Pete Yoder cowers in the corner of the Predictorship saloon as gun-toting Roger Taylor blasts his way past to the top of the pile. No time for a novice? Roger doesn’t think so, and with his 10 point scoring frenzy I’m in no mood to argue.

But there’s dust flying up in the street outside as Mark ‘Butch’ Young rides into town. Galloping up a massive 11 places from 33 to 22, the Baggies boy looks like he means business; and shooting correct scores for every game except Arsenal–Wigan, it appears the notorious gun slinger will be taking no prisoners in his quest for glory.

Meanwhile, chewing on an old charoot in the corner, Matt ‘Angel Eyes’ White contemplates the errors of his high-risk ‘three-draw, goals aplenty’ poker strategy and gets ready to throw in his hand. An empty bottle sits between him and his companion Mark ‘Mose’ Lawrenson gibbering incontinently in the corner, ‘City have have got some real quality in all areas, so it’s a case of softly, softly, catchy monkey.’

It looks as if Matt’s in for a long week of soul-searching.

Nobody likes a quitter though, and this week’s sharp shooters are squaring up in the Corrall for some last minute target practice, preparing for the week ahead: Rob ‘Morgan’ Molloy, Wendy Nathan, Gabe Bevilacqua, Patrick Bevilacqua, Jill Taylor and Roger Taylor all hit the mark with three correct scores apiece and it looks like they could be spoiling for a fight.

But time’s running out and back in the bar Mark ‘Butch’ Young is dealing out the cards waiting for Jill ‘Annie’ Taylor. Will her luck hold out after their joint ‘Prediction of the week’ for the Everton–Liverpool result?

Mose Lawrenson ambles over to watch. ‘It’ll be easier to sell the club (Newcastle) with a manager in who’s taking them up the league,’ he muses, ‘and if that happens then it wouldn’t matter if it was Bela Lugosi doing the job.’

Come on Roger, time to get out your Colt 45!

Now the conference season is well under way Chris Butters steps up to the podium once more to take a shaky lead in this week’s Predictorship battle for the premiership title.

Meanwhile, Pete Yoder is campaigning in the wings and shows his colours, reaching an all time high position as he eyes up Chris’s shoes for size (the heels wouldn’t suit you Pete). But nobody should be preparing any acceptance speeches just yet as last week’s ‘Great Pretender’ Roger Taylor, hand in hand with Dave Taylor, conspires to form a family coup close behind. It looks like Chris will need to avoid travelling in any open top cars for the time being!

Speculation continues to be rife throughout the table with short selling suspected as Saleel Sathe, Maziar Sattari and Pete Yoder pull in the bonuses with a top score of 9. There is also a suspicion of insider dealing with some disturbingly accurate foresight over the weekend: Dave Breese, Sally Moon and Tom Palmer (Bolton 1-3 Arsenal); Dave Breese and Mark Young (West Ham 3-1 Newcastle) and Mark Lawrenson (Hull 2-2 Everton), who are all likely to be hearing from Alasdair Darling in the next 24 hours.

Sometimes absence is the best policy, and it certainly worked for Rob Molloy, our only absent predictor this week, who still climbs four places! Not something to be encouraged as Norma No Mates will testify as she, once again, reflects on her position at the bottom of the table.

We wish Mark Young better luck this week with West Bromwich losing to Aston Villa on his birthday last Sunday and we hope some of Nick Watson’s ‘mystical foresight’ last weekend will rub off on us all…

Roger Taylor is this weeks’ ‘Great Pretender’, putting the early leaders, Chris Butters and Dave Taylor, ‘Under Pressure’ to coast past into the lead and ‘Break Free’ at the top of the table. It’s a ‘Kind of Magic’, surely?

And there must be some necromancy going on in the woods elsewhere with the spookily clairvoyant Rob Molloy and Wendy Nathan both predicting the 3–1 rout of Manchester City by Chelsea on Saturday, despite Robinho’s early goal.

Hope Arnold, Nicola Savage and Mark Young also waved their wands this week to conjure up a score line of 2–1 at Anfield, sending ‘the Reds’ tumbling down to 14th place in the league just below Bolton! If only such powers were available to Mervyn King…

Ted Warland, on the other hand, has resorted to the novel tactic of rain-dancing in his garden to drum up a little luck but disappointed, drained and dampened by his resulting three point haul, we don’t recommend you try this at home!

However, Ted needn’t feel too disheartened as this weeks ‘washout’ awards have to be handed to Ralph Hannah, David Jones and Norma No Mates, who could do with a trip to Hogwarts to brush up on their ball-gazing skills, managing to score only one pawltry point a piece…

Many predictors weighed in with a cautious handful of offerings again, hoping to avoid the hazards of sub prime speculation and the 2–1 tally at the Portsmouth-Middlesbrough game rewarded thirteen of you with a useful two points.

And finally, the ‘damp squib’ award of the week is handed to James Bradley with a no show and a second yellow card. Time to get off the subs bench James, Lawro’s catching you up!

Is it Peter Piper, is it Peter Perfect? No, it’s Pete ‘the picker’ Yoder. Pete storms up the table this week faster than a disqualified Maclaren with a massive 10 point score slick enough to get Penelope Pitstop touching up her lipstick and pouting into the rear view.

In the Wacky Races for glory this week, our predictors have refuelled and supercharged their engines after last week’s dismal wash out. Six happy predictors hauled in an impressive 9 points and a further seven pulled in a respectable 8, which just goes to show that a little playing away from home can spice things up a bit!

… and it’s looking as if we’re heading into a tightly fought season as the leaders bunch up behind the safety car; Chris Butters, Roger Taylor and Pete Yoder are all snaking along one point behind Dave Taylor on 29 points, with a host of pretenders revving up behind them.

Early season optimism hasn’t warn off quite yet with bold and brazen predicting from our ‘Patriots of the Week’ Mark Fitch, Cathryn Gregory and table-leader Dave Taylor for the England Andorra match: Mark Fitch threw caution (and points) to the wind with his ‘for the love of God’ prediction, 5–1; Cathryn Gregory pulled on her red and white bubble perm and cheered frantically for a 6–0 net-bending result and Dave Taylor broke his legendary 1–0 scoreline with a devil-may-care 4–0. Steady Dave!

Likewise, a little light flooding couldn’t dampen Steve Dunlop’s passion anticipating yet another ‘biggest leap up the table’, rolling in this week with a respectable 7.

This week’s tea leaf tossing champions are Mark Fitch, Cathhyn Gregory and Sally Moon who turned in with three correct scores a piece.

‘Predictors of the week’ are Pete ‘the picker’ Yoder who’s must have been smoking something interesting to come up with Macedonia 1 Scotland 0 and Nick Watson for his intriguing eastern European insight for Poland 1-1 Slovenia.

So with victory still on the cards for all (yellow in Lawro’s case for refusing to predict this week – shame on you!), strap on your safety helmets for another thrilling ride this weekend…

The depression was more than atmospheric this week, with the average score faltering a paltry 3.47 and a top score staggering to an unimpressive 6!

As hurricane Gustav strikes Louisiana, Predictorship towers is just recovering from the turmoil of disastrous results. So turbulent was the scoring that among the few predictors cooking up a storm was our resident wild card Norma No Mates.

Norma was, in her usually cautious style, predictably tight-lipped about her against-all-odds change of fortune. Possibly a wise tactic, given that the over-optimistic Steve Dunlop (Benfica) anticipated delivering ‘the season’s biggest leap up the table’, only to turn in an unremarkable 4. However – emailing from a bar in the remote mountains of darkest Peru (while chewing on a marmalade sandwich…), does earn him the ‘most heroic attempt at posting a Predictorship score in the face of adversity award’.

Can anybody top that?

In fact, previous high fliers continue to flounder in the relegation zone:
Our resident ‘Stato’ and bronze medallist Matt White (Fenerbahce), by his own admission ‘struggling to get his faltering campaign into second gear’ (possibly as a result of early morning calls from newborn daughter Lara) struggles up one spot to 28. Meanwhile Mark Young, our Beijing correspondent, must be wishing that some of the medal-winning form he witnessed would rub off on his beloved Baggies. It can only be a matter of time, surely.

Nevertheless success must be celebrated, however slim, and congratulations go to Dave Taylor’s Chelsea for shimmying artfully past Chris Butters to the top of the pile with one of only two six point scores this week.

The ‘Predictors of the week’ have surprisingly plumped for Norma’s favourite 0-0 score: Simon Gold’s Tottenham (for Bolton v West Brom) and Pete Yoder’s Wolves (for Villa v Liverpool).

With little more that can be said after such an exhausting dip in form, we finish with some uplifting words from our ‘chairman’ David Roberts: ‘Play the percentages and don’t try do be too clever.’

Possibly something to chew on in the week to come…