Lord Nibbler

5 on Bet 2

Man City vs. Arsenal - Man City 13/8, Draw 11/5, Arsenal 11/8

10 on Bet 3

Wigan vs. West Ham - Wigan 5/4, Draw 9/4, West Ham 7/4

5 on Bet 4

Chelsea to beat Stoke 3-0 - 8/1

The Doubler

Sunderland 2-0 Hull

Yeah, this open bidding thing hasn't exactly gone smoothly. It would have been OK if I hadn't underestimated just how many players were still needed.

Yes.

You can't bid for more players than you can accommodate. If you have 7 free places in your team, you can only bid for 7 players.

I'll go through the topics and make sure that's not the case. If you know you've bid for too many players, you need to withdraw your bids.

£15m for Jordi Gomez is ridiculous. You'd have to be an idiot to bid any more than that.

Well I was desperate for a good striker. I got Robinho too, and Fellaini, so I'm happy.

Why has nobody ridiculed me for spending £102m on Carlos Tevez?

One topic per player.

No, open bidding now. I've opened a subforum where you can make bids for free agents. Other managers then have 24 hours to outbid you.

You can also buy, sell and trade players amongst yourselves. If you agree a deal with someone, post it in that same forum and get the other manager to confirm it.

Updated squads.

metalman needs to PM me his bid for Eduardo, Captain Kirk needs to PM me his bid for Robinson, and Scott McFly needs to PM me his bids for both.

I've had Pesci's as well, so it's just Ellis and metalman.

Baddar, I sent you a PM on the other forum. You bid for Jo, but he's in Pesci's team (I mistakenly gave him Andy Johnson). You can send me a PM with a replacement, or submit a whole new list.

Same goes for Scott McFly.

And metalman, you do have Andrew Johnson.

I have 10 second round squad lists in, just metalman, hackerjack, Ellis and Pesci to go.

After that it's open bidding.

I've decided that we will have a brief transfer window after all the second round bids are in (I have 7 so far). Most people will still need one or two players, so we'll have open bidding for free agents and you can work out transfers or trades amongst yourselves.

At least that way, everyone should be able to field a decent starting XI in the first week of the season.

EDIT 2: Just for kicks, top 5 most expensive players so far:

Fabregas - £102m - Hackerjack

Lampard - £102m - Hackerjack

Torres - £100m - Bryn Davies

Arshavin - £92m - Frank Grimes

Rooney - £85m - Jagger

Just for more kicks, the second-highest bids for those players:

Fabregas - £80 (£22m short)

Lampard - £100m (£2m short)

Arshavin - £72m (£20m short)

Rooney - £56m (£29m short)

Nobody else bid for Torres, so technically Bryn could have saved £99m there.

Sent you a PM...

I've updated the player list, so you can start on your second squad list.

Remember, you can only bid for the "blue" players if you were joint highest bidder the first time around. So, for example, only Ellis and HailtotheKing can bid for Anelka. And it has to be an improved bid, so in the case of Anelka it has to be at least £31m.

If you don't want to bid for a "blue" player in your team, just submit your second list without him on it.

What was my bid for Fletcher? Could've sworn it was in the 8m region.

That was for Steven Fletcher?

You had Fletcher down as an AM, and I assumed it was supposed to be Darren Fletcher. I did send you a PM about it.

I'm updating the list of players now. You can send your second list in whenever you want.

Click.

Plenty of quality players still available, I'll update the player list ASAP.

I'm about to post up the squads over on the forum. A few "interesting" points:

After the first round of bidding:

metalman has the most players (18 + 1 joint bid)

Bryn Davies has the fewest players (5 + 1 joint bid)

Bryn Davies also has the most money left over (£354m)

Frank Gimes has the least money left over (£87m)

hackerjack made the highest bid for a player, £102m. And he made two bids of that amount.

Still nothing from Pesci.

If he doesn't send me it today, we'll move onto the second round without him. He can either submit a second round list, or we'll run a 13-team league. Somehow.

While we wait for Pesci ( ), I'm gonna make a fixtures list.

Post your team name, if you have one. The following "humorous" names are banned:

Norfolk and Chance

Sporting Lesbian

Your Mum's Athletic

Inter Me Nan

"I didn't submit my list because EWB rapes my shitty computer with its new skin so I have to run it in lo-fi and the PMs don't exactly scream out at you... I only just noticed it when I checked my emails. I'll submit my list now, if I'm still allowed in."

Hopefully he'll send me it ASAP.

All except Pesci.

Right, done.

Now someone tell Pesci to stop being shit.