FA cup or other Cup games are usually like this. Managers usually give chances to young team or players who don't get enough chances. Its good way to hand out chances to show some potential and get a chance in first team.  With the pandemic situation , it was sure that they won't be risking any first team players.

Would be a bit boring to watch, maybe switch to other league for this week.

You mean Bayern vs Gladbach? or as  AS Roma vs Inter as showing in Sportsbet special bet page. Both seems to be right on time. Only one that I thought of likely to be cancelled was Aston Villa vs Liverpool and that also seems to be right on schedule. Wonder which one you are talking about.

Lot of EFL matches in this MM and I don't think teams will be risking their 1st team squad for this. Arsenal have good young talents so I expect lineup build mostly of those who aren't getting much chances lately like Nketiah, Pepe, Willian..and so and it would be same for Newcastle so I think it would be a close one to watch.

There are lot of players in Arsenal not getting chances including some experienced so I am counting on them to make some good performances.

^^ Interesting. What do you think about it? I've got mixed feelings here- Don't think they need one with the big names they have up already but who knows what might , maybe Pirlo is thinking a bit ahead and keeping a backup just in case injuries depletes his options...

For now, I have only heard about Juventus heavily interested in some young talents who are making quite some news with their place in first team in their respective teams. For example- Nicolo Rovella (https://www.juvefc.com/report-juventus-set-to-complete-transfer-today/) and another talent from  a MLS team (https://twitter.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1347302835143258112). Both are 19 years old....so feels like they are heavily investing for the future.

I've seen some news that Aston Villa is not taking it as priority and are thus resting out their whole 1st team squad since it's an EFL fixture and don't want to take risks with covid out there. They are likely to test their U23 squad and roll out for their match against Liverpool. I think same would be for Liverpool as they have also match against United and they also wouldn't want to take risks.

Right now we know how city are bad against counter attacking and Spurs are very good on that. Controlling ball is one thing but that doesn't gives you the win. City have 4 months to prepare and that is enough to  tighten up defense and fix the holes they have. Guardiola has lot of time to prepare his squad but so does Spurs. It will be good finale to watch.

I don't know why they bought in the first place when they had Bruno Fernandes. Now Bruno Fernandes is playing so well that he has now made his position solid in first team picture. With that, I can understand manager stand in playing Bruno and making De Beek on standby. Van de Beek is not a natural defensive midfielder while McTominay is. I've seen Ole testing out Van de Beek on that position but that also takes time to adjust there as well given they have already 4 defensive midfielders- Fred, McTominay, Pogba and Matic. So it becomes quite a difficult situation for manager as well.

Maybe loaning him out for the time being. Its good to send him out on loan to develop elsewhere.

Here goes my selections for MM this round:

Gladbach - Bayern (2)
Aston Villa - Liverpool (2)
Celta Vigo - Villareal (1)
Sevilla - Real Sociedad (X)
Benevento - Atalanta (2)
Atletico Madrid - Athletic Bilbao (1)
Leipzig - Dortmund (X)
Arsenal - Newcastle (1)
Manchester United - Watford (1)
Southampton - Shrewsbury Town (1)
Roma - Inter (X)
Parma - Lazio (1)
Udinese - Napoli (2)
Ajax - Eindhoven (X)
Flamengo - Ceara (1)

for boosted odds of 150824.33x . Lets go...

Yeah they need to work about Sergio Aguero - I mean whether to extend it a bit further or find a replacement for him. Jesus is a good striker and is always out there in field trying his best but maybe someone with experience on centre forward would be more good for Cityzens. They have Ferran Torres and Foden also played at that position but they are not a natural centre forward. So they can work it out for a bit but given the pocket they have it will be better to spend to bring a new forward player just in case if they don't want Aguero now.

Truly.. Amazing performance from Saints yesterday in a match where they had to face the best in Premier League. Saints had some injuries with Vestergaard (defender) missing and McCarthy (goalkeeper) also injured. The goalkeeper starting the match yesterday haven't played any games for Saints till 2017. But yet they managed to beat the table topper.

Now Liverpool stands equal in terms of points on table along with Manchester United and the win lands Southampton with other teams with 29 points on 6th position

Wow!! Seems like you are having quite a weekend hitting parlays. I hope Benfica wins tonight and land you on successful 14/1 parlay as well as other SB Sunday special backers.



No problem, I enjoyed doing it a lot  .

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Off now waiting for the next one... We had quite some favourites this week , maybe a bit of change with surprises next?  . Whatever it is , competition is tight now with BTC soaring high and I am sure that MM has gone popular now and lot of new users joining.

We had some crazy competition in side event organized by @buwaytress. I also enjoyed watching the leaderboard along with the matches, also realized that anyone has chance to win despite if their no. of correct outcome is not much.As for the result now, we have new participant (not that new  ) winning this round's side event.  @Turquinito    has won the side event with highest odds - 1060.21x . It was his 8th attempt in MM and he has already won something while participating.


Here is the leaderboard of the side event:




It was really fun in the side event with a good competition amongst us. Thanks    @buwaytress    for holding this side event and making it possible to try out this new competition idea. I am definitely gonna come up with this idea (thanks to rohang as well for dropping out this idea) of competition in future again if I manage to win the MM. Probably with more prizes and good prize pool, but for now sad to see this end here for now.

Impressive run by the ralle14, Janprix, Indymoney, Turquinito and rohang for making it to 11 in this difficult MM once again. Sad to see them winning nothing in the end but I will say this- you are not that far from winning. It was not as surprising week as we usually have. Someone with 15/15 correct picks would have won his ticket with @75445.30405x odds, so someone staking with minimum qualifying amount of 0.1 mbtc would have won 7.5 BTC.

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I was actually hoping for 1-2 surprises at least in last day but it was all favourites day... ugh!

Chelsea defence are giving so much space for City to find their players and take shots. Lot of holes in defence and that gave wonderful opportunities for City to score. Also there were some good chances like De Bruyne one which was not taken. Really not a defensive display I was hoping that Chelsea would put against City.

Not enjoying the match anymore .

Actually that name wasn't there when first two games went through. Don't know what's happening with leaderboard but can understand given how much data they have to process to get the leaderboard- not so easy...

I was watching Dortmund's game and hoping for an equaliser but Sancho's goal in late minute put the nail int coffin. That puts me now behind... We have 6 guys with 10 correct picks and still one game yet to start so that's really impressive....

Yeah that is also another way to push Dortmund for the transfer if Sancho is also keen in joining United. We already saw how Leroy Sane pushed Manchester City to let him go to Bayern Munich but his case was a bit different as he didn't signed contract extension and they had no other left. While in Sancho case , his contract is up till 2022 and that's quite a time. Won't it be a bit difficult? Don't think Dortmund will let him leave easily.

The negotiations were on quite some stages between United and Sancho in last transfer window. However, Dortmund on other hand were adamant on not going below a price tag I think which was little over 100 million Euros. United wanted to negotiated about the price tag but Dortmund never agreed to it. They gave their own deadline to United about Sancho but it never went serious for Dortmund after that deadline was also passed. It is gonna be still same if they are still going to negotiate like earlier.

Right now Diallo to United is going strong atm for United. Haven't seen any strong transfers rumours other than that linking up with United.

We have some pretty tight competition going on in side event. Its me leading right now with 115.20x but I am pretty sure someone with surprises if they get it right then they can easily get past me easily. I was checking the spreadsheet if it was working well with your sheet and it was really interesting how the leaderboard was changing while the matches were live. At one point , arallmuus was leading when match between Leipzig vs Stuttgart was on 0-0 scoreline with 265x odds. Anyway here goes the leaderboard:



I am not so good like tykiwanuka in briefing so pardon me for not adding more additional stats and facts.

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@tykiwanuka I think I have made a mistake in my picks. I had "Draw" for Chelsea vs Manchester City fixture. Fixed my picks in original post.  With this I think I have similar picks as arallmuus in remaining matches.



Yan* guy actually wasn't there when the West Ham won and United won. Its impressive that he recorded 8/8 matches yesterday. I am sure there will be plenty of guys like that with 8 correct picks followed by lot of 7 and 6 correct pick guys. This leaderboard thing is keeping me biting my nails wondering about the actual leaderboard.

Leeds are a great attacking side. They keep the possession and keep on trying shots as much as they get the chances but their defense is also weak. They would have been a great side if they were in Championship.  Right now they can easily thrash a side in PL who are struggling in attacking and are defensively also kinda bit weak. We saw how great they were against West Brom.

We still have lot of matches and we have some tough fixtures tomorrow as well. Right now also there are some pretty tight matches going on with 0-0 scoreline at HT so feels like we gonna have 1 or 2 draws at least this week. Not as much as last weekend , last weekend was very much unexpected.

jeremypwr right now leading in side event as well as in terms of correct picks.  

^^ I am bit surprised as no one took chances taking West Ham. They have been playing well so far. They are in better shape than last season. Even though that one goal that came out at 86th minute was a bit of luck as the shot taken by Cresswell got a deflection from Mina and landed luckily to their opponents player and Soucek got a clear goal.

Glad that United got some of us on the scoreboard.