I would also like to say to say thank you to all the partiipants for allowing me to be on your site, and a special thanks to Me Lord for his brilliant contribution of running this game so brilliantly and with humour... Well done, it's been a pleasure to participate.

It's almost time

Millwall have appointed former Preston North End, Sunderland and Stoke City boss Alex Neil as head coach on a "long-term" contract.

The 43-year-old Scot most recently managed the Potters, having taken over in August 2022, but was sacked just over 12 months ago.

Neil, who won promotion from the Championship as manager of Norwich City in 2015, takes over from Neil Harris whose second stint with the Lions ended this month.

Neil was in the stands in the CBS Arena on Sunday, watching his new side battle to a goalless draw with Frank Lampard's Coventry City.

The result kept them 13th in the table.

Millwall's director of football Steve Gallen said Neil was a head coach with "proven methods" and "exciting ideas".

"Ultimately, Alex has an excellent track record in the Championship for results and development of young talent, as well as many other attributes that we feel confident will drive us forward as a club," Gallen told the club website, external.

Neil's first match in charge of Millwall will be their home game against Oxford United on 1 January.

The Lions were 11th in the Championship and had not won in their previous four games when Harris, who returned in February for a second stint in charge of the club, announced he would leave earlier in December.

Since then they impressively ended play-off chasing Blackburn Rovers' six-game winning run before being defeated 2-1 by Norwich on Boxing Day.

Neil takes over a mid-table club that has won just once in their past nine Championship games.

Having overseen promotion to the Premier League through the play-offs with Norwich almost 10 years ago, he left the Canaries in March 2017 after they returned to the second tier.

Later that year he took over at Preston, where he spent four years, before being sacked with the club 16th in the Championship at the time.

He joined the Black Cats on a short-term contract in 2022 and won promotion from League One through the play-offs shortly after, but left to join Stoke early the following season.

He has been out of management for over a year since his 16-month stay at Stoke came to an end in early December 2023, with the Potters 20th in the table.

Martin Canning, who worked alongside Neil at Stoke and Sunderland, has also moved to south-east London as assistant head coach.

Neil has likened the challenge he has at Millwall to the job he first took on at Deepdale in the summer of 2017.

"The opportunity was a great one for me," Neil said on his arrival at Millwall.

"I think it's very much similar to when I went in at Preston, going into a good environment.

"It's not as if there are huge problems. The team wasn't struggling and I had to go in and develop a style of play, maybe bring some of the younger players through, so I see this as a very similar project to what I did there."

THE MATCH

WEDNESDAY 1ST JANUARY KO 3PM

v

LAST MATCH



We ended 2024 on a disappointing note as defensive mistakes saw us lose to Preston. It was a quiet first half although I thought we edged it, Windass going close for us, but it was a defensive error which saw Derby go in 1 up at HT. A simple cross to the back post was headed down & Riis forced it in from close range. Onto the 2nd half and we levelled things up with Windass 30 yard screamer. We were soon behind again when the ref awarded Preston a penalty, (imo just outside the box) but it was given & scored. Windass had a great chance to level but the keeper saved. Preston then wrapped it up, despite a double save from Beadle, Riis poked in from close range.

DEJPHON CHANSIRI, GET OUT OF OUR CLUB    

THE MATCH



Our first game of 2025 sees us host Derby County at Hillsborough. Derby are currently languishing in the lower half of the table in 16th place. Derby will look to improve there away form as they have won only 1 game out of 12 so far this season. If they can improve it they should have enough to avoid a relegation dogfight come the end of the season. They are managed by Paul Warne who has been in charge since 2022. There leading scorer is Yates with 5 goals and 2 assists.

DEJPHON CHANSIRI, GET OUT OF OUR CLUB    

ALL TIME H2H

OWLS 47
DERB 53
DRAW 42

CURRENT FORM

OWLS  L D W W L D                                                                     

DERB  L W L W D L                           

EFL STOOGES

DOES IT MATTER THERE ALL CORRUPT  

LEWIS SMITH
Darren Williams and Rob Smith
Fourth Official: Scott Jackson

THE TEAM

Beadle
Palmer Bernard Iorfa Johnson
Bannan Charles
Ugbo Ingelsson Lowe
Smith

SCORE & SCORER (HOME TEAM SCORE FIRST)

2-1 Smith

WEDNESDAYS FIRT GOAL TIME

26

ATTENDANCE

27567

BML LEAGUE

Washington 16
Imre 16
Maddix 14
SCO 14
Wereham 10

BMPL

Stateside 14
Owlkev 12
Southey 10
Pei 7

OTHER GAMES OF MILD INTEREST

Brentford v Arsenal
Sunderland v Sheff Utd
Stockport v Birmingham
Notts Co v Walsall
York City v Gateshead

ADADH

THE MUPPETT LEAGUE




KATE BECKINSALE TRIBUTE PIC

Here is a genuine question about the club's history which I can't be bother to research but to which I'd like to know the answer.

Yesterday watching Sheffield United I saw Alan Knill looming over Chris Wilder (just as almost everyone looms over him!) and remembered Knill as our Assitant Manager. I know he was a centre back who played about 3 million games for Rotherham, and I know he did manage clubs like Bury ....... but my memory keeps insisting that he had to take us over as Caretaker for a Christmas period. My memory insists he won four games out of four, all 1-0. Is my brain simply scrambled? Is there any truth in this at all?

Knill has always fascinated me because he always looks kind of vague and not really with it, and yet he clearly must be a pretty sharp chap.

Some medical experts even question the existence of such a syndrome. Some football fans question the wisdom of clubs signing players of advancing years. Let us take the current age-related injury crisis at Chesterfield as an example.

Players unable to be considered for Christmas / New Year games:-
John Fleck age 33
Ash Palmer age 32
Mike Jones age 37
Paddy Madden age 34
Will Grigg age 33 (injury not fire or yule log related)
Chey Dunkley age 32
Michael Jacobs age 33
Ryan Colclough age 30 (injury occured whilst still 29)

Players over 30 fit to play:-
Ollie Banks age 32
Tom Naylor age 33
Jamie Grimes age 33
Tyrone Williams 30

At one time experienced players either accumulated bookings to time their suspension for a holiday period or conveniently got themselves sent off. This phenomenon really NEVER EXISTED of course, nevertheless the suspicion remained amongst supporters that they had more chance of seeing Santa and his reindeer tapdancing than certain players in football kit over the holiday period ......

Much as I am delighted that eleven year old Gunner Elliott made his first team debut I can't escape the thought that having such a large cohort of over 30s in our squad has cost us even our outside shot at the play-offs. Have we ever had such an experienced, or perhaps aged, AND small-in-stature squad before? And how and why have we so many injuries ......?

OR am I just a very old cynic? (Apologies if I accidentally missed any geriatric players)

Which young players other than Tanton weren't fit to be considered .....?

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 Badger gives you 2 points

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. However, if you do predict a draw and it's a match that won't be going to a replay, you can get a possible extra point by stating which of the two teams you think will eventually win.

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.  


At the end of the season, the winner of group 2 and the bottom of group 1 will swap places in what is commonly known as "promotion" and "relegation". It's something that most football fans will be familiar with, unless you're a fan of Liverpool or Arsenal or one of those other fashionable clubs.

The second placed player in group 2 will then have a play off with the player who finishes second from the bottom in group 1 to decide whether they will be going up, down or staying where they are.

We're going to have two seasons in one though, just to try and make it a bit more interesting and not so long drawn out. The first season will end on the Boxing Day fixtures, with the play offs being on the dates of the Twixtmas fixtures and the NYD fixtures.

The second season will start the following week, which is usually the FA Cup 3rd round, finishing on the last game of the League One season. Then another period of relegation/promotion play off games, taking in such fixtures as the EFL play offs, FA Cup Final, UEFA finals and such like.

Each group will have it's own set of fixtures. Both groups will have the Town games, with scorers to predict as before. Then it will be a split of League One fixtures and bonus matches, hopefully around ten, eleven or twelve games per Matchday.

The random badger is restricted to three goal scorers in any of the fixtures in your group.

Here's how that will appear at the end of the fixture list. All you have to do is fill in the blanks.......


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

Any of those will score two points if correct. No minus points for getting it wrong.

Postponed matches will only count if the match is re-played before the next Matchday is under way. Abandoned matches will be awarded half the points for the score at the time of abandonment, so 1 point if you have the correct result, 2 points if you have the correct score.

Substitute or scorer in one of the Town games:- These will be only be allowed if you change them before the match involved has kicked off.

Prediction League Archive: https://www.sportsbabble.co.uk/showthread.php?tid=12830


So we now have a two legged Play Off between Lord Snooty and theo_luddite. The usual rules apply, but in the case of the match ending in a tie, we will have a tie breaker. That will be to predict the total number of corners in the two Huddersfield Town matches during the two legs. The closest wins. If it's still a tie, the winner will be the one who scored most points over the season, which in that case would be theo.



Final Division One table for 2024/25:

1. themaclad = 398 pts
   
2. St Charles Owl = 390 pts
   
3. jjamez = 375 pts
   
4. Baggiebob(BBB) = 367 pts
   
5. Lord Snooty = 344 pts
   
6. SHEP_HTAFC = 324 pts
   

1. neonfoxinthebox = 402 pts
   
2. theo_luddite = 392 pts
   
3. Devongone = 350 pts
   
4. ritchiebaby = 327 pts
   
5. Amelia Chaffinch = 326 pts
   
6. WakeyTerrier = 278 pts
   

Wednesday January 1st (all 15:00):
Wigan v Town
Town scorers:
Wigan scorers:

Barnsley v Wrexham
Blackpool v Shrewsbury Town
Bristol Rovers v Leyton Orient
Burton Albion v Peterborough United
Cambridge United v Reading
Crawley Town v Charlton Athletic
Lincoln City v Rotherham United
Mansfield Town v Bolton Wanderers
Northampton Town v Stevenage
Stockport County v Birmingham City
Wycombe Wanderers v Exeter City

Tie breaker:
Total number of corners in the two Town matches of both legs = ??


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

THE MATCH

SUNDAY 29TH DECEMBER KO 12:30PM

v

LAST MATCH



It was definitely a game of two halves as we made an unlikely 2nd half comeback to earn a point at The Riverside. It didn't take long for Boro to take the lead, Doak with a free header from close range. It was soon 2-0 as Boro cut through the middle and Aziz fired in from the edge of the box. On the half hour it was Aziz again from close range as our defenders turned into statues. Onto the 2nd half and the comeback began when Ingelsson fired in from just inside the box. It was soon 3-2 as the ball hit Windass and went into the net. Then Boro had to sub there keeper and also went down to 10 men when Van Den Berg was given a second yellow. We then completed the Comeback when Valery headed in from a corner. We pressed for a winner but settled for the point.

DEJPHON CHANSIRI, GET OUT OF OUR CLUB    

THE MATCH



Our final game of 2024 sees travel over the Pennines to take on Preston. Preston are languishing in the bottom half of the table as they seem to be the draw specialists of the league, 11 of the 23 games played so far. They are probably too good to get involved in the relegation dogfight but I can't see them bothering the playoff hunt. Paul Heckingbottom is the man in charge after taking over in late August. There leading scorer is Riis with 5 goals and 2 assists.

DEJPHON CHANSIRI, GET OUT OF OUR CLUB    

ALL TIME H2H

OWLS 45
PRES 46
DRAWS 26

CURRENT FORM

OWLS  D W W L D W                                                                    

PRES  W L D W D D                           

EFL STOOGES

DOES IT MATTER THERE ALL CORRUPT  

SUNNY SINGH GILL
Mark stevens and Matthew Jones
Fourth Official: Benjamin Speedie

THE TEAM

Beadle
Palmer Bernard Iorfa Johnson
Bannan Charles
Ugbo Ingelsson Lowe
Smith

SCORE & SCORER (HOME TEAM SCORE FIRST)

1-2 Smith

WEDNESDAYS FIRT GOAL TIME

26

ATTENDANCE

N/A

BML LEAGUE

Washington 13
Maddix 11
SCO 10
Imre 10
Wereham 7

BMPL

Stateside 11
Southey 10
Owlkev 9
Pei 4

OTHER GAMES OF MILD INTEREST

Everton v Notts Forest
Oxford v Plymouth
Middlesboro v Burnley
Bolton v Lincoln
Bradford v Chesterfield

AHAHD

THE MUPPETT LEAGUE




KATE BECKINSALE TRIBUTE PIC