A Trip To Romania

Chelsea and Dundee United won their respective Cup Finals, as did Bayern Munich, but due to the late-ish kick off and also because it was my wife's birthday meal I didn't get involved...which was a shame, because I was specifically looking at Over 2.5 goals.

Bayern won 4-0. Ah well.

Huddersfield drew 0-0 with Millwall (not Cardiff, apologies for the mistake), but I managed to trade out successfully - if Millwall had won I'd have been out of pocket. Verdant also did the business, comingin 7th of 15 at 2/1 so all in all it was a reasonably successful weekend.

On Monday I'm looking at two games in the Romanian 1 Liga that will affect issues at the top and the bottom: at 18:00 GMT second placed Unirea Urziceni take on Ceahlaul Piatra Neamt (the 'Carpathian Bears') in a classic end of season game: Unirea need a win to keep their title hopes alive while the Carpathian Bears need the points to escape from the relegation zone.

Worth taking a Unirea win; they have only lost twice in their last 20 1.Liga games and are currently on a three game win streak without conceding a goal. Their opponents have lost four of their last five away games.

At 7:45pm there's an intriguing game between Pandurii Targu Jiu (one place above Ceahlaul Piatra Neamt) and fourth placed Timisoara. Having compiled some guide odds earlier,the draw is overpriced at 12/5 and ought to be nearer evens. If you fancy trading it, it might be worth backing it before kick off and then laying if the price shortens as the game goes on - there probably won't be many goals in this game (65% chance of under 2.5 according to my figures) so time may be on your side. To put this game into some kind of context, Pandurii have drawn nine of their last 12 home games and Timisoara have only lost one of their last ten aways; Pandurii also have an extremely good defensive record at home and are only in relegation trouble because they can't score at home and are dreadful away.

Lay of the Day is Heavenly Dawn in the 8:10 at Windsor. Like Verdant, this is another horse trained by Sir Michael Stoute: this time Richie Mullen is aboard. Even though the stable has won this particular race on three of the last four occasions and Heavenly Dawn may be the antepost favourite, neither trainer nor jockey has a good recent record at the course and there are some decent looking alternatives.