Noelinho

Personally, I think this has potential to be anything from very tight to a walloping.

Workington are in the driving seat, for me. I don’t see them slipping up, but if they do, I’d favour Glasgow to take it. It would take a fairly spectacular failure from both these clubs for Redcar or Plymouth to finish fourth, looking at the fixtures, for me. I have Glasgow finishing on 17 points (min), Workington on 20 or 22, Redcar 17, Plymouth 14.

Tigers’ team for this fixture is awful. We only have three of our regulars: Bomber, Pearson, Smith. Leon and Matic are riding on the continent, and the other two are out. Not sure who is replacing them.

I just chuckled as Dave Rowe referred to the “no facility guest” on BSN when introducing the teams tonight!

“No facility” simply means you are not granted what would be considered a like-for-like replacement. With the 75% rule, it probably needs a better name, but the sport has bigger problems tbh.

This is the rule. It could also be that Ace was all they wanted to pay for.

Assets don't matter in this context. You have to be declared in a team.

Good luck to the Workington Tigers this afternoon!

Yes, I see the logic in that, as long as schedule changes are in good time.

Perhaps they should join the Championship then.

We need to do that by bringing the world class riders back, rather than by diluting the quality of the Championship.

If the points limit goes down, that would be insane. 42 next year would provide parity to this year.

It would make a lot more sense to give each team an equal number of guaranteed first choice race nights, but I know that's far too simple and logical to be considered.

Me too, but they never win in this situation. I'd have been minded to chance it though, especially given the team we had tonight.

The irony is, tonight’s team would’ve been easily the strongest we’ve been this season.

Shouldn’t be that controversial tbh. It’s not like NDL riders should also be running in the main leagues in Poland, Sweden, Denmark or the Premiership really, is it?!

Honestly, it just means having some fixtures on a different night, which we all manage when it's in our interests.

Who's the second rider bringing third home for Glasgow?

I'd take Claus over Leon all day long.

It hasn't though, to be honest. He might look a little better, but scoring has been pretty consistent. Removing his heat 15 rides, he's scored 8,9,6,4,8,8,5.

Yeah, it can’t be Leon.

I can only comment on his Glasgow form last year, but he increased his average early and then held on to that average until the end of the season. The issue was that we didn’t see the step we expected him to take, but he’s done that this year. He’s gating better, riding tracks better… he’s riding like he’s not under pressure. My personal opinion is that his biggest issue last year was we made him captain and piled too much pressure on him. I also think subconsciously, being in a team with Basso (they share the same birthday) may have contributed, and it possibly didn’t help that Ben’s style made him so adored. You’d never expect a rider to say any of this lest it be seen as a sign of weakness, but I honestly think those things contributed to us not seeing his full potential last year. But I wouldn’t say he faded - it was more a gap between expectation and realisation, which he’s honestly sent a bulldozer through this season.

Claus is out on Friday for personal reasons (hence no facility), and this was known to the promotion when he signed.

Brennan’s gating has been exceptional this year. Probably the best gater Ive seen this season.

Not sure Poole is top of Anders' list.