RandoEFC

No luck with Villa so -£5 for me this week.

Man Utd, Everton, Spurs and Leeds are the four horsemen of the "why does this always happen to us" apocalypse.

The Pogba transfer broke Man Utd in my opinion. You could see they paid in part for the brand and not all for the footballer. He's the signing that brought the celebrity culture to the dressing room and I don't think they've ever shaken it off. I remember thinking at the time that's not how Man Utd normally do business. I think they have many players who would be class at City, Liverpool or Arsenal but it's been so long since anyone at Man Utd knew how to guide talent that there's no expertise there anymore. You need more than just a good coach. You need a Guardiola or Klopp type character to come and reshape the entire culture but even if they employed one I don't think they'd be allowed to do what's necessary at that football club and any manager like that worth their salt wouldn't go there anyway. You could list all of the problems there all day but that's certainly one part of it.

Lacroix looked really good for you at Goodison as well I thought. My problem with this analysis is that players win fouls all the time where the defender tries to kick the ball or is just running along and the attacker gets themselves between the defender and the ball to buy a foul and it almost always gets given. Burn catches Calvert-Lewin's other ankle at the same time he gets kicked anyway. For me Burn prevents Calvert-Lewin from taking the shot by causing a collision and that's a foul. The fact that the initial contact comes in the form of Calvert-Lewin kicking Burn's leg is incidental. It's not the worst howler we've seen from VAR by any stretch of the imagination and it would have been robbery after the way we performed going forward yesterday but I do think we're unlucky not to get a penalty there.

Social media consensus seems to agree with me. Calvert-Lewin kicked Burn's leg but Burn put himself in the path to stop him from finishing the move. Really think Newcastle could have had no complaints if that was a penalty. Attackers initiate the contact all the time and get the foul because they've got on the wrong side of the defender.

Is he worse than Rangnick? Solskjaer? Moyes? There's quite a selection . Mourinho is the only one who's really done alright for a bit with them. Van Gaal was shite as well.

I mean we'll take a point off them. Especially if it includes their pantomime villain Pickford saving a penalty from the little tit Gordon . They were much better than us. That was our best defensive performance of the season except for Tarkowski's rugby tackle on Tonali and Garner and Keane played really well. Our attack were off it today though. McNeil never got in the game and Calvert-Lewin didn't get much change out of their centre backs. 3 games, 5 points since the last international break. We're starting to perform at about par in terms of results. If we'd have not imploded against Bournemouth we'd be well clear of the relegation fight at this stage. Just need a decent run now with a lot of bottom half opponents. We could get a good points haul but if we're off it then we don't want to be handing points to the likes of Ipswich and Southampton and getting dragged back into the thick of it.

Calvert-Lewin and then Gueye should bury that anyway but I think that's a decent claim for a penalty.

Brentford ️

We were doing okay before the penalty but we've been getting battered since. Ridden our luck to get to halftime at 0-0.

Haha little fucking rat.

Tarkowski you fucking cunt.

Garner out of position at right back, Young at left back, Keane back into central defence. If Newcastle's attack can't bag 3 or more tonight they want taking out and shooting. Begging for an international break because of injuries yet again.

Going a bit riskier this weekend so taking a £5 stake. Brentford and Aston Villa both aren't even odds on to win against two teams in total shambles this weekend which I think represents good value. I'm taking the Asian -1.0 on each match, meaning one or both legs might end up Void. £5 returns a maximum of £46.50.

I'd have had us down as capable of getting a result here but Branthwaite has picked up a fresh injury that will keep him out of this one and now rumours are circulating that Mykolenko may be injured too. With Keane probably featuring alongside Tarkowski and Garner and Young potentially our full back pairing I predict Everton 1-3 Newcastle.

Results - Singapore Grand Prix Another no-show from @Coma this week and it's a costly absence with some much higher scores this week. Qualifying was billed as a head to head between Leclerc and Norris following Free Practice, but Ferrari floundered in Q3, leaving Norris to take pole position, scoring 5 points each for @RandoEFC, @Stan, @MUFC, @nudge, @Whiskey, @Dave, @DeadLinesman and @OrangeKhrush. All 8 of the same competitors bagged another 5 points when Norris took a dominant win on Sunday, while @Tommy had to settle for 2 points for putting Norris in P2. Surprisingly, @OrangeKhrush was the only person to put Verstappen on the podium at all, nailing the championship leader's 2nd place on his way to the perfect podium, scoring him a total of 20 points. Along with @OrangeKhrush, @RandoEFC, @Stan, @Tommy, @Whiskey, @Dave and @DeadLinesman bagged 5 points each for Piastri's 3rd place, with @nudge the only person taking 2 consolation points for putting the in-form Aussie in 2nd place. Sergio Perez was this week's random driver, and @RandoEFC cashed in 5 more points for nailing his 10th place, a pick informed by Red Bull's struggles throughout Free Practice. This weekend's bonus question was about how many safety cars, red flags, etc. we'd see in the race. This year's Singapore Grand Prix was a collector's item, with not even a yellow flag in sight throughout the race. Nobody was brave enough to predict 0 safety cars, so @RandoEFC, @MUFC and @DeadLinesman take home 2 consolation points for coming closest with 1. @OrangeKhrush was this week's top scorer following his perfect podium, and his 25 point haul moves him up to 2nd in the standings. @RandoEFC extends his lead with a solid score of 22, boosted by his random driver selection coming in. @Tommy loses ground at a costly stage in the championship as the only player who predicted this week that didn't make double figures. The mid-table largely cancelled each other out this weekend. In the Constructors' standings, McLaren are comfortable top scorers this weekend, stretching out a 23 point lead over Red Bull, who were outscored by the rest of the field and have fallen into the clutches of Mercedes and Aston Martin as a result. Aston Martin were awarded 6 points on top of @OrangeKhrush's haul due to @Coma's absence.

Welcome back. Between the "Robben" and "CFCLoyal" usernames I do hope you know that Everton and Chelsea are, in fact, not the same football club .

I hope not but I can totally imagine the West justifying to themselves that it's alright to join a war on Israel's side after the genocide they've committed before they officially join Ukraine's war effort against Russia.

Really? They're not finishing in the top 8 and if they manage to scrape into the third quarter of the table they still have to go through a playoff against a better team from the top half. I suppose in terms of proportion, there's not much in it. The bottom quarter get eliminated and the third quarter get the lifeline of the playoff game instead of getting dumped into the Europa League. I think that's offset though by the fact that it's easier to fluke your way a bit higher than your level in a four-team group in six games than it is over eight games in this weird league structure. In a smaller group, a fluke win is twice as effective because you gain 3 points whilst also denying one of your direct rivals a win.

Israel posted a tweet with footage of the missile attack and the caption "This is not normal." No fucking shit, shameless cunts. I feel for the civilians in Israel but Benjamin Netanyahu and his government deserve to burn in perpetuity in the deepest pits of hell. Now their own citizens are under threat. The people responsible for perpetuating this conflict, be they Hamas, Hezbollah or Israeli ministers, deserve everything that comes their way. I'm not having Israel painting themselves as the righteous or civilised ones though.

They don't care about the mismatches or the poor clubs playing each other. This whole format change was to generate more "marquee" fixtures in the group stage because $$$, $$$ and $$$. The old group stage format kept the "biggest" clubs apart because of the pots meaning that they had to wait until the second half of the competition to milk Bayern vs Man City and Real Madrid vs Juventus for all that sweet dollar. I honestly don't think they've considered any other issues and Dortmund hammering Celtic 7-1 won't give them any sort of pause. More goals is more content which is more impressions and interactions on social media. It's true that these results happened already in the group stage. There will probably be more hammerings this year in my opinion but we won't know for sure until it all shakes out. Personally I'm not that fussed about the Champions League so I don't have a dog in the fight over this whole format thing but it's clear that generating more money is the thought process behind it rather than providing a balanced competition so I don't think the organisers will see it as a drawback at all. I agree though that as a casual if you want to stick a match on it's a lot less appealing now. There's a real lack of incentive for the likes of Celtic and Slovan Bratislava I feel. In this format they already know they're not getting anywhere in the competition even if they take a scalp or two, whereas in the past, if you could cause an upset in one of your six fixtures, you could put yourself in reasonably serious contention to get through.

I have totted up the scores for this, just not got around to the write-up. Things are a bit mad right now as I spent all weekend moving house. Thankfully there wasn't a race this weekend! Sneak preview - somebody got a perfect podium.

They're fighting to appeal to the Tory base which has never been further away from the median voter in my lifetime. It's pathetic really. They lost 5 seats to Reform while the Lib Dems have 70 seats around the South that the Tories need back to form a majority but the only strategy they've known since the Brexit referendum is "we weren't being right wing enough". If Labour can just get their act together and do okay over the next few years then they'll win the next election too. The Tories have absolutely no conception right now of why they took a hammering last time. They need a new generation of politicians to come through with some vision because the ones running for the leadership this time are just recycling the same shite that Sunak failed to sell to the public.

I think we could see one of those seasons where half a dozen go by Christmas. Martin, Ten Hag, Lopetegui, Cooper, O'Neil and Dyche I think are all very realistic.