Halifax 1-1 Southend
Fylde 0-2 Aldershot
Barnet 2-2 Altrincham
Bromley 2-1 Maidenhead United
Chesterfield 5-4 Dag & Red
Eastleigh 2-1 Gateshead
Kidderminster 0-2 Rochdale
Oldham 2-3 Dorking
Oxford City 2-1 Hartlepool
Wealdstone 2-5 Ebbsfleet
Woking 1-2 Solihull Moors
York 2-1 Boreham Wood

League Table After Matchday 7

Amelia - 163
Spireitematt - 154
SaltergateBorn - 126
St Charles - 126
Dancing - 121
Lord Snoots - 118
Devon - 82

York City have appointed former Notts County and AFC Wimbledon boss Neal Ardley as their new manager.

The 51-year-old, who spent 11 playing for Wimbledon, has agreed a three-year deal at the National League side.

He replaces Michael Morton who was sacked by the Minstermen last month after a winless start to the season.

Ardley spent more than six years in charge of AFC Wimbledon, guiding them to League One for the first time after winning the 2016 League Two play-offs.

He joined Notts County in November 2018 but could not stop them from being relegated from the English Football League for the first time.

The following season Notts were third in the National League before the season was curtailed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

They did make the re-scheduled play-offs but were beaten by Harrogate Town in the final, with Ardley sacked in March 2021.

His most recent role saw spend the past two seasons on charge at Solihull Moors, guiding the club to third place in the National League in 2022 before losing in the play-off final.

He left by mutual consent in June after a mid-table finish last season.

Blue B 19
Derby 18
Minizin 15
Stairs 12
Lady J 10
Zinman 7
B.B.B. 7
Dingle 0

Bit of a mixed bag this week overall. BlueBaggie finally finds a bit of form and tops the table this week with 19 points, a season's high for him. A max on the Bonus and CR on the Gamball certainly helps your score as he saw!! Derby is 2nd just a point back, like Blue he scored well on his balls including a max on the Bonus, the only difference was he missed ion the Scoreball. Minizin keep up the pace in 3rd with 15 points, like the 2 above him he had no negatives on his balls and added one CS to them.

League leader Stairs is 4th with 12 points, like the top three, no negatives on the balls almost guarantees you a decent enough score. Lady Jane is 5th with 10 points and Zinman in 6th with 7 points both missed on the Gamball, BBB also ended with 7 points, he missed on the Bonus.

Dingle had a week to forget!! He only scored on 2 games and missed on all his balls to leave him with a big fat zero!!

77 Stairs
71 Minizin
68 Derby
54 Zinman
54 Blue Baggie
45 BBB
42 Dingle
42 Lady Jane

Stairs saw his lead cut to 6 points over Minizin with Derby just a further 3 points back. These 3 have put an early 14 point gap between them and the rest, led by Zinman and Blue, who are now not that far ahead of the bottom 3. Blue was the biggest mover, gaining 3 places this week and Dingle was the big loser dropping down 2 places to joint bottom with LJ.

Championship
Snooty 14
SCO 10
BaggieOne 9
Themaclad 6
Sanjay 3
AAA 2
Twerton 0

The lowest total points for the season so far as a lack of correct bonuses dragged the scores down - just 1 correct ball out of 7, largely down to Norwich! Correct scores were also in short supply, just 3 this week. Snooty heads the week's table with his best score so far of 14 points. Of course, he was the correct bonus ball player to complete a full set of balls for him this week. SCO scraped into double figures and his score ball put him one point ahead of BaggieOne in 3rd place. The top 3 had an identical number of correct result and score predictions and were only separated by their balls.

Nobody else gained a correct score. Themaclad, Sanjay and AAA again had the same number of correct predictions with the balls splitting them - Themaclad got 4 points from his gamball with Sanjay's scoreball keeping him ahead of AAA.

Twerton's great start came to a crashing halt as he failed to amass a single point. He only got 2 results correct and missed out on all his balls.

Twerton 62
BaggieOne 47
AAA 45
SCO 42
Snooty 41
Themaclad 39
Sanjay 35

Twerton's week off doesn't really cost him much as he keeps his comfortable early season lead. Some shuffling of the pack beneath him as BaggieOne climbs to 2nd with Snooty and SCO also moving up though there's not a lot between those beneath Twerton.
54 points have been scored off the balls so far with Twerton gathering 33 of those - explains his position at the top of the table!

Enjoy the week off - fixtures for week 6 will follow shortly.

https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/foo...d-aged-55/

Scottish Cup First Round Draw - ties to be played on Saturday 23 September at 3pm. Of course, once the TV moguls get their hands on the fixtures, some of these will change. BBC Scotland usually show a Friday night and Monday night match from each round.

Bo'ness United F.C. v Darvel F.C.
Broxburn Athletic F.C. v Nairn County F.C.
Banks O'Dee F.C. v Dalbeattie Star F.C.
Camelon Juniors F.C. v Civil Service Strollers F.C.
Dundonald Bluebell F.C. v Kilwinning Rangers F.C.
Dunipace F.C. v Cumnock Juniors F.C.
Formartine United F.C. v Threave Rovers F.C.
Dalkeith Thistle F.C. v Clydebank F.C.
Musselburgh Athletic F.C. v Gretna 2008 FC
Penicuik Athletic F.C. v Pollok F.C.
St. Andrews United F.C. v Auchinleck Talbot F.C.
Tayport F.C. v Buckie Thistle F.C.
Brechin City F.C. v Rothes F.C.
Brora Rangers F.C. v Berwick Rangers F.C.
Clachnacuddin F.C. (1990) Ltd. v Inverurie Loco Works F.C.
Cowdenbeath F.C. v Linlithgow Rose F.C.
East Stirlingshire F.C. v Huntly F.C.
Edinburgh Univ. Assoc. F.C. v Dunbar United F.C.
Turriff United F.C. v Sauchie Juniors F.C.
Culter F.C. v Deveronvale F.C.
Gala Fairydean Rovers F.C. v Strathspey Thistle F.C.
Golspie Sutherland F.C. v Forres Mechanics F.C.
Keith F.C. v Luncarty F.C.
Lossiemouth F.C. v Beith Juniors F.C.
Wick Academy F.C. v Jeanfield Swifts F.C.
University of Stirling FC v Albion Rovers F.C.
East Kilbride FC v Whitehill Welfare F.C.
Caledonian Braves FC v Fraserburgh F.C.
Broomhill F.C. v Cumbernauld Colts FC
Tranent F.C. v Hutchison Vale F.C.

I'll be paying special attention to the 5 Uniteds in the early rounds - surely at least 1 will progress to the next round! There are also a few Athletics and Juniors and Rangers as well, plus the usual suspects from previous years.

It was, as the saying goes!, a game of two halves. First half the game plan from Motherwell was spot on and Hearts seemed to struggle going in at the break deservedly a goal down. Plenty of possession but as is the case ,sometimes, I have seen at Easter Road is it doesn't develop into much.

Hearts came out for the second half and looked better and Shankland was unlucky on a couple of occasions.( Boyce should also have scored  )  They were given a boost on 70 minutes when McGinn was sent off but even against 10 men there was no way through the Steelmen. In fact 'Well had a chance to increase their lead in the last minute but Clark denied them.

There was a feeling of restlessness in the crowd after the recent results and wonder if they have the right team in charge or if results continue in the same vain, will we see a change to the hot seat at Tynecastle sooner rather than later just as we are seeing at Easter Road at present.   

ps: see Naismith is back now as the official first team coach now that the JTs are out of Europe. I believe he didn't have the right badges to be in charge whilst they were still in Conference League..........rules eh

Chester host Hereford in the National League Northern division today.

Chester have had a mixed start to the season and have 7 points from 3 games. However they have had a win and a draw in their last two games.
Hereford having achieved the same amount in their first three games have failed to get any more in their next 4 games losing to the bottom club Southport at home last Saturday.

Should be a tight game and for any Bulls fans going I think you need to buy tickets ahead of the game due to a stadium reduced capacity at present.

COYB

Fleetwood Town have sacked Scott Brown as manager.

The Celtic legend, 38, departs after 16 months in charge following a winless start to the season.

The Cod Army have picked up just one point from their first six League One games, having been beaten 2-1 at Charlton Athletic on Saturday.

Brown's assistant head coach Steven Whittaker has also left the Lancashire club, who are second bottom of the table.

Fleetwood issued a statement to say that "Brown has left the club with immediate effect".

The statement added: "Following a difficult run of results the club reluctantly felt now is the right time to make a change to the first team management.

"Everyone at the club would like to place on record their thanks to Scott and Steven for their hard work and professionalism during their time at the club."

Brown took the Fleetwood vacancy in May 2022 as his first job in management following the former Celtic and Scotland captain's retirement as a player.

They finished 13th in his one full season in charge, fading out of play-off contention late in the season.

Brown spent 14 years with Celtic during one of the Scottish top-flight club's most successful periods, in which they just missed out on 10 league titles in a row but won four consecutive domestic trebles.

He also won a League Cup with his first club Hibernian - and spent eight months as player-coach of Aberdeen, following his exit from Parkhead. But he left after manager Stephen Glass was sacked in February 2022 - and then returned to football with Fleetwood three months later.

His Fleetwood exit was announced just a couple of hours before the first Rangers-Celtic derby of the season.

2 points for correct result
4 points for correct score
2 points for each correct scorer
Correct joker doubles your score   (correct score on a joker would give you 8 points)
Wrong joker result gives you minus 2
Correct Random Badger gives you 2 points

The random badger is used for any random prediction used once in each matchday sequence. For instance, a scorer at a particular match, the number of red cards in the matches or yellow cards or own goals or owt you want really within reason, I do need to be able to check whether it's correct or not. Please don't put stuff like....."Commentator says...."  
The joker   is played for one match in each sequence and if correct you get double points. So if you've predicted 1-0 and it finishes 2-0, you get 4 pts, but if you've predicted 2-0, that's 8 pts. But if you get it wrong, it's minus 2.
Jokers and badgers are optional. You don't have to play one if you don't want.

The prize for winning the league is one rep point.

Cup games: In the event of a draw, it's half the points if you've predicted a draw when it gets to 90 mins and the full points if it's still a draw after extra time. Half the points will be awarded for correctly predicting the winner of the match if it goes to penalties. Similarly with the badger, if your random prediction is affected by this, it'll be half the points.

Random score generator: I will be using the random score generator again for those who miss predicting, so we shouldn't get some people too far behind that after missing a couple of weeks they lose all interest, because I know it's not easy getting on here every week.
To be fair to everybody, this is going to be like, say if three people in one week miss their predictions, the first one in the table will be given all 0-0, the second one down the line will get 1-0 and the third will get 0-1 and so on, like if there's four missing the 4th will get 1-1, then 5th 2-1, 6th 1-2. and if there are so many missing, might as well pack in.
And if you miss two weeks on the trot, I'll stop until you come back on again. Not doing it for half a season like I did t'other year.  

End of season Play Offs: The one who finishes top of the league will still be champion, but after the season finishes there will be Play Offs between the top 4, with 1st v 4th and 2nd v 3rd. This will take in stuff like the EFL Play Offs, FA Cup Final, final day of Prima Donna League, European Finals etc. It will be one matchday for the semis and one for the Final. It will be the individual scores for each matchday against the allotted opponent, with some kind of tie breaker for a drawn match.

The prize for winning will be enormous. Another rep point.

1. St Charles Owl = 72 pts
   
2. neonfoxinthebox = 69 pts
   
3. theo_luddite = 65 pts
   
4. Baggiebob(BBB) = 60 pts
   
5. jjamez = 53 pts
   
6. themaclad = 53 pts
   

European Championship Qualifying:
Thursday 7th September:
Slovenia v Northern Ireland

Friday 8th September:
Georgia v Spain (17:00)

Saturday 9th September:
Ukraine v England (17:00 at Tarczyński Arena, Wroclaw)

Sunday 10th September:
Finland v Denmark (17:00)
Republic of Ireland v Netherlands (19:45)

Monday 11th September:
Latvia v Wales

Tuesday 12th September:
Italy v Ukraine

150th Anniversary Heritage Match:
Scotland v England:

Bonus matches:
Saturday:
League One:
Fleetwood Town v Blackpool Postponed

League Two:
Bradford City v Grimsby Town (12:30)

*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***

1. Lord Snooty = 82 pts
   
2. SHEP_HTAFC = 67 pts
   
3. ritchiebaby = 63 pts
   
4. WakeyTerrier = 59 pts
   
5. Devongone = 54 pts
   
6. Amelia Chaffinch = 53 pts
   

European Championship Qualifying:
Thursday 7th September:
France v Republic of Ireland

Friday 8th September:
Cyprus v Scotland

Saturday 9th September:
Ukraine v England (17:00 at Tarczyński Arena, Wroclaw)
North Macedonia v Italy (19:45)

Sunday 10th September:
Kazakhstan v Northern Ireland (14:00)

Monday 11th September:
Portugal v Luxembourg

Tuesday 12th September:
Sweden v Austria

150th Anniversary Heritage Match:
Scotland v England:

Bonus matches:
Saturday:
National League:
Chesterfield v Dagenham & Redbridge
FC Halifax Town v Southend United


*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***
*** scores for ***

An afternoon of global boiling saw me take the journey up the coast to the Mazuma Stadium Morecambe to see the home side take on Salford City. The home side ran out 1-0 winners in a game which was fairly average.
Salford dominated the ball created little a block on gol in the second period was the only effort on target I can remember, the home side didn't create much either although they did score.
Possible foul on a Salford player but Mr Finnie didn't give if, classy finish by Mellon who was best player on the pitch looks a handful does the Burnley loan player.
Second half much like the first bitty, Slew a late substitute denied by a great Cairns save all that was life was an on field bust up duly came late on, Lund's tackle thudded into a home player believe me I heard the thud and then it's fight time, red card for Lund, handbags then started in the tunnel as he trudged off and ill feeling was still evidence at the final whistle

Morecambe: Moore, Love ©, Bedeau, Songo’o, Bloxham (Slew, 77’), King (Davenport, 77’), Mellon, McKiernan (Taylor, 77’), Mayor, Senior, Connolly.

Subs not used: A Smith, Tutonda, Stokes, C Smith.

Goals: Mellon (25’).

Bookings: None.

Red cards: None.

Salford City: Cairns ©, Ashley (Lund, 58’), Mariappa, Watson, Hendry, McLennan (Vassell, 58’), Tilt, Smith, McAleny (Dackers, 84’), Berkoe, Bolton.

Subs not used: Wright, Humbles, Henderson, Olopade.

Goals: None.

Bookings: None.

Red cards: Lund.

Attendance: 3,458 (312 away).