It’s Contest Time! Time to Find Out Who the "Winner" Is!

El Hadji Diouf wants to know what everybody's talking about. We'll give you a hint: It's America's favorite past time!

Way back in January, when UF was a just a plucky newborn, we decided to run a contest to see who could guess how useless Bolton are. More specifically, the contest was to guess how many league goals Bolton would score the rest of the season. You can re-visit that magical post here.

Now that the season is over, we know that you have been dying to see who won, checking the site constantly in the hopes that maybe, just maybe we would post an update. Well, you are very lucky my friend. Read on after the jump and find out who won...

To refresh your memory, here were the “rules”:

How many goals do you reckon that Bolton will score in the Premier League during the 14 games that remain in their season? [meaning Bolton’s league games starting in February, roughly after they sold Anelka, for those of you keeping track at home]

The tie-breaker is how many goals will Bolton score against Atlético Madrid in their two UEFA Cup matches (penalty shootout doesn't count, and we'll assume Bolton won't advance past Atlético so any other goals scored in the UEFA don't count either).

Now, Bolton did of course advance past Atlético Madrid, which kind of screwed up our tie-breaker, but thankfully Bolton only advanced on a 1-0 aggregate so their useless was nonetheless in tact.

As for the league, tallying up Bolton’s total goals beginning in February we arrive at the correct answer of 10 goals in Bolton's last 14 games. This makes for a stupefying .71 goals per game (and actually it was .65 goals per game after Bolton sold Anelka -- we waited a couple matches before starting our contest). How Bolton ever managed to stay in the league is a tribute to, well, the fact that there were even more inept teams this year.

Speaking of ineptitude, take a look at our table of guesses, where we find that the winner is Ian, who guessed spot on that Bolton would score 10 league goals!

Precious Roy: 5 league goals
Moonshine Mike: 5 league goals
Sven: 6 league goals
Spectator: 8 league goals
Badly Drawn Boykins: 8 league goals
Ian: 10 league goals
The Fan's Attic: 11 league goals
Lingering Bursitis: 11 league goals
ü75: 23 league goals

So a hearty congratulations to Ian, who will be buying the first round of drinks at our first Pants Party.

And let me just end our contest by pointing out that ü75 has a lot of explaining to do.