waiheke1

Too many double-uppers.

What's wrong is that he signed for wolves not Poole...

Asset rides for own team. Sounds a bit like a squad system to me. Anyone know of any club whose promoter is advocating a squad system?

Poole and wolves both stronger than belle Vue on paper now I would say. But fortunately the title will be settled on the track. Only Alanis Morissette would find that ironic...I think "coincidentally" may be the word you are looking for.

I would +8 BUT... Tommy Smyth "with a y" is surely the worst commentator ever.

And if you haven't seen it, you really should. You won't see a better meeting, ever.

Vavulik comes in at 27th. Good performances in Poland (13th in averages) and The Euros, but only average in Sweden (33rd) and the GP qualifiers.

Ranking for smoli comes from bundesliga, swc and sec/gp qualifiers. Take out the bundlesliga and he still ranks 14th. He's outperformed some pretty big names in the gp qualifiers and was pretty impressive in the swc. But certainly it's too high, pretty much guaranteed one such rider in the 20. Dolgins rankings have him at 37th which would seem about right.

Back with updated ranking system, my view on top 20 riders in the world for 2016 to date. Takes into account performances across all major competitions (top flight domestic leagues - top 2 for Poland, Sweden and UK), GPs and qualifiers, SWC, National finals, SEC Euro champs): 1 Tai Woffinden 9.96 2 Greg Hancock 9.72 3 Patryk Dudek 9.24 4 Jason Doyle 9.19 5 Grigoriy Laguta 8.85 6 Bartosz Zmarzlik 8.58 7 Krzysztof Kasprzak 8.51 8 Emil Sajfutdinov 8.45 9 Martin Smolinski 8.42 10 Niels-Kristian Iversen 8.39 11 Piotr Pawlicki 8.35 12 Antonio Lindbäck 8.33 13 Chris Holder 8.29 14 Andreas Jonsson 8.13 15 Artem Laguta 7.80 16 Joonas Kylmäkorpi 7.75 17 Tomasz Gollob 7.72 18 Piotr Protasiewicz 7.71 19 Matej Zagar 7.71 20 Nicki Pedersen 7.65 No surprises at the top. Only surprise inclusions in the top 20 are Smolinski (who is an anomaly) and Gollob. GP riders just outside the top 20 include Lindgren (22nd) and Magic (24th). Harris is the lowest ranked GP rider in 69th. Danny King the best Brit (apart from Tai) in 33rd ahead of Cook in 37th. Max Fricke the highest of the riders currently contesting the u21 world champs, in 31st.

Except of course, Joonas scoring low doesn't help get Woffy in. Woffy would have to be a straight swap for Joonas (or Freddie), so Joonas lowering his average would prevent them from getting Woffy in, not help it - wolves now have two weeks to make the change, if Joonas had scored well there would be no hurry. I'm sure you knew that of course though Shovvy... tbf, if a Poole rider had done exactly that, you are right that there would be some idiots claiming exactly what you just did, but not anyone with a brain...

Tbf all the current team bar howarth have performed at least to expectations this season. Against the aces I think you could only day that of Clegg masters and thorssel.It's hard to argue that howarth isn't one of the biggest disappointments of the El this season.

Tbf he was world number 2 two seasons ago, and is arguably in the top 10 riders in the world on current form..

I disagree that Poole will have choked if they don't win the league. Maybe the aces will just have ridden well? Is poole'a team on paper really that much stronger than the aces? Maybe marginally, but man for man the only area where they are clearly stronger is at 7. So over two legs, 6 rides out of 60. All it takes is one ace to over perform and that advantage is wiped out. If u take the start of season teams: the "real" hl for both have performed as as expected (watt IMHO should mot have been on the list, but was clearly far worse than anticipated ). R Worrell and bjarne have performed as you'd expect. Fricke has over achieved compared to Kurtz. S worrall and Ellis have both surpassed expectations. Jacobs and Newman have both performed pretty much as you'd expect. But the fact that aces have performedbetter than expected hardly means poole have choked. Most said they were the strongest two sides. And that was accurate. Let's just enjoy a good aces side in a brilliant new stadium, and if they win congratulate them, not just use it as a chance to get digs in at poole.

Don't disagree Dean, but see the fuss many fans make about gp riders not having their best bikes over here. Surely that's a good thing!

Getting it down for next season, or so that if wolves aren't quick enough he can't be replaced by woffy?Add woffy to that wolves side and they are a match for anyone, though they still need howarth to start scoring.

When you say Hampel who are you referring to? Could you please be more specific? Do you mean Joonas Kylmakorpi?

It's like Gustix has joined the thread. If we get the blame for it not being clear who "hampel" referred to then we'll know he's multi aliasing again...

Barring injury it's hard to see tai not being an automatic pick for the next decade at least

Have any of our world champs been "gaters "? Can't think of any, though dont know enough about the post war champs. Possibly why none have been multi world champs, the Hancocks/gundersens/maugers more successful than your collins/gollobs. Tai can get out of the gate pretty well on his day, but has to do a fair amount from the back, though that first bend cutback seems to do a fair bit of the work for him.

I'm not having a pop at gavan, just suggesting that the way he has returned from his ban is not particularly constructive. He clearly has more to offer the forum than those other two, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered spending 5 minutes of my life posting above.

The sides are really evenly matched, home advanrage should see wolves home but aces to hopefully grab a point.

I would say their best machinery is not in GB. But isn't that a good thing? Otherwise the "lesser" riders would be forced to spend more on machinery to compete? People complain regularly about costs being forced up due to the top riders having super tuned machinery, but then when the top riders have comparitively "standard" bikes people complain about that as well! I think people also under estimate how much tougher it is for HL under the current EL format. I'd say the likes of Holder, Zagar, Freddie, Doyle have been good servants to British speedway, even if they do clearly earn much bigger money rising elsewhere.

Which Brits do not have an EL place that are worthy of one, and which "2nd rate foreigners" riding EL are they better than? If you refer to the PL, then I agree more should be done to promote Brits. but if they grant a facility for those riders, you'd also have to do it for the likes of KK, Andersen etc. as well. Ellis and Bates clearly would have no chance (at this stage) of qualifying for the SEC finals, but agree riding in the qualifiers may be beneficial.

but people complain about the number of guests and riders missing, people say they will not go when star riders are missing, so why should the BSPA do anything to increase the number of meetings riders will miss from. Which as you point out, is not limited to the SEC finals, but also the qualifying meetings as well. Yes it would be good for young Bitis to take part, but from a BSPA perspective there is probably no real gain - lets' face it, if Lambert becomes a superstart chances are he may end up skipping British speedway altogether - yet certainly disadvantages. And of course if you allow facilities for riders missing for SEC, then what about the pairs. What about other unoffical meetings? I too would love to see Lambert and Tai in the SEC pairs, and Lambert and Cook in the SEC, BUT the BSPA position is totally understandable.

Gavan you've come back on here, and the first half dozen posts you've made contribute nothing, and are just you venting totally unneccesarily. Everyone on here knows what Robetr72 is and what Starman is. But you can be nearly as bad, with your Poole obsession and ability to spend pages and pages simply arguing. You claim to have come on here and "basically apologised" well I can't see any semblance of a genuine apology there, but certainly attempts to re-stoke arguments.And to claim yoou haven't made agressive posts is ludicrorus, I can recall plenty of posts directed at Sidney as another example. I've nothing against you, and you clearly know a fair bit of stuff about speedway, and can make some excellent points. But I haven't missed your tedious arguments with Starman/Robert one bit, and it seems many others feel the same way. Maybe have a think about whether you are on here to debate, or just want to argue, as if it is the latter then you're not really any better than those two forum clowns, and do you really want to drag yourself down to that level?