JCookie

Bit harsh - Rasmus Jensen first rode in Britain 6 years ago and has never been more than a decent PL rider until this year. NBJ didn't come over until 2015 and has a not too dissimilar PL record. It'll be interesting to see if Jensen can carry his form on into next season.

I'd argue that's not the case, given that their 17 combined attempts this year have yielded one final place and even then it was a last place. I think you'd struggle to find 15 riders capable of winning a world title, but I don't think it'd be beyond the realms of possibility to find 15 riders capable of winning a GP. Fricke, for example, is a point behind Zagar and four behind Iversen, despite having raced one less round. He's also had two double figure scores, so straight away he'd be an improvement.

You've riled up Sidney junior now as well

Sounds like this attitude has only been exacerbated by his wife going from social media postings. She seems even more sensitive to criticism of Bomber than he is!

We need someone to coach the riders and get the best out of them, while making sensible tactical decisions. It's becoming quite common now, especially in European football, to have a technical/business person dealing with all the background stuff and a head coach to deal with the sports side.

Was it not the case that quite a few promoters struck (with her)?

What a very strange man he is. The obsession with Auty is bordering on being disturbing.

Shocking, if true. Pearson is becoming a scourge on British speedway in this day and age.

You've probably got to give Doyle at least one wildcard based on his recent past but I have a suspicion he might be beginning to chart the same path as Holder and won't be a GP rider in 2-3 years from now. I think Doyle is a great rider and definitely deserved the world title he won (and probably the one he didn't), but given his turnaround from PL rider with no application to World Champ, I wonder just how difficult it is to maintain that level of dedication/application once you've achieved what you set out to do? He's also a rider who's had terrible luck with injuries which must surely catch up eventually.

I agree that nobody sets to sign a poor side, but if you do happen to do that then I feel you should live with the consequences. Looking at it objectively, the signing of Harris was probably never going to end well and therefore Ipswich should not be allowed to replace an 8 point rider with a new 8 point rider, because their original selection has dropped 3 points off his average.

So basically, if you sign a naff team then you can sack them all and have another go with the full limit still in play?

Another 3 man away side, another home defeat for Newcastle.

It's a tricky one I suppose. I've been an advocate of not allowing the bottom 9-15 in the challenge before, but at the end of the day they probably are amongst the world's top riders. Just gets a bit tiresome watching Zagar, Iversen and Lindback have 1 good meeting in 5, with no genuine hope of ever becoming World Champion.

Keep battling for the rest of us, hopefully they'll go ahead with their threat and delete their profile soon...

You said it would be someone who would please us!!!

Thank you for this information, nice to have it first hand from someone who genuinely knows. If the Sky money kept certain clubs afloat then I'd love to see the position of those clubs now without the money. As much as we love speedway, it paints a bleak picture if 100k is just keeping it afloat.

What else, to ensure long term prosperity, did they do with it? Even if it wasn't entirely spent on one rider then a lot of it was. Nothing has been done to change the sport long term. 100k a club in a league of 8? 9? Will we ever see money like that again.

Must be one of the biggest scandals in modern speedway, that teams were paid £100k a season, and many of them did nothing but spend it on one rider for a season. The long term things you could do with that money.

I'm not bothered about getting into an argument about comparing averages, but the main thing that I miss from those days is the identity each team seemed to have, which is missing now. You knew the type of team (style wise) that each team would turn up with, there was always a good atmosphere with fans and usually some flash points with heroes/villains. Nowadays there's little, if any, of that kind of stuff. It seems like you could transplant any of the PL teams into another one now and nobody would bat an eyelid - if Leicester's 1-7 was signed by Sheffield, for instance, nobody would think any differently. It used to be a treat seeing the likes of Wilson, Stonehewer, Shields, Bjerre, etc coming to your track and taking on your number 1 (inflated averages or not) but now everything just seems so dull in the PL. The lack of teams has certainly contributed but it just seems an overall lack of personality in all parts (riders, teams, clubs).

Premier League season of 2003 had 18 teams in it. Sadly, it's all been downhill since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Premier_League_speedway_season

In regards to BT Sport - I wonder if there are any currently banned, Team GB, riders at a loose end on Saturday night?

I hear the upcoming weather forecast in Glasgow is awful, especially the next 12 days.

Is Fricke minding himself for Gorican in 2 weeks?

Not long now until one of the biggest meetings of the year, this could make or break next season's GP given the (poor) standard of the line-up. I've been able to get the following together based on posts on here, seems very little considering it's a fortnight away. Martin Vaculik Matej Zagar Niels-Kristian Iversen Craig Cook Peter Ljung Chris Harris Robert Lambert Pontus Aspgren Anders Thomsen David Bellego Mikkel Michelsen Max Fricke Martin Smolinski Kenneth Bjerre Aleksandr Loktaev Jurica Pavlic Will Lambert be fit for this? Will Harris manage to get back in? Fricke, Bjerre and Vaculik will go through for me.

Keeping faith is a nice way of trying to spin it, but it's more likely there's no money or inclination to make a change.