I was perusing the magazines in Tesco when I noticed that they had The Apprentice on the front cover with the headline 'Time to Pick a Winner'.

They then had three candidates-- on the front with a caption for each...

Surely this is not the final 3? But what a weird cover if it is not the final 3?

I am confused?!

I mentioned this in the Spoiler thread. Last year on the front cover for the same feature were Tom, Susan, Jim and Helen. The Final Four was... Tom, Susan, Jim and Helen. Just saying.

I was hoping Tom would make the top 3 BOO.

Well I doubt it considering all three captions are negative. They probably make it quite far but I think its pretty clear from the show's edit so far that Tom will win (He will make the final at the very least).

After watching Tom last night he is a bit annoying when it comes to showing off his own knowledge, this could go against hima and I don;t think he will win.I hope the top 3 are Adam, gabby and Nick

I think Nick will win, I definitely want Tom in the final though and will be disappointed if he isn't.

They blew it last year - so this year they may have set out to avoid blowing it by random selections of who to put on the cover, or they might try bluff and put three non finalists, or they may have made the same mistake again. It could be a spolier or random , a mistake or very intentional.

Bizarrely when I tried to think of positives for anyone and rule out the people who try hard but can't get it right, make serial strategic errors, or seem pretty useless all around, I do come up with the same three people though.

They are the 3 nicest ones left imo. Nick and Gaby are popular with the others, Adam can be annoying but he is a good bloke. I hope they are the final 3.

That top three would sound about right to me, apart from Adam of course. Would be suprised if he was there and not Tom (though after Sugar questioning whether Tom should be there or not might be a reason why he didn't make the final three, if this cover reflects the true outcome).

If this cover really did show the line-up for the final episode, it would have a pretty major implication - namely that either we're going to get two double-firings in as many episodes, or that one of the two upcoming episodes has a team foul up so badly that Lord Sugar fires them all.

Inside the magazine there are profiles of all 8 candidates left (including Jenna) by Nick and Karen.
The cover picks three with quotes from the analysis - none of which are particularly flattering but that could be a red herring, but I would be surprised (and disappointed in RT) if these were the final 3

I think they might just have put the likely finalists on the front.

@ big dave
That would be VERY interesting!

What I find more intriguing though is why Tom ISN'T on the cover.

He's supposed to be as he says "quite good looking" and I would have thought that they would've included him on the cover to shift more mags.

The editing on the series also appears to have stopped building him up as a winner and now seems to be "explaining why he won't win", to quote meglosmurmers.

Did the producers discover something that made him less of a star candidate?

Much as I like both these ideas, I think it's more likely we're heading for the final being the interview round. I didn't like that half as much as the 'final task' format.

Or they go for the Young Apprentice format and the losing team on the last task go? All he has to do is have 2-4 plans he can live with and split the teams so he gets at least one good one - or, if there is only one, he makes sure that team wins by selecting the team or deciding the winner.

Really? It was Tom's time to go this week. Shame the other team ended up losing. Tom's teams video was appalling! He didn't take charge, just sat and drank and had fun too much!

Another possibility is that it started to seem like a one horse race with Tom constantly being praised in each team and being perfect at everything So to keep things entertaining they want to level the playing field editing wise.

Yes, bar this week's slip I think throughout the series he's one of the best candidates. He definitely needs a good week though, he seems to have taken his eye off the ball.