Zoe criticised by LAS for just sitting back and doing as she was told, if she saw it was going badly she should have shouted or stepped in.

Vincent criticised by LAS for not doing as he was told (apparently, although I'm not sure what this specifically referred to) and doing his own thing and taking over when he thought things were going badly.

What's a candidate to do?

This is something Sugar does all the freaking time!

That and use perfect hindsight to rubbish the losing team's approach in favour of the winning team's when you just know that he would have taken the exact opposite stance if the losing team had made an extra £10 and won.

It's so transparent.

Totally agree. All it does is make it appear that he hasn't got "a bloody clue", as he would say.

I'd love for one of the candidates, when getting slagged off by AS for supposed bad decision-making, to turn round and say that to him

In his defence, it's something that he is, to a certain extent, forced into by the format of the programme. He has to fire someone each week and so he has to find some vaguely cogent reasons why they lost the task when, in reality, it is often nothing more than blind luck.

This is particularly noticeable in selling tasks where the teams can choose between selling small numbers of high value items of a lot of low value items.

The outcome would often be determined by the sale, or lack of sale, of a single high value item so is nothing more than luck.

And yet he will harangue the losing team for picking the wrong option when he would have to harangue the other team for the exact opposite if things had turned out differently.

It would just be edited out.

Mmm very good point. As a PM people are bound to make both good and questionable decisions - the questionable ones get heralded as 'courageous' and 'bold' if the team win, or as 'cock-ups' and 'misguided' if they lose; regardless of the amount a team wins by.

I think, ultimately, Gavin was responsible for the tasks failure. That said, there are so many non-entities on the show that it is reaching a ludicrous level; Zoe not making ANY real contribution, Ellie being quick to blame others for her own lack of drive - it's ridiculous!

The most notable example of this being that spanner last series who gave commission of bus tickets to the agency regardless of whether they sold them or not. As they won the task, this was described as "brave" and even "innovative", when in reality it was just retarded.

I'm really not sure about this.

I think most people who are supposed to be working as part of a team would quietly do what they have been asked to do by the team leader and wait for their moment to shine.

But it never seems to occur to Sugar that, if all the members of the team were trying to grab the limelight all the time, very little would get done.

I thought she was treated very unfairly yesterday. She was a team player, doing what she'd been asked to do and waiting for her moment to demonstrate her negotiating skills and was thwarted because the travel timing did not work out and, rather than make sure she got her '15 minutes' she pointed this out for the team's benefit and lost her chance to make a mark.

But then again, someone could just as easily fail to make a mark because they happened to the the intransigent seller who would not give any discount. Not even a penny.

It is all so arbitrary!

Sugar criticizes people that are too quiet, too loud, too confrontational, too acquiescent, too whatever! It's sheer luck if a candidate gets on his good side. If your personality doesn't match up to his perception of what an Apprentice should be like, you're more or less screwed from the start!

He hired Lee McQueen, a guy that told big lies on his CV. That decision was contrary to the integrity of the show. He routinely hires the final two candidates even though the purpose of the show is to hire ONE candidate - the winner. He's criticized candidates for doing exclusivity deals even if the deals could bring in money. Sugar has never said "exclusivity deals are not allowed." I've never heard him say that prior to a task. He shifts the Apprentice goalposts when it suits him!

I'm pretty sure the only time Lord Sid has reamed out someone for offering exclusivity has been when they have been selling on some elses' behalf - Ice cream in series 4 being the notable example, where the supplier had not agreed to it . Where the candidates are selling their own design then they can offer it, and indeed last year a team lost as they refused Boots exclusivity.

A candidate needs to find a balance.

On this occasion I don't think the criticism of Zoe was justified, but it has been for other candidates in the past. If a candidate sees a fire, they need to shout "Fire!", and if no-one pays attention they need to make sure they do.

On the other hand, taking over the task like Vincent did, even to the point of interrupting other team member's negotiations, taking the phone off them etc, is also bad.

Lord Sugar was criticising the extremes. The ideal candidate would not be as passive as Zoe was said to be, nor as unmanageable as Vincent. Is that so hard to understand? There is no contradiction here.