Katsuya

I do love Eric, but he's just not good enough a singer to pull that song off. Jedward-Hungary-Sweden as a top three though.

You'd think they'd at least learn to jump in co-ordination.

JEDWAAAAAAARD

This is the first song that has got my housemates going. I do love it, but it wont win.

Dana International > Boring Lithuanian girl. Sign language is a cheap, dirty tactic >_>

This song should be much better than it is. It just doesn't go anywhere. Bosnia are my favourite so far.

He's a lovely old man singer. But he just needed to sing it a bit more clearly/with fun...

Yay Bosnia, this guy is pretty good...so long as he can sing it well.

Ugh, I forgot how annoying this guy is. Plus he sounds worse than before.

Plus, it's funny seeing how inaccurate peoples predictions end up being.

Pffft. Chat is silly, big threads are better for stuff like this.

Apparently, the odds are massively shortening on Jedward across the board.

9 games in to the season...Grimsby Town are leading the Premiership

Do the German media recognise that Jedward aren't "good" in the conventional sense of the word? I'm intrigued whether Europe actually know their history.

Jedward's problem is going to be overcoming the fact the Jury are going to hate them. Both Rybak and Lena won both televoting and the jury voting...somehow I doubt the juries are going to give more points to Jedward then they are Amaury.

The favourite for a while has been the French entry, but it's not got the best draw. A good shout might be Azerbaijan, it's got the latest draw of the "big" songs.

On course to signing Crespo for Grimsby Town

It's Eurovision day Something that's struck me is that there are barely any songs that I wouldn't be happy with if they won. Admittedly, that might be more down to low expectations for any of my favourites winning, but, yeah...I think the caliber of songs this year is one of the best there's been in a long, long time. It's almost like countries are trying more now they know they have a real shot thanks to the juries etc. I think my favourite is probably Lena, though. The more I've heard that song, the more I love it...the only problem is, it took a while for me to like it and most of Europe will be hearing it for the first time. Outside of that, French opera dude or Eric Saade (), but then there's Hungary, Jedward, Estonia, Switzerland, the UK, Azerbaijan and Serbia I'd be very happy with winning. I don't like having absolutely no idea who's going to win it

Holy fuck. I hadn't checked Serie A / La Liga for pretty much most of the season... Ascari are leading Genoa and Reggina, with Lazio & Torino just behind them. Inter, meanwhile, are 5th in Serie B. Rayo, meanwhile, are leading Celta and Tenerife in La Liga. Oh, and Standard Liege are pretty much in the Semi Finals of the Champions League. Also, one of the best running stories of my game came to an end: namely, 1. FC Köln being the unluckiest team in the UEFA Cup. Three years in a row they'd been runners up, only to be knocked out by Crewe this year (who themselves are practically in the final )

Whoever suggested the "fuck off" button, I think I want it now. Every single day, Ipswich are bidding for someone in my team, the only thing changing being which one they're bidding for. Thankfully, the majority of my players are fine with me rejecting it, since they appear to recognise the fact that I've got us 9 points clear of second place and we're pretty much a lock for promotion and it's not even half way through the season. I got lucky that I managed to sell off one of my players for £5mil, which let me bring in a whole load of younger talent that are really proving their worth.

Eight matches in to the league, we're top of the table by 5 points having won all eight of those matches. Even better, we've scored 17 and only let in one goal. Plus, we're in to the 3rd round of the League Cup, having knocked out Sheffield United (now in the Premiership) in the 2nd round. Also, in a hilarious "where are they know?", Ruud Van Nistlerooy is enjoying the twilight of his career at Lincoln City.

*sigh* Eurovision Song Contest 2009, Jade Ewen represents Britain and comes 5th. We actually came 3rd thanks to the juries and 10th in the televoting. But to prove a point: Lithuania gave us 3 points, Croatia gave us 4 points, Armenia gave us 7, Russia gave us 6, Bosnia gave us 4, Moldova gave us 1, Albania gave us 2, Czech Republic gave us 6, Belarus gave us 3, Bulgaria gave us 7, Macedonia gave us 6, Latvia gave us 2, Poland gave us 7, Slovakia gave us 7, Slovenia gave us 3 and Hungary gave us 1. All of them Eastern European and all of those are in the lower points (the ones not read out). We did shit in 2010 because it was possibly the worst song we've sent in the past ten years. I'm including Jemini in that, too.

See, the crazy thing is I think that Ireland may have suggested sending Jedward without quite thinking that might suddenly find a modicum of talent and get a good song together. I mean, the audience were loving them last night. Unfortunately, they got drawn in the first half of the running order and the last person to win from the first half was Ruslana all the way back in 2004. Of course, the "you can vote from the beginning" thing might change that, but I'd doubt it that much. The running order, for those interested, is: Also, yeah, if the judges only voted for their neighbours then it's pretty damn difficult to explain why Norway and Germany won the past two years since the juries came back. In some cases - Greece/Cyprus/Turkey, Ireland/UK, Andorra/France/Spain - the juries will probably vote the same way as the televoting but that's probably based on similarity in terms of musical style and taste. The Eastern European juries tend to lean towards good songs as well as a random selection from their neighbours, which sort of splits up the voting there. I mean, if you look at last year's top five, two of the five are Eastern European, but Playing with Fire was a damn good song and Drip Drop was widely tipped to win it, simply because she'd promoted it everywhere and she was hot...plus, it did have something to it. Same with 2009, Azerbaijan got third and Always was probably a better song on the night than Rybak (who, in hindsight, probably didn't "deserve" to win, since Iceland was a much better song). A lot of the time people just immediately jump to conclusions about the Eastern Europeans if they do well, but a lot of them are damn good songs. Admittedly, there have been some god awful ones - Latvia and Estonia, plus Russia - but Wild Dances is still an amazing song and Molitva is probably one of the better Eurovision winners when you look back at it (people just seemed to get too hyped up about the Ukrainian drag entry). I have no idea who's going to win on Saturday, really. I refuse to believe all the hype that says Blue are going to win it, but we saw last year that a "Big Five" country can win now and we saw in 2009 that people are willing to vote for us...and Blue are probably more suited to the competition this year than Jade Ewen was in 2009. I've turned a corner in the past couple of days and grown to like "Sognu", so I'd be happy with that winning (plus, guy is hot, which I didn't notice also >_>). Jedward winning would be hilarious, but they're too low down the order, which is the same for Hungary & Sweden also I think. Hopefully that crappy Finnish song won't get a load of early votes. If anyone is looking like an outside bet, I'd say Azerbaijan (who pretty much deserve the win just for having been so close year after year) or maybe even the Serbian girl, which is a damn catchy tune.

Quit West Ham, joined Grimsby. Plan is to see how quick I can get them from Division 1 to the Premiership Title, see whether I can beat what I managed with West Ham. ETA: Sam Allardyce, my replacement at West Ham, has taken Peter Gould, the England No. 1 out of the goalkeeper spot and also taken Maxim Tsigalko out of the starting 11, even though he's been the top goalscorer for the past 4 years in the Premiership and was voted Player of the Year in the last season. Oh, silly AI.

How...the fuck...did that happen. Like, seriously. There weren't any real shockers that went through (Slovenia, maybe, and the Bosnian one was a bit boring)...but, wow.