These are the matchups for the Round of 32:


Source: https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/news/0262-1084518d0356-6b2988d91fbf-1000--fixtures-and-results/

Some good ones, which used to be played in CL in the past iirc, like Olympiacos vs PSV and Benfica vs Arsenal. I am looking forward to Salzburg vs Villareal and Young Boys vs Leverkusen, which should be exciting with quite some goals scored.

As to who will advance, I am favouring all the teams on the right apart from maybe Brugge, Eindhoven and Villareal.

I don't follow Darts during the year, but over Christmas it's always nice to watch the madness (spectator wise) and the drama (player wise). The madness will be a bit less this year though unfortunately - there will be fans in the Alexandra Palace, but only 1,000 and they are not allowed to wear costumes or sing. I am curious how this will work, since afaik they are allowed to drink alcohol and the more alcohol you drink, the more likely you are to sing or do other weird things

But anyway, as said I am no expert and I usually follow the first days without placing bets. After having seen all players and their performances, I might place a bet here and there, if I see a good one. Maybe we have some dart pros here, who can share their picks or are just interested in discussing things. 

The first matches will start tomorrow and we will already get to see the reigning Champion Peter Wright, who will play his secound round match against West or Gilitwala. Here are the outright odds, taken from William Hill, with MvG being the favourite as always:


Source: https://sports.williamhill.com/betting/en-gb/darts

The draw can be found here. Odds for matches and side markets should be available in basically every bookmaker.

Happy discussing

I do It's not about the results or their position in the table right now, this is about Favre's personality. He is a very difficult person to deal with longterm and he had the same problems at Hertha and Gladbach in the past (not sure about his stint in Nice). He always gets into trouble with the bosses and their relationship gets worse and worse over time. As long as the team performs well, both sides will just live with it and keep a distanced business relationship. But as soon as the team is in a slump after ~2+ years, the management will grab the opportunity and sack him. By then he will probably also have lost the locker room (which looks to be the case in Dortmund as well), so there is no point in keeping him. This slump doesn't have to last very long; some games of non-results are enough, to justify the sacking publicly without having too many questions asked.

I think he is one hell of a coach and can develop (young) teams extremely well, but he is also an alpha male, which isn't always super obvious when you see/hear him. As a coach you have to be like this to a certain extent and it will work as long as you deliver. But the other alpha males in the club, will not hesitate to get rid of you, once you fade and/or show weaknesses.

Still some weeks to go until these matches take place, so lots of things can change and will change I agree with ManCity, Bayern, Juve, PSG, Real.

I would give the edge to Dortmund with a then new coach against Sevilla. Atletico vs Chelsea looks very 50/50, but for me this would be Chelsea, if I had to pick one side. And then Liverpool is surely fav, but here I can imagine Leipzig having the upper hand in the end. They can be a pain in the ass to play against and Liverpool isn't super convincing until now, despite Kloppo knowing the germans very well, which is an advantage.

BTC for the side event sent to Avirunes.

Here are our results, a bit more green today



9 correct picks: tomahawk9, Avirunes
8 correct picks: -
7 correct picks: rdbase, ralle14, buwaytress, Trofo, (entebah)

Looks like it's not enough for the top of the SB leaderboard, but it is for the threads bonus prize, congratulations to all winners

All-time stats:



After countless tries, tomahawk9 finally got his first fame points Avirunes now has the sole lead in the "Wins" category with 6.

(This table is slowly but surely getting too long^^)

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37 goals were scored in the 15 games and the winner is Avirunes for the side event, congratulations once again



Please post your BTC address or send it to me via PM.

Regarding Wolfsburg, they had a pretty easy schedule so far, if there is anything like that in Bundesliga. They still haven't played Bayern (1), Leipzig (2), Dortmund (5), Union (6) and Stuttgart (7). They will do so in the next 5 games, then play Mainz and then Leverkusen (3). From these 7 games, only two will be at home, so you can expect them to go a bit south in the table in the coming weeks. Nonetheless they are playing a good season and are tough to beat (even Leverkusen and Gladbach failed to beat them this season).

-

And Dortmund just sacked Favre

It looks the obvious pick, but I am not that confident. Jaguars have 2 divisional matchups left (today and week 17 @Colts) and they can win one more game without losing their #2 pick. They are not in tanking mode like the Jets, but aren't too unhappy when losing imo. I watched them at Vikings last week and they are better than their record suggests; Glennon is doing a good job. Jags will play this one super motivated I think and apart from the blowout against the Steelers, they kept their last games close, losing only by 2/4/2/3 against ok-ish opposition with Texans/Packers/Browns/Vikings. Now looking at the H2H, which is always a bit meh tbf, the Titans would have beaten this HC only once the last 9 years when playing @Jacksonville, even losing 6 times SU. Earlier this season it ended 33-30 at TEN.

I am not saying this is a bad pick, because in the end I don't know as well nor do the teams Just some general remarks, good luck

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Will not have any pre-match bets today as it seems I like the Giants ML, the over in Raiders game and Bills ML, but will look for better odds/lines inplay.

As for the Chiefs game, I think Miami could even win this, but only if they win the TO battle and their defense/ST helping with scoring a TD. Or two.

I think I have never seen so many red in a table on Saturday evening Even the matches with an ok-ish consensus were all wrong, amazing



And still we have tomahawk9 and Avirunes doing really good, chapeau. Tomorrow are the more what it looks "easy" games and not that much ground to make up, unless you have picked some upsets (and they happen^^). If you look closely - for our internal prize - buywaytress and Avirunes can't finish better no more than tomahawk9, they can just tie with him. Trofo looks still in the hunt with 3, but already out, just like all the other users I think, but I didnt check in detail; a tie with tomahawk9 is probably still possible for some.

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For the side event we saw 15 goals after 8/15 matches played and all users with guesses around the 30 mark look in good shape for this one

Hehe, lol @leea-1134 I changed your picks and not that it probably matters whith your performance thus far^^, but I have some trouble interpreting this pick:


Is that a zero-zero = draw ?

Or more like zzzzzzzzzzz for a super boring game ?

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Yep, quite annoying for me. The X would have kept me in contention, but with 1/5 I am basically out for this week. Keeping my fingers crossed for @Avirunes and @tomahawk9 though. For all others as well of course, but these two must be high up in overall leaderboard - Avirunes probably leading (didn't check).

Die Frage ist, ob das nicht sogar noch rückwirkend irgendwelche Auswirkungen auf die IF hätte, wenn David zu seiner Zeit Stiftungsgelder veruntreut oder die IF zu privaten Zwecken missbraucht hat, was ja wohl laut CfB bzw. der Chatauszüge durchaus der Fall sein könnte. Bin kein Jurist, aber vielleicht kommt dieser Schritt so oder so schon zu spät (?). Soweit ich weiss, ist man eher persönlich haftbar für derlei Sachen, aber wer weiss, was da sonst noch schief gelaufen ist

Let it ride, though I don't like the Bielefeld pick. They can get a draw at Freiburg, but winning there is a stretch.

If you are thinking of hedging or cashing out after one leg of your parlay is won, why even bother to play parlays at all ? Just play single bets then instead, which is better anyway, and enjoy some return of money every now and then^^

I like all of your picks (some reasoning would be nice^^), but this one I like the most. Bremen will be without Rashica, Füllkrug and Selke, not sure how they will be able to score here. And Leipzig will score for sure, which would make this bet half lost. It's more likely though that we will see them score 2+ and have an easy win. They might be a bit tired from the CL match midweek, but I don't see them struggling today with the good home team they generally are.

Also expecting Bayern to have no problems with taking the 3 points at Union, who will miss Andrich and Kruse. After the fantastic start of the season I expect the team from the capital to fade from here on and it will start/continue today

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What a poor showing by Sandhausen 0-3 FT. I don't see many worse teams than them in GER2 right now, so we might get lucky this year and they will relegate finally. About time.

95% of the players earning their money in SuperLeague now had some kind of a career at a bigger european club. Once you are done in Europe and have a good name, you will get an offer from a chinese club and play there as some kind of an advertisement for this league and to raise domestic interest in it. 

The chinese national team is still poor, they even often struggle against smaller asian countries (not talking about Japan or South Korea). Football just has no roots there, so you have to push it artificially, which only works to a certain extent (see USA as well). The foreign players are good and bad for the chinese players. They do learn from them, but they also often rely on them to do the work, so it's hard for them to develop properly. And in the end the CSL is still too weak to produce good chinese players, who can make international noise and then also help their national team.
Do you know any chinese player in Europe who is successful there ? I only know Wu Lei who plays for Espanyol in LaLiga2 and LaLiga before. He is doing ok there, but nothing more.

The chinese Football Association is trying a lot to form younger players, like teams having to use a fixed number of U23 players, but it's just not working. I think these players need to go to lower leagues in Europe and get developed there. The problem is, that this is a huge step for a young athlete with no guarantee of success. And you don't earn as much money there as in China.....

Big problem in China is, that everything is only measured in success/numbers. And this success has to come as fast as possible, thus giving it no time to grow organically. They just try to grow by injecting loads of money into the system without a real plan to build a strong foundation - this is fortunately not working (yet).

Sorry to say, but I can't accept it. It was clearly stated that it's each users responsibility to check the previous picks and I updated the public table frequently, so was easy to check with a little bit of effort I don't like to be the asshole here, but rules are rules and it's only fair to the other participants. Leeds was already leading 1-0 when you changed your pick too.

Just hope for more/less than 34 goals or even no one winning this week, then you can try your luck next week again

Here are the picks published so far (public/live table):



Southampton and Juve get the full support, with other high-consensus picks being PSG, Arsenal, Atalanta and Leverkusen (kind of surprising to me, although I picked LEV as well). Marseille - Monaco and the Madrid derby are games which look wide open according to us and the odds also^^

For the Friday/Saturday games there is few-ish consensus found in general, for Sunday way more. So I am expecting a wild Saturday and the leader on Saturday evening can already dream of some BTC going his way.

There is a first for everything and @buwaytress and @leea-1334 have the exact same picks. @ralle14 and me only differ in our opinion about Birmingham - Watford

As last week, please everyone check, if I made no mistake when putting your picks in the table.

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Here is a better overview for the side event:



Kind of surprising, that most people went with quite low total goals. My guess would have been 51.

@notblox1
33 goals was already taken.

Good luck everyone

Lets try GER2 again

Sandhausen - Fürth -> Sandhausen +0.25 @1.9x

Sandhausen changed their coach recently and it paid off in last round at poor Würzburg, when they finally were able to win again after 2 months. They have a good team on paper and established themselves as a solid 2. Bundesliga side in the last years, despite being a super small organisation with basically no fans. Fürth is the surprise of the season, I am not sure why they are that good all of sudden. After 5 wins in a row, they lost to Heidenheim in last round and Sandhausen is a similar team to Heidenheim, just a bit worse Fürth will miss their captain and top scorer today most likely, which is quite a blow for them. Sandhausen is tough to beat at home and even during this very mediocre season thus far, only Aue managed to win there. Sandhausen won both games last season against Fürth.

And some bucks on Daniel Keita-Ruel to score @2.9x. He is a very good forward for GER2 standards and has scored five times already this season, two goals in the last win at Würzburg. He played the last two seasons at Fürth and surely wants to show them, what he is capable of

Denke ich auch Und dazu passt auch dieser Tweet von CfB:


Quelle: https://twitter.com/c___f___b/status/1337142975693021184

Eigentlich hatte David sich ja ganz gut unter Kontrolle in letzter Zeit, nachdem er zuvor auf jegliche Kritik öffentlichkeitswirksam angebissen hat; daher weht der Wind wohl eher nicht. Ich denke schon, dass es intern auch Meinungsverschiedenheiten über die Zukunft von IOTA gab, aber das ist kein Grund den "Boss" rauszuschmeissen. Das ist eine große Sache - ich war bisschen geschockt tbh - also wird da etwas, die IF bedrohende Sache, hinterstehen.

Auch wenn ich in den Chor einstimme, dass David eher in die Kategorie unsympathisch gehört, so tut es mir für ihn persönlich doch auch irgendwo leid. Einfach so sein Baby entrissen zu bekommen, ist für niemanden schön, unsympathisch hin oder her. Aber wie ich in der Vergangenheit schon schrieb, hat David mMn Dreck am Stecken und dann muss man sich auch nicht wundern. Er wurde für seine Arbeit ja zumindest finanziell sehr gut kompensiert

IOTA verliert einen Visionär und Querdenker (sic) und wird etwas blasser ohne ihn. Langfristig sehe ich es auch eher als Chance, aber hängt sicher auch davon ab, welche Details da in den nächsten Wochen/Monaten ans Licht kommen. Ich denke auch nicht, dass David einen leisen Abgang einfach so hinnehmen wird; würde ihn da eher so in die Trump'sche Kategorie einordnen. Popcorn-mäßig darf man auf den kommenden Krieg zwischen ihm und CfB gespannt sein, denn jetzt darf ja auch David wieder öffentlich lospoltern.

Mich wundert es immer so ein bisschen, dass Dom sich da so lange halten kann^^

If you are patient, can wait a bit and are interested in Football (Managers), you might want to have a look at Soccer Manager Elite.

You can buy shares in clubs/players and will get crypto dividends for it. You can also choose to manage a team or be an agent for players and will get a wage for that paid in crypto.

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After a good performance you usually have a bad performance in MM, so not having high hopes, but here are mine:

Leeds United - West Ham United
Wolverhampton - Aston Villa
Valencia - Athletic Bilbao
Birmingham City - Watford DRAW
Olympique de Marseille - AS Monaco
Manchester United - Manchester City
Real Madrid - Atlético Madrid DRAW
Everton - Chelsea
Southampton - Sheffield United
Atalanta - Fiorentina
Genoa - Juventus
Bayer Leverkusen - 1899 Hoffenheim
Flamengo - Santos
Arsenal - Burnley
Paris Saint-Germain - Olympique Lyonnais

No-draw strategy worked good last week, but for this week I had to add two of them again^^

The "Share Betslip" option didn't show up for my friend, so I have to work with screenshot again unfortunately: MM 50



Or is there any other place to get it ?

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For the side event please make sure to post your entry in time, i.e. before the Leeds game starts, for fair play reasons or I can't consider it unfortunately. Some people only post their picks late Friday or Saturday morning sometimes, which is fine in general, but not for this side event