Saturday's Results

Not a bad Saturday - three wins out of five and only one real disaster - and my wife and I got back from apple picking with loads of apples, both eaters and cookers. Anyway, here's the rundown from yesterday:

* Straight From Biff Tannen's Sporting Almanac:

Wigan 1, Sunderland 1
QPR 3, Middlesbrough 0
Lincoln 1, Barnet 0

* Sounded Like A Good Idea, But It Wasn't:

Ruud van Nistelrooy didn't score.

* Totally, Utterly, Completely and Hopelessly Wrong:

Borussia Mönchengladbach 0, Eintracht Frankfurt 4.

* Worth Keeping An Eye On:

Manchester City 1, Blackburn 1
Told you.

West Ham 1, Chelsea 3
I thought it would have been tighter, but as the last two goals came in the final seven minutes Over 2.5 would have been the right call but then again, I lost nothing.

Brighton 2, Milton Keynes 0
The Seagulls remain an enigma: if they come up in the next couple of weeks it might be time for a spot of unorthodox thinking.

* Streaks

The streaks involving Bolton, Hamilton and Portsmouth continue. The next time Hamilton play Rangers at home is April 9th.

I'll be back later with a quick look at how the College Football teams I'm backing got on yesterday and with some NFL picks for later on.

Incidentally, the current Betfair profit for the month is £23.97 ($36.82) - all of which is American Football or laying horses as the Borussia Mönchengladbach game reduced my football profit to minus 2p, which is break even in any other language.

World Cup Final Stages

Whoever wins the Germany v Argentina quarter final this afternoon has a really good chance of winning the lot.  

In the 16 World Cup finals (West) Germany have played in, they've been knocked out by the eventual winners five times, beaten finalists four times and beaten semi finalists three times. They've also won it three times. England been knocked out by either the eventual winners or beaten semi finalists in almost 75% of their World Cup campaigns, another stat that favours Germany  If Argentina win, they have a fair chance of winning the lot - although if Germany win I think they'd be a better bet as Argentina have only really been a major international football power since their 1978 win.  Also worth considering: knocking out Brazil doesn't automatically mean that Holland will win the World Cup. Seven of the eleven teams that have knocked Brazil out of previous tournaments have either been beaten in the semis or lost the final, but interestingly two of the remaining four went on to win the World Cup for the first time (Argentina in 1978 and France in 1998 - and they were both hosts!).  I can see Holland getting to the final, but if they win or not depends on who they play. Repeat finals are pretty rare (there's only been one - Brazil v Italy in 1970 and 1994), but the Dutch lost to Argentina in 1978 and West Germany in 1974.  I know I haven't mentioned Spain but there's a reason for that ;-)  I think I might have been the only person supporting Uruguay yesterday, I had two lays on Betfair - elimination at every stage OTHER than the quarter finals and Group A not to win the World Cup. So that was pretty intense as you can imagine. Don't think Uruguay are going to win the whole thing though...but you never know. Financially the best final for me would be either Germany or Argentina beating Uruguay, but as the Stones sang all those years ago, 'You Can't Always Get What You Want'.

Bayern v Lyon: There Will Be Goals...But How Many?

My Will (25/1) was pulled up, you can’t really get further away from a win than that can you?

The Betfair contest was interesting…my five selections all won (although I didn’t look up the scores until I got home on Sunday), so it was a good job I had a small accumulator on them. There seemed to be a lot of confusion about the terms and conditions of the contest – it was basically a bonus promo which is fair enough. If I qualify for it that’s great but if I don’t I’m not going to lose any sleep.

Another big European week ahead, although I’m probably not going to commit any money to any of the Champions League or Europa league semi finals I’m intrigued by some of the angles. First of all, Lyon v Bayern Munich.

With Bayern taking a slim lead to France, if Lyon are to progress they absolutely have to score; their problem is if Bayern do then Lyon’s dreams of travelling to Madrid for the final are doomed. So I think there will be goals but laying 0-0 might be the way forward rather than backing any particular amount, as might be laying one or both of them to keep a clean sheet. With that in mind, Bayern would be the obvious choice - they have lost three of their last four UCL games on the road, haven’t kept an away clean sheet in the competition since they beat Maccabi Haifa in September and haven't kept one in Bundesliga away games for nine games.

Oh and before I forget, Lay Of The Day for Tuesday is Imperial House in the 5:00pm race at Lingfield.

The Lay Of Today

What a clunky title ;-)

I was going to suggest Nozic in the 3:05 at Sandown but that almost feels like picking on him, so I'm going to go for another Paul Nicholls trained horse in the same race: My Will.

The Betfair Facebook community had a competition that ran until noon UK time: pick five winners from across Europe from today's games and if all five win your account gets credited with £50. Using numbers generated by my trusty spreadsheet I've gone for Barcelona v Xerez, Inter Milan v Atalanta, CFR Cluj v Unirea Alba Iulia (top v bottom in Romania's Liga 1) , Cittadella v Mantova and Benfica v Olhanense. The accumulator price for this is about 4/1.

I've also started looking at baseball, but at the moment it's a little too early in the regular season to calculate effective odds as no team has reached the twenty home/away game benchmark I normally use. Still, I'm going to keep tabs on the second game in the Cleveland Indians series at the Oakland Athletics. The Athletics won 10-0 last night and although I can't see that happening again the As should probably win again.

Right, football, meat and beer coming up...