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MOTD sweep update

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Steve Wilson | 11:45 UK time, Wednesday, 7 October 2009

Back in August I invited you to join in the Match of the Day sweep, and a staggering 850 people did!

With the international break upon us I thought it might be a good idea to assess how it is going. In the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ football office we had 49 entries this year including the usual gaggle of commentators, presenters and pundits.

In case you have forgotten the rules were these; place the 20 sides in the order in which you think they will finish the season.

If you are spot on you get five points, if you are close, two places or less either way, you get three points; but if you are more than five places out you get minus five points.

Then you had to predict who would win the , League Cup, and ; decide who would be the first Premier League manager to leave his job and pick a Premier League top scorer with five points for any correct prediction.

Well no manager has moved on yet and obviously no cups have been won - so here's how I predicted the table would look and how I score with the table as it actually stands now.

1.Chelsea (5 points)
2. Man Utd (5)
3. Arsenal (3)
4. Liverpool (3)
5. Villa (3)
6. Man City (3)
7. Everton (0)
8. Spurs (0)
9. Sunderland (3)
10. West Ham (-5)
11. Blackburn (0)
12. Stoke (3)
13. Fulham (3)
14. Wigan (3)
15. Burnley (-5)
16. Bolton (0)
17. Wolves (5)
18. Hull (5)
19. Portsmouth (3)
20. Birmingham (-5)

This adds up to a pretty respectable 32 points, enough to put me in equal eighth place in the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ office.

Our bosses normally do pretty well at this and true to form, Match of the Day editor Paul Armstrong is joint top with producer James Daniels on 37 points.

I am not the top commentator (no change there then), Alistair Mann is leading the way on 33, with Martin Fisher, Dan O'Hagan and Guy Mowbray joining me just behind.

Top pundit by a distance is Lee Dixon on 36 points, which leaves him just one point off the overall lead. So find your entry and work out how you are doing - and of course no cheating!

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    is this really worthy of a blog page? surely an email to those 850 people would be more suitable?

  • Comment number 2.

    ZEUSFC - is it really then worth a moan?

  • Comment number 3.

    a couple of weeks for the MOTD team don't forget - they can't be bothered to cover the England game

  • Comment number 4.

    I didn't enter this but I did create a similar sweepstake with my mates. The difference is that we have a scoring system like golf where you want your score to be as low as possible. The scoring is done on the difference between the predicted position and the current position of each club.

    It's the mid table that makes or breaks you. I was joint top last week and now I'm second bottom out 8 people.

    We've also decided to include a swap where you can directly swap two teams in the January transfer window. It can be risky though. Last season most people had Hull to go down and in January they were flying high. Everybody chose to stick with their original predictions. If they had changed to put Hull 5th, they would have got a lot of extra unwanted points. I can see people weighing up the same option with Burnley this season come January.

  • Comment number 5.

    I have to agree with your comment about not being a top commentator

  • Comment number 6.

    I'm not doing very well.

  • Comment number 7.

    I'm on 39 points!

  • Comment number 8.

    I like reading about this sort of thing- thanks for the update Steve!!

    Can you let us know the pundits positions please? I'd be interested to know how Hansen, Linekar, Shearer, Lawro, Keown, and to a lesser extent, Crooks are doing.

  • Comment number 9.

    My predictions would get me 40 points.

  • Comment number 10.

    i am on 60points!

  • Comment number 11.

    Bit harsh,Steve77, I'm sure like anyone in English football they would have loved to cover the game.

    But it's a real shame (some expletives would be handy right now), that the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ has no Internationals.

    Maybe the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ spends too much on football bloggers etc and less on actual product , (football).

  • Comment number 12.

    My predictions give me 53 points including 4 correct positions. I had Bent to be top scorer, hart to be sacked and my Ipswich to win the championship :( !!!!!

  • Comment number 13.

    Well i must say Steve Wilsons blogs are rapidly becoming even more laughable than Lawro's predictions, this shouldnt count as a blog at all and the last one about drogba, torres, rooney was very biased and misguided and showed a lack of football knowledge and experience.

    I'll stick to the insightful blogs from now on, good luck to you for future blogs - possibly a blog regarding interesting new shapes to replace the "traditional round" ball used in football, or altering the shape of the goals possibly, i dont know and wont be bothered to care

  • Comment number 14.

    i would of got 100 points

  • Comment number 15.

    2. At 1:10pm on 07 Oct 2009, profspike wrote:
    ZEUSFC - is it really then worth a moan?

    ---------------------------------------------------

    with the criticism thats aimed at other ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ bloggers, I believe it is, and if you read the comments 11 &13, you'll see why I posted it!

  • Comment number 16.

    Hi Steve
    Ignore the negative posts, your sweep could just be the solution to freshening up MOTD. It does not surprise me that Lee D is top pundit, his knowlegde is more recent than the the rest. I want you to take this a stage further and the least successful pundit gets relegated and a more recent pundit arrives for the new season. I now that rewards/penalties for results is a new concept at theBeeb, buuuut it could just sort out the weakest links.

  • Comment number 17.

    post 16 - I fail to understand how anybody can have "more recent" knowledge than the rest? Please explain this as i a agog to your comment other than the fact you generalise that each pundit must specialise in the era they played in, which would then surely mean Shearer would have the "most recent knowledge"?

    Like the comment about weakest pundits being relegated tho - would have a near overhaul in 3 years.... could even stretch it to the blogs...

  • Comment number 18.

    #17 Ta for the positive comment. By 'more recent knowledge', I mean that Lee D (among others)has had more recent exposure to and practical experience of the physical demands on, tactics played, and is more current (among others) than say Hansen/Lawrence, who appear to at times patronise the audience. H & L (among others)are expert, no doubt, but I feel that they have by now exhausted everything they have to say. Just my take on MOTD just now.
    PS I am not ageist by the way, for instance Arlene should still be there on the dance show.

  • Comment number 19.

    i dont understand what you mean still - dixon has no idea as to the tactics of modern premier league football and due to the nature of the game we love it is near on impossible to predict, what with surprise packages (fulham last season) and the yearly flops (newcastle)

    I agree Hansen does patronise and emphasises too much on defending and lawro knows nothing at all about football and just sits there as a comedy element

  • Comment number 20.

    Its only an update on what should have been a lighthearted bit of fun, I cant believe some people are STILL moaning!

    Keep it up Steve

  • Comment number 21.

    26pts so far for me. I was going reasonably well with 7 x 3pts and with Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City and Bolton all spot on... then came big deductions for West Ham, Stoke and Burnley!!

    I run a little competition very similar to this with my brother at the start of every season - it's far more difficult than you might initially think!!

  • Comment number 22.

    Surely not the greatest time to a fair update, with the differenes being so small and several sides having a game in hand. Might I also add it would be nice to see some analysis (why did you predict West Ham 10th and why are they down at the bottom) added to these numbers.

    However, nice to see that pundits are not better at predicting than commentators or producers. Proves that, unless they have really good anecdotes or an insightfull tactital view, they are pointless.

  • Comment number 23.

    22 points and I said Burnley will finish 20th!

  • Comment number 24.

    Well i must say Steve Wilsons blogs are rapidly becoming even more laughable than Lawro's predictions, this shouldnt count as a blog at all and the last one about drogba, torres, rooney was very biased and misguided and showed a lack of football knowledge and experience.

    I'll stick to the insightful blogs from now on, good luck to you for future blogs - possibly a blog regarding interesting new shapes to replace the "traditional round" ball used in football, or altering the shape of the goals possibly, i dont know and wont be bothered to care
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

    think captainTrueFan might need a tall glass of chill out and calm down juice. bit of fun. nothing else. relax. the world is a lovely place.

  • Comment number 25.

    Lee Dixon is the best pundit by a country milee....

    Its not over yet tho.



    Where are hansen and lawro....i don't like them as they are biased to liverpool:(

  • Comment number 26.

    Why do you people realy feel the need to be negative towards this blog.

    I mean its only fun.

    Its just the same as fantasy football to be fair.

    And if it was realy that bad why take the time out to complain about it just get over it

    If Steve wants to do a blog on this then thats fine

    Im sure he dosn't complain about what you do!!!!

  • Comment number 27.

    Sounds like sour grapes to me, a wannabe pundit/commentator throwing the toys out of his pram.

    Take no notice steve, we all (mostly) see that its just a bit of fun, I did the same thing with my family, it gave this :

    Chelsea (5)
    Man Utd (5)
    Man City (3)
    Liverpool (3)
    Arsenal (5)
    Everton (0)
    Tottenham (0)
    Aston Villa (3)
    Fulham (-5)
    West Ham (-5)
    Wigan (3)
    Blackburn (0)
    Bolton (5)
    Sunderland (-5)
    Stoke (0)
    Portsmouth (0)
    Hull (3)
    Birmingham (0)
    Burnley -(5)
    Wolves (3)

    Only 23 points !!

    As for FA Cup, League Cup, Champions League and Championship;
    Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea, Newcastle (if they didnt win it it would be an enormous surprise)
    first Premier League manager to leave his job : Benitez (would love it)
    and a Premier League top scorer : Drogba (if you haven't noticed, i'm a chelsea fan...)
    An update at Crimbo would be welcome

    Keep it up, here as well as on MOTD.

  • Comment number 28.

    just recounted, only 18 points!! Useless!!

  • Comment number 29.

    Mine 31...

    And i know it will get better as few teams have played only 7 matches

  • Comment number 30.

    waste o'time

  • Comment number 31.

    For pity's sake, if you are just going to moan about these blogs then do us all a favour and don't bother! If you don't like them read something else, the internet is a very big thing!

    Steve, great little sweepstake and a good challenge that me and all my friends are taking part in!

  • Comment number 32.

  • Comment number 33.

    I agree totally. I love sweepstakes, but I've also been using these fantastic footy systems and I've won a lorra dosh with: betsteady.com Talk about getting paid to watch football!
    Keep the good work up Steve.

  • Comment number 34.

    Why would i want to do you a favour?

    Maybe the bloggers will try harder if they know that people feel they are just phoning in a bunch of worn-out cr*p.

    Fingers crossed.

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