RandoEFC

I'm surprised that you're surprised by anti-competitive practice in elite-level football. It basically defines the sport now.

Our 42nd Last Man Standing competition is over and for the first time, it's @Storts' name getting etched into the hall of fame. I can't prove whether or not he's taken part in all of the previous 41 editions but he's certainly a long term player and has had to wait for his induction into the Last Man Standing Hall of Fame. Congratulations!

We have a winner! @Stan Valencia ️ @Lucas Valencia ️ @Storts Real Sociedad ️ @Michael Valencia ️ Congratulations to @Storts for claiming this round with 6 consecutive winning picks! I'll do a proper update when I'm back from holiday and kick off the Ligue 1 round.

It's going to be some robbery if West Brom, Norwich or any other team who finishes 5th or 6th win the playoffs. Arguably Southampton too compared to the seasons Ipswich, Leeds and Leicester have put together to this point.

We should be looking at this as very much winnable given that we've won more away than home under Dyche and that Newcastle's injury and suspension list as almost as long as Nottingham Forest's transfer incomings since promotion. This team has absolutely nothing going for it at the moment though. They've found surprise wins to turn the tide before so it could happen but in terms of actual expectation, any Everton fan who's hopes aren't on the floor at this point is a fool.

I don't know what that means. I've had enough of spreadsheets now though to be honest. The owner has checked out. The current *interim* board were put in place in August as a stop-gap while the takeover was carried out. The Premier League are ensuring that they drag it out for a full season while the club flails without leadership and yet they won't be accountable, in fact they'll end up charging us yet afuckinggain when arguably the largest contributing factor to us being run badly at least over the last year is them keeping us waiting over the 777 situation. Again, it's been 6 fucking months. If they haven't provided evidence to pass the fit and proper owners test then they clearly aren't fit and proper. How difficult is this? Nobody knows better than the Premier League how urgent a matter this is given that they're the ones who have seen fit to charge the club under its current ownership twice already this season. They're putting the final nails in our coffin and they'll come up smelling of daisies and just be allowed to carry on raking in billions while hundreds of thousands of Everton fans are left with a husk of a football club and potentially without a football club at all at this rate. I don't know who to be most pissed off at to be honest out of Kenwright, Moshiri or the Premier League but I do know that football is supposed to be an enjoyable national pass-time and this shouldn't be allowed to happen to people's clubs.

More good news as our accounts released tonight show an £89m loss. I don't know how that affects any further points penalties and frankly don't care. Fold this absolute circus right now and put us out of our misery.

Some serious hyperbole here. Liverpool have dropped points in almost a third of their games this season so you can't assume they'll win 9 in a row from here. They've got to go to Man Utd who they haven't beaten in either game this season, Everton who are shite but where they often draw, Villa who beat both Arsenal and City at Villa Park and West Ham and Fulham won't be pushovers either. Spurs at home too. Yes it's technically "in their hands" but there's a quarter of the season left. It's not like there's 3-4 games to go.

Just to round this point off, given the Lampard-esque nature of some of the recent losses (bottling a 1-0 lead at home to West Ham in the last 20 minutes to not even draw, conceding two first half penalties to Man Utd under the slightest application of pressure, losing at Bournemouth through an injury time own goal after being gifted an undeserved draw), he'd usually be out on his arse by now if we're being honest, but thanks to a combination of Moshiri, 777 and the Premier League, we effectively don't have a board or owner and there's no person at the club with the authority to sack him so that's a conversation that should be well underway by now but currently won't get off the ground.

Just another day of Purgatory FC. An anonymous, routine loss taking us to 4 months without a league win but further evidence that at least one of Forest or Luton will probably be shit enough to let us off the hook for another season. Nothing new in the fact that everything associated with the once great football club is boring and just a bit crap. My sympathy for Dyche has run out now. You can't be such a hard watch and not get results. 12 league games without a win is almost one-third of an entire season and a new club record. Still remains pretty even in probability whether it will ultimately be relegation, administration, 777, financial regulations, or a new mystery cause that will finally put the final nail in the coffin and kill this husk of a football club once and for all but please just let it be soon so I can accept it and move on.

Just seen the replay of that one. Joke that that's apparently a penalty nowadays .

Winning a league title should instil a winning mentality at a football club. They won the FA Cup a bit later on but apart from that, it seems to have had the opposite effect on Leicester. Bottled top four twice in a row not long after their title challenge, bottled a relegation fight they should have easily got out of last season. Not going to be pretty if they bottle promotion as well.

Yeah good on him. I guess he sees it as a shame to call an early end to his "chapter" with Leverkusen. Passing up both Liverpool and Bayern is no small thing but he's probably got decades left of his managerial career if he wants them and the same or similar opportunities will be presented to him again. Maybe he's holding out for Ancelotti to retire...

Predictions - Japanese Grand Prix I'm posting these very early as I'm off on holiday tomorrow. I'll try my best to tag reminders next Friday ahead of qualifying which will be early Saturday morning for most of us! @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, Pierre Gasly. [INSERT POSITION] Bonus Question - We've done this one before - which driver's finishing position will outperform their current Drivers' Championship position by the most places? E.G. if Carlos Sainz finishes 2nd, he will have outperformed his current position in the Drivers' Championship (4th) by 2 places. If nobody picks the "biggest overperformer", then I'm going to give the full 5 points rather than 2 consolation points to whoever makes the best pick. [INSERT DRIVER]

@Michael - the weekend is approaching!

Results - Australian Grand Prix A broad mixture of scores this week, starting off with a 0 for @Whiskey who didn't make any predictions. Qualifying was more or less business as usual, with @MUFC the only person to gamble on someone other than Max Verstappen for pole position. Leclerc sadly blew his last qualifying effort leaving him empty-handed, with everyone else bagging 5 points for the usual VER pole. Also resolved on Saturday was this week's bonus question. Not helped by Ricciardo's deleted lap-time seeing him knocked out in Q1, nobody predicted a gap between him and Piastri of anything like the 1.5 seconds that Piastri had out-stripped his compatriot by come the end of Q3, so 2 consolation points go to @OrangeKhrush who predicted the largest margin of anyone. Onto the race, and wouldn't you know that it took until just the second race after we started predicting "top three without Verstappen" that this ends up being the actual top three in the race. The change in this prediction achieved what we wanted anyway, with a variety of Perez, Norris, Ferrari and Mercedes picks yielding a nice mixture of scores. Nobody predicted Sainz in 1st place, but 2 points each go to @RandoEFC, @Tommy, @Coma and @DeadLinesman for putting him elsewhere in their top three. Everyone predicted a top three finish for Charles Leclerc, with @RandoEFC, @Stan, @Tommy, @nudge, @The Palace Fan and @DeadLinesman all bagging 5 points for putting him in P2, everyone else picking up 2 - the only points of the weekend in @MUFC's case. @Stan, @nudge and @OrangeKhrush all distinguished themselves by rounding off their podium predictions with Lando Norris in 3rd, collecting them another 5 points each. The presence of Perez in everyone's top three prevented anyone from bagging the 20 points for a perfect podium. Finally, this week's random driver was Oscar Piastri at his home race. Nobody was bold enough to predict a finish as high as 4th for him, but @RandoEFC was closest with 6th place here so picks up an extra 2 points. Here's what it does for the standings: Three races in, defending champion @RandoEFC sneaks to the top of the standings with a 1 point lead ahead of previous leader @Tommy. @MUFC's poor weekend and @Whiskey's no-show this weekend see them propping up the standings. In the Constructors', a mediocre week for Mercedes sees them drop from 1st to 4th. Red Bull raked in the highest points tally this week but it's McLaren who sneak into the top spot in a close battle between them, Red Bull and Aston Martin. I'm going away tomorrow so I'll be posting the predictions for next weekend's Japanese Grand Prix this afternoon.

Nicely worked equaliser but what are those celebrations about in a friendly?

Surely Red Bull have to be tempted? Ricciardo is clearly washed and Tsunoda doesn't have the temperament to be a reliable second driver in a championship team. Sainz is an upgrade on Perez. The Audi project is clearly appealing in the long term but I can't see that Sainz won't have offers from Red Bull and/or Mercedes and personally think, looking at the dustbins Sauber have put out this year, he'd be mad to go there instead.

4 points is already scandalous compared to what we got given that they signed 42 players in 18 months or whatever it is. Sounds like they won't get points added on for frivolous appeal so best we can hope for is they get laughed at. All of it just goes to show how absolutely ridiculous our initial 10 point deduction was.

The esk knows his stuff but by all accounts he's close to either MSP or one of the other consortiums interested in swooping in at a lower price if 777 falls through, so I do take his commentary on the 777 takeover with a pinch of salt.

Haha the gammons thinking they're the "silent majority" and being convinced that they've got a massive boycott on the go only for it to amount to about 20 people will never get old.

I'm pretty sure the last race I missed and watched the highlights was Singapore where Sainz also ended a Verstappen winning spree and Russell crashed out on the final lap . It's important to me that a Driver/Team never win an entire season of races in F1 so at least that one's back on the shelf this year.

All I've managed to glean is that the big, strong, beer-breathed flag shaggers who are known for saying things like "we could do with a good war to toughen up this snowflake generation" as if they speak with some authority despite the last world war ending 20 years before they were born, have seen the pink and purple bits and been reminded of the rainbows that have them waking up at night in cold sweats. Remember though it's the "woke brigade" that are snowflakes, offended by everything and need to be toughened up.

I know it's probably generally true of internationals and especially friendlies but that was a hard watch. This England setup has been reasonably successful at tournament level but I also think there's quite a flat track bully element about it. Boringly efficient against the cannon fodder and then usually just coming up a bit short against their proper rivals. In both cases, not particularly exciting viewing.