Leicester will be seeded if they ship the league though. Could very well luckbox a Olympiakos/Dynamo Zagreb type group.

Nothing is as nonsensical/crooked in sports as soccer/football group seedings.

From the criminals in FIFA/World Cup to the UEFA Europa League..how the **** can 4 of the top 5 teams left play each other in the Round of 16?

The fact that they are is a pretty good indication that the draw wasn't crooked actually.

Could be. Even in games where we look comfortable and the other team look offensively weak .. we get terribly undone by something simple out of nowhere. I'm not sure why it happens but it's far too often for coincidence.

It sucks were not hunting top 4 but you simply cannot do the above and expect to win enough games

Spurs v Dortmund is the one, what's the other?

From the little I've seen Everton look like a great team to be watching if you are a fan at the moment. You looked good for the most part in the recent game against us - albeit that you lost . But it may be that either (i) you don't have enough quality through the team to be defending as consistently well as you attack - if you set up to attack as well as you do (the blanket not quite long enough to cover your toes and your shoulders principle), or (ii) Bob isn't strong enough at making people stick to what they should be doing (if LO's assessment is right). Because I haven't seen you enough I don't know if those are independent of each other or not, although I'm not saying that Pulisology is a good way to go

Everton are playing a pretty high variance style. You can't have free-flowing, attacking football based around a core of talented youngsters AND a disciplined, rigid unit that grinds out results.. Well, not unless you're Bayern Munich (and to be clear, Everton are not Bayern Munich). I think Bob has the balance pretty close to where it needs to be to maximise Everton's points EV but the aforementioned combo of runbad and some clumsy/naive mistakes has resulted in 2 seasons of underachieving. The current squad is as good as group of players as we've had since I was in short pants though, and I'll remain moderately optimistic next season as long as we can retain the key players through the summer.

whilst I'm soliliquising, I see betfair has Spuds at a tiny bit better than square_root(2)-to-1 for the NLD, which seems decent to me.

probably haven't watched an everton match all season so take with a grain of salt, but according to xG through jan 14, Everton ran pretty good +6 expected goals difference to +11 real GD. Of course they could still have run bad as of pythagorean record

Spurs good value in NLD.

Everton are sick. Stones/Jagielka injuries seemed to be staggered unfortunately so that they haven't played together in forever. Agree they experienced runbad at times, along with Howard's poor play which was costly. Why don't Gerry and Lennon ever play together?

I'd make them even or a very slight fav vs Leicester on neutral tmrw (assuming no Kante).

Liverpool-Man U.

Sure seems like an easy road to the finals for Sevila..

Have they changed how the seeding works? It's always been based on your last 5 years in the CL/EL so Leicester would be a 4th seed.

edit - yeah just googled and it's changed. Seems like a strange change.

One of the commentators on NBCs called Newcastle the "New York Yankees of English football"..in that a lot of people despise them, and wish for them to be relegated. I had heard that of Chelsea, but Newcastle?..is there any truth to that?

Newcastle are pretty unpopular yeah. I'm a bit of an outlier as I've met a lot of really cool Geordies over the years, but I'd still be happy to see Mike Ashley relegated as he's an absolute blight on the sport.

Everton should sack Martinez and go after Mourinho. Mind you he'd need to know this new owner is gonna plow boatload of money into the club before he'd take the job.

I feel like there's some conclusion to be drawn, but I can't quite see what and I'm pretty clearly meandering re Everton ... but maybe they have the most "promising" squad since "you can't win anything with kids"-era ManU. Otoh, as El Tel once remarked on national TV, Fergie was a "jammy ****".

re Newcastle: obviously Ashley is a painful owner for them, but I don't think most (non-fan) people dislike the club - and they aren't particularly successful. Surely ManU (or maybe Chelsea) would be a closer analog of the Yankees?

Once was painful enough and it showed that even getting relegated doesn't mean **** to him as this season is like an exact copy pf last time. I'd happily trade getting relegated for Leicester winning though. The season in the championship was actually pretty fun and it was nice to actually win matches.

Also tchaz I have no idea how lol swedes pronounce Miike but I would go with maik

Newcastle fans are probably the worst in the league and def the most delusional. They keep thinking they are back in the Keegan/Robson era when they were challenging for titles and CL places. They need to now know that surviving in the PL is a good season. Anything top half is a bonus.

Meanwhile, in the Championship, another opportunity to displace the Clarets from the top goes begging.

Middlesbrough get another go tomorrow.

Newcastle seems like a big enough club to stay in the PL without much trouble

Because the Round of 16 isn't seeded???

Think my wager will be for 2:2 exact score or draw/o2.5

Awesome game to wake up bright and early for to start a day of entertaining games capped off with Dortmund v. Bayern and tblitw leaders playing simultaneously.

NLD my favorite non-LFC match of the year