forced and it's depressing that things would have to get that bad to give either major party the political capital needed to popularise a greater investment in education. You can rinse and repeat this argument for health/hospitals, the emergency services, and public services in general. Starmer is obviously preferable to the Tories but I've seen nothing from him to suggest he'll do anything about this particular issue anytime soon if he gets elected.

Here's mine for the week anyway.

I think that is simply insane value.

I'm shocked that Under 5 goals even shifts the odds . I do find in general that the "Under" markets are often better value than the "Over" ones. You can tell that the bookies set their lines and then the market shifts things in favour of more goals just because it's more fun to bet on Overs than Unders.

Heckingbottom is now at odds of 1/2 which implies a 67% chance that he's the next to go. The next favourite is O'Neil and Dyche at 12/1 which is about an 8% chance.

A proper roller coaster to end up breaking even .

Relegation and 777 seem like the least of our concerns. Apparently that loan from 777 is £20m to keep the club afloat and will get us through one month. Reading more and more about how administration is a genuine threat.