Assumes you can find two suppliers and that you can tell who will go lowest without having the negotiation and that both have not given you an inflated price. To do it properly you need someone who knows but can't supply who will give you a more credible figure for the price - then you need to negotiate around and then buy. They had no time to do that, and no more information, and often could barely find one supplier.

The task is inherently flawed. If it was to buy something known you would be testing common sense on pricing and haggling. But as the commodities are obscure and they have no data and no other offers to bargain with or time to get them , you make it dependant on who they end up going to.Its a case of someone thinking of a task and then making it harder but unthinkingly making it pointless in doing so. Who they go to is random on who they find in a phone book or what random people, randomly encountered, happen to tell them. Its random then all the way through to who doesn't get back because of traffic or mileage.

The result ends up as random unless you go to a supplier who you ought to realise was expensive which Stella and Laura did. They then compounded the error by not using the one bit of pricing data they had. However how was that worse than not getting three items at all?

You end up with what you get. The boys lie and badger and get discounts which tells you something - but even Sugar reacts differently to such tactics depending on what he's thinking at the time so they have no way of predicting what he wants. The girls get the full list. The penalties with hindsight reflect the focus on haggling - not the ability to find whats required, because thats what Sugar values. His Lordship then shows he has no idea whats going on by telling one team they needed to know what the fair prices were - when neither team did because there was no way to know.

It ends as a straight test of the girls ability to blag the people they end up finding against the boys blagging those the boys find. The boys win on luck and blagging, the girls actually complete the task. His Lordship then judges some other task that didn't happen, but which would allow sensible pricing decisions to be made , and ignores the only issue thrown up by the detail of why the girls paid so much more for different items.

To top it all, his Lordship doesn't pursue the question of how Stella ignored the price she had, or the invisible phone call she claims to have made, and he sends Laura home for nothing to do with the task at all. You almost might just as well have tossed a coin and sent Chris or Laura home anyway.

It's not the sort of edit they'd give to the potential winner, which is what I thought Liz was until now.

I'm guessing any combo of Chris, Joanna and Stella will be the final two.

This has been brought up time and time again, but remember the Lee and Saira incident?!

Hmm, and who ended up winning that year?

What's even worse about that incident was that they weren't even on the same team that week

Yeah, but that was a bit earlier in the process. And Lee's a man. I don't mean to sound sexist, but a it's a lot harder for a woman to get away with things like that. Liz really has to prove herself now, or she's out.

It doesn't matter when or who did what. They showed Lee go off on one but he still won.

Liz did no wrong in my eyes. I'm fairly confident she'll still win as she doesn't need the support of the public. This is why I like this show. We have no say. Lord Sugar knows what he's looking for when he employs.

Stella's comments were worse. Corporate is usually a killer in Sugar speak .Stella's big errors have been similar to Yasmina's and he may forget them again - but corporate was his decisive line between Kate and Yasmina as he somehow, bizarrely, put a weight on running your own restaurant compared to Kate's CV and success in big companies.

Liz's problem is that, like Kate, she doesn't have enough PM wins and she has had more chances than Kate. Liz needed a big success at a practical buying or selling task and momentum over the finish line. Instead she's almost as damaged as Kate was after the Liverpool selling trip . He's used the complacent line, equally meaninglessly, before too about someone very good who didn't tick his market trader boxes. Liz, again like Kate, is also smart enough to say the right thing always - which he finds suspicious - and to spot the logical problems in the way tasks are set up - which he doesn't like or doesn't understand.

Chris is pretty useless, but then so was Lee. Joanna has a bag of Sugar like instincts, qualities and major limitations - and her inability to work with people has been much less noticeable,

It comes down to the job. if its talking to smart professionals he can't go beyong Liz or Stella, and they will win for the same reasons Simon did. If its the sort of job he thinks will suit someone who is more of a market trader or who has a self made woman, Sugarlite, journey story, Joanna is looking a good bet.

Valid points. Except, I don't see Stella as corporate and cold at all.

I ont find Stella corporate or cold either. I find her efficient and decisive.

Taking my earlier point about only sourcing one item - once they'd found it, no-one bothered just doing an extra check to see if they could find it elsewhere, cheaper. Maybe they didn't have time, but how long does it take to make a few more phonecalls? Taking the truffles as a prime example. The team had the list price of how much 50gms should cost them. They still went ahead and bought one that was, literally, twice as much as they knew at the time that they should have paid for it! Alarm bells anyone?

If Stella was fibbing about the attempted phonecall then Laura would have used this against her in the boardroom. As it was Laura backed Stella up and said that the phone was "engaged".

Laura also leapt in to "negotiate" the £200 and was eager to shake hands. Despite her moaning about the wisdom of going to a restaurant in Knightsbridge, it's ironic that she was so keen to do what she would have complained was "stealing a transaction" had it happened to her.

(my latest Apprentice blog on http://www.myspace.com/wivenhoefunnyfarm/blog/541024398 - be warned it is biased and opinionated )

Yes Liz did not do herself any favours last night BUT she is the strongest candidate as she is not "wooden" like Stella.
She showed last night that she is a fighter and a winner and is not scared to air her views something that Lord Sugar likes.
Liz to win!

Liz is way more of a fembot than Stella, and definitely tries to use her looks to charm. I was cringing when she went all girly over the hand-kissing AFTER the deal for the plates was made.

Not necessarily as acknowledging Stella's fault would only have brought more focus on their sub-team and therefore Laura herself. I think Laura was being strategic and self-preserving...

Maybe - except Laura did try to bring up her negotiation skills a fair bit.

Would like to see all the footage with regards the phonecall that apparently never was - not just the edit...

Both Stella and Liz seemed oblivious to the fact that Laura had a massive target painted on her head. They should have had the intellect to realise this rather than damaging each others reputations.

Lee was far worse to Sara in series 4 and still won.

You mean Sara, Saira was from the first series - but easy mistake to make.

Stella's been on a downward curve the last few tasks and Liz has showed herself up to be childish, petty and unprofessional. It's doubtful LordSirAlan will see any of that footage, so I'm not sure it really matters.

Good news for Joanna, mind.

Don't diss the Liz.!!!

Don't mind me I just misinterpreted the thread title and got overly excited and then disappointed.

I don't think Liz has blown it but I do think that whilst everybody else has been a bit static and not changed much since day 1, Joanna has " taken on board " ( Sorry your Lordship) her weaknesses and worked a lot of them out. I think everybody else is standing still whilst she is developing at a rate of knots. Joanna for the win.

Love Liz though

I think its pretty clear what let Liz down wasn't her management skill - I think she planned and managed the task better than Jamie did.

However, she showed that she was not good at low-level negotiation - a bit like Stella I think she's a bit too "corporate" - and she isn't so good at street negotiation. Joanna would probably have been the better choice for most of those pitches (although £55 isn't much better than £57).

This task she certainly exposed a weakness, though I wouldn't say she's blown it. Even the winners had their weaknesses. And It wasn't just Liz who was poor on this task - the girls simply did not push hard enough when pitching (I suspect the only one who really did was Joanna). So they all lost.

Her mistake was she should have kept Laura with her as PM and not trusted Stella. She knew they didnt get on, and should not have put them together. It was a disaster doomed to happen.

But their loss had nothing to do with Laura and Stella not getting on. As it was, Liz tried to keep a rein on Stella by asking her to call her with price info before closing a deal which Stella blatantly ignored (it seems) thus there would have been pain any which way.

Other than Joanna, the girls were very poor at haggling. As LA so eloquently put it, they seemed to think they were on a treasure hunt! Joanna was inhibited by Liz's lack of focus on the haggling side of things and I believe Laura was inhibited by Stella as we did see her at least try (but fail) to get the message through. For all their faults, the boys got it.

Actually Stella only asked how much they could purchase it for, it was Laura who jumped straight in there with £200 in response to the guy saying he would sell it to them for £270, and persuaded him to sell it to them there and then promising that they would visit his restaurant. Stella could have said "hold on, we need to agree this with out manager first", but then Laura would probably just have accused her of being obstructive and scuppering her negotiation

This is a frequent problem for PM's. They elect to spend time with their mates, in Liz's case, Joanne, however Liz would have been much more likely to win the task had she sent Joanne off with either Stella or Laura as Joanne is clearly the best girl at bartering. (probably the best of any candidate in fact)

She put all the negotiating strength in her sub team instead of spreading it out.

Chris made the same mistake last week hanging out with Liz in the bakery and sending the ineffectual Jamie and Christopher off on what they seemed to think was a stag do in Hamburg. Had Chris or Liz gone to Hamburg to make the appointments they'd have been more likely to win.

The first thing every PM should do is to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of their teams.

Sorry but the entire fault lay with Stella as they had no business purchasing from a restaurant - let alone a high end one - in the first place...which was all Stella's doing. Can't believe I'm defending Laura but even she knew it was stupid and kept suggesting they look in the East End, all of which fell on deaf ears. They were never going to get it for much less than £200 from a top end restaurant anyway.

COMPLETELY forgot about that - me too! I found her very patronising to the vendor in that moment.

I totally agree with that Sweet FA! However, you said Stella should have called Liz as instructed before agreeing on the price they paid, and theway I saw it, Stella didnt have chance because Laura dived in and took control of the negotiation and agreed the price anyway. We saw Stella (and Laura?) say they tried to.... perhaps it was lost in the editing... but it seemed to me like that call never happened as Laura had already done the deal.

Perhaps if that call had taken place, then Liz might have thought "hang on, I thought we were only expecting to pay £100??" etc.