To me, Anita seemed the least guilty of the three last night.

Either Sralan didn't understand that she didn't set the budget, just totted it up, or he was just looking for any excuse to get rid of a candidate he has little interest in - like the corporate lawyer last year (who seemed a pratt yes, but Anita didn't.)

I think he considered her the most expendable of the three entertainment-wise.

Not really -s he looked disinterested and was one of those, who just dod what she was told. All she needed to have done was say to Mona "look, we are spending a lot here when hte likely revenue is not that great" - instead shge said "we made budget".

People like that are nop good, so she was just a makeweight as the viewers get used to the real frontrunners.

She added up and announced to the team that they had not overspent on the tools... why couldn't anyone else say "hang on, that's a lot of money, maybe we're spending too much?"

If Moaner had laid out a business strategy for the task, as a team they would have been able to see that the less the spent on tools, the better. So it was lack of planning, and just a desire to get out there and clean as much as possible, that caused them to lose the task. In my opinion of course

Which put her in the ideal position to realise that they were spending too much money. and as was said, just because you had £200, doesnt mean that you should spend it all.

And that was one of the two main reasons they lost. Had they either, spent less on supplies, or had the team doing the showroom cars done a good enough job and gotten the 10 extra ones, they would have won.

You could definitely see that he liked Mona, for whatever reason. He kept dropping hints to her in the boardroom about how to save herself. She didn't pick up on any of them; either she panicked or she's very clueless. But you could see he wasn't going to fire her.
And you knew he wasn't going to fire the designated bitch, because the editing had made her the designated bitch. Those get the most attention out of any characters on the show so obviously she was going to stick around.
So it was quite predictable who he was going to fire last night. I'm normally no good at predicting at all, but I wasn't in any suspense. I think he always fires someone kind of clueless and ineffectual and wibbly in the first show.
I don't know if the editing made it predictable or if Sirallun did, though. They edit the show a certain way once they know who's fired, so that might make it seem that Sirallun is more predictable than he really is.

I suppose that's the only thing that you can lay on her - out of 8 girls, it occurred to none of them to spend less. The real blame falls at Mona's feet of course, but he clearly wanted to keep her.

Actually Kate did speak up at the time. She said they didn't need to spent the whole £200, and that it would come out of their profits. She had it spot on.

Firing Anita was reasonable. There were two reasons for failing and she was involved in both of them. The first is that she stood by and watched them haemorrhage money when she was best placed to stop it - and that really pushes Sir Alan's buttons. The second is that she was on the sub-team that made a tiny profit, and had Debra blaming her for it. If they had made as much as Mona's sub-team made, they'd still have lost, but only by about £2.

It's my cherished belief that he doesn't like to fire team leaders unless they mess up really, really badly, and this especially applies to the first task. And Debra was articulate and nothing really got pinned on her.

Anita had no fight in her. Initially Alan will let the useless one's get away if they're feisty but if they prove equally inadequate in later tasks then they don't get away with it. Sometimes though some get away with it more than they should.

I suppose it bugs me that they have to be seen to fight not to be fired to impress Sralan. This inevitably results in slagging others off and shouting other people down.

Of course these people are not going to go all the way, but they always seem to displace the candidates who have more decorum. They are just never given a chance (and labelled 'boring').

Hence my initial question, has he already chosen his apprentice?

Depends a bit too on what you think the show is about. SAS thinks its about him testing people and finding the best. It actually is often about him finding lame excuses (which in this case applied to everyone) and demonstrating that he has little idea what goes on. He tends in every series to keep the forceful challenging people (like himself) even if they are not very bright and then tends to back off and take the quietest one left at the end Some people think of Michelle as his weakest choice - because the alternative was Ruth and Michelle didn't stay - but actually I tend to think she's his strongest choice. The show is often an exercise in how to get rid of the quietly promising and keeping the better TV fodder and the people most like him for the end.

I sometimes wonder if SAS thinks he is making a show about the weakness of the apprentices and the producers are meanwhile having a laugh at his own decisionmaking and biases. Seen that way he is Captain Mainwaring intent on finding his next Corporal Jones.

She did fight. She gave a little speech about how although it hadn't been her finest hour and she had made mistakes, she wanted the job and would improve. Or something like that. It was quite spirited.

Well you can also lay on the fact that she just wasnt very good.