Dan

Welcome to the future. I nearly ended up being these on 24 but went for someone else, so them coming up again is the world (the wheel) telling me that I'm meant to manage these, and I quite liked the idea of it before but just fancied Croatia more. OFK Vrsac of the Serbian 2nd tier. Now I've done a bit of digging into Serbia and this could be another level of difficulty altogether. Pretty much every league in Europe, largely thanks to the Champions League money, is dominated by a couple of teams who secured the bag and monopolised the league. This is very much true of Serbia, where Crvena Zvezda absolutely walk the league year in, year out. But Serbia feels uniquely tricky for two main reasons on top of this. The first is there is absolutely no money in the league. I did a bit of digging and found that in Croatia's top tier, 9 of the 10 teams pay £1mil a year or more in wages (Vukovar the exception) while in Serbia, only 4 out of 16 do. So Vukovar, expected to go down with a whimper in Croatia, would be pushing for Europe in Serbia. Similar sorts of situations in Hungary and Romania as well which are other leagues I have active. The other is that they have a very strict domestic player policy where as it is now, you can only name 4 foreign players in your squad. So the league has absolutely no money, and with what little money you have, you have a very limited pool of players you can bring in. It's similar to Portugal but with a lower standard, less freedom in who comes in and a fraction of the money. What I expect is that I will actually get up to the top tier pretty quickly (despite a prediction of 11th) and establish. But actually getting above the big teams is going to be a mission and a half even for somebody who has pissed as much time on the game as I have. So the trick is to get to a European league phase as quickly as possible (which will be very hard in itself) and use that money to upgrade youth intakes and whatnot. What Serbia does have in its favour is it does produce decent players for its size. But having seen this league system, it's not hard to see why it lags quite a way behind a comparable neighbour. This could be a real slog but looking forward to chucking many hours away trying to crack it.

Tottenham are just extraordinary. They hit a new low every time they play

Hoping he doesn't stick with Reid/Ayew.

He had a good game bar the penalty. Got away with that one.

It's possible. I guess we'll never know but that clean sheet feels as big as winning itself. Huge monkey off our backs there.

Glad for him. He's dropped off as the season's gone on but I still have him nowhere near one of the biggest offenders.

That penalty save is enormous. Game changer.

If we don't win this we're toast.

Have they really had 4 corners after 5 minutes?

For **** sake

The Galatasaray game will be good I agree! But how do we think it'll be at Leicester?

It's a wrap for Greece. We win the league but lose the cup final to PAOK. New destination has been decided, and my god, this is going to be an absolute pig of a save on the face of it, but I like a challenge.

Oh I know. I've absolutely no confidence whatsoever. But this is an opportunity - as is the weekend.

This. You only have to see how many of our players leave and do well and interestingly, how many do this after making a quite slow start at their new club. It's true of Tielemans, Barnes, possibly add Hermansen in too.

We've caught these at a great time. It's going to be impossible to retain any faith if we don't win tomorrow.

Yep hadn't realised this. Bristol City Last 5 - 17th Last 10 - 17th Last 15 - 14th Last 20 - 16th QPR Last 5 - 22nd Last 10 - 19th Last 15 - 18th Last 20 - 14th Two extremely presentable fixtures. These will really reveal where we end up.

And released after, so point kind of proven.

Jury is still out. Two good results in Middlesbrough and Ipswich. Two bad ones in Stoke and Norwich. I just don't think anything has 'really' changed a great deal. We had games like yesterday under Cifuentes but it's not a surprise because we're playing a nearly identical team and formation. I can only really believe there's been an upturn after the next game. If we win that then there has been. If there hasn't then there hasn't. It's really pretty simple.

Massive opportunity. Their manager is supposedly making bizarre decisions to make a point to their board, and their form has gone right off the boil. Even despite this they aren't playing quite as badly as we are. But we've definitely caught them at a decent time. It just needs to be a win.

Pretty much exactly how I feel. I thought we'd draw - I can't really explain it with Ipswich but we don't seem to be a good match for them. They probably ought to have won but I struggle to have any sympathy on the penalties given they spent the game diving trying to win one. I just can't have a single bit of faith because I don't really see anything that hasn't been happening all season. I'll believe it when I see it with this team. We're guaranteed to concede, we're constantly losing 50/50s against basically everybody, we don't really create anything. We got a good result at Middlesbrough and followed it up with another 2/10 scandal performance. The Ipswich result is only any use if we back it up in the next two. I've no confidence whatsoever that we will.

I just can't fall for it. It makes sense in theory but this is a team that will reel you in with an OK result and then spit it back in your face with a total catastrophe in the next. I'll have to see it to believe it.

Mavididi.

Total waste of space as per.

Got the result to help Cov out the way as predicted. Now over to the result to screw ourselves. 1-2.

I feel exactly the same. It's like there's an internal policy to play 4-2-3-1. I don't have an obvious alternative but it's just crazy to me - nobody ever changes anything.