December 2011
End of year update
We were very close to a decent return from the accumulator, with Wes Brown’s 89th minute winner for Sunderland the difference between a profit and a loss. With 4 winners from the 7 selections we get £3 back from the £12 investment.
As stated before, these sort of accumulators are particularly difficult bets to land, hence the big odds! However, if approached as a fun bet at low stakes, they can certainly spice up the days football.
Following this bet, the disappointing final total for December was -£40. Lets hope the New Year brings a change in fortunes and some better refereeing!
19th December, 4pm
One winner, one loser from our last selections, which left us slightly down between the two.
We’re into the last week before Christmas, but there’s no let up for the Premier League, with midweek games marking the start of a busy run. Man City still lead the table by a couple of points, in what is looking increasingly like a two horse race. Can Chelsea can recover from a disappointing draw at Wigan? Can Spurs continue to hold their lofty position? It’s nicely poised at top and bottom, with plenty drama sure to unfold over the next few months.
We’re looking to Wednesday for our bet this week, when there are 7 Premier League games to choose from. Rather than stick to the single bets, I’m going to chance an accumulator this week. Here are the games:
Aston Villa v Arsenal
Man City v Stoke
Newcastle v West Brom
Everton v Swansea
Fulham v Man Utd
QPR v Sunderland
Wigan v Liverpool
I’m going for a bet on every single game. Across 7 selections this is known as a “Super Heinz” – and involves a total of 120 individual bets. This covers every single double, treble, etc all the way up to the full 7 fold. Because it is a lot of bets, the stakes are best kept very low. In this case, just 10p per bet for a total of £12.
My selections are as follows:
Aston Villa v Arsenal. ARSENAL.
Man City v Stoke. MAN CITY.
Newcastle v West Brom. NEWCASTLE.
Everton v Swansea. EVERTON.
Fulham v Man Utd. MAN UTD.
QPR v Sunderland. DRAW.
Wigan v Liverpool. LIVERPOOL.
With this type of accumulator you are almost guaranteed something in return, barring a number of huge upsets! However, the doubles and trebles will not return great wins, you are looking for at least 4 winners to get something worthwhile. If all the selections win the return is approximately 10/1 on the whole investment, so would be about £140. Fingers crossed!
12th December, 1pm
At the start of the Champions League groups you would not have predicted that both Manchester clubs would fall at the first hurdle, but that’s exactly what happened! United lost 2-1 in Basel, losing our bet in the process with an uncharacteristically flat performance. An early mistake from the keeper gave Basel the initiative, who went on to ride their luck to win the game. City are out despite a win over Bayern Munich, the damage for both teams was clearly done earlier in the campaign. We may well have a look at their Europa League prospects in the coming weeks.
Tonight is the final game of the Premier League weekend, with Chelsea hosting Man City. It’s still relatively early in the season to be calling this a must win game, but should Chelsea lose they will be a huge 13 points adrift of City at the top. Even the win leaves them 7 points behind, you have to guess that Chelsea will be going all out to win this one. A difficult one to call, City are unbeaten in their last 8 away games but haven’t faced a test quite like this is expected to be. Chelsea are showing a few signs of form, with consectutive 3-0 wins over Wolves and Valencia in the bag. But prior to that they lost at home to both Liverpool and Arsenal, conceding 7 goals in the process. Can they keep out a free-scoring City side?
My take is that Chelsea are going to have to pull out an absolute top notch performance to take all 3 points here, and the current price of 2.46 (on Betfair) does not hold much appeal. Man City are available at 3.1, and this sounds like better value to me. If they go out all guns blazing and the likes of David Silva continue to play well they are going to cause problems for the Chelsea back line. I think there will be goals in this, and I think Chelsea will struggle. I’m going to strike two £10 bets:
Bet 1. Over 2.5 goals. Current Betfair odds 1.87.
Bet 2. Man City to win, in the DRAW NO BET market. Current Betfair odds 2.26. Remember that with this bet, a draw results in a full refund of your stake.
6th December, 12pm
A loss in the first bet of the month, but the referee can shoulder the entire blame for this one! An utterly appaling neglection of duty just 4 minutes into the game saw him fail to send off Luiz for denying a clear goalscoring opportunity for Ba. The decision really was inexplicable, and its this sort of infuriating inconsistency that is currently blighting one of the best leagues in the world. The recent weeks have seen numerous examples of dreadful decision making, perhaps its time the authorities looked at video evidence for the key decisions in the top divisions?
Still, we shall solider on and hopefully we can find a winner in the Champions League games this week. The match on my radar here is Basel v Man Utd, with both clubs still in with a chance of qualifying for the knockout stages. Man Utd have suffered a leaky defence in the Champions League so far, with the 3-3 draw at home to Basel perhaps the most surprising result to date. However, this was without injured captain Vidic and since he has returned, United have looked at lot stronger at the back. Basel have a decent home record in the league, but in the Champions League they haven’t been quite so good. Last time out at home finished in a 0-2 defeat to Benfica. They need to win to progress, United would be happy with a draw.
United haven’t been playing their most inspirational football lately, and I think tomorrow will be a case of getting the job done. Tight at the back, maybe nick a goal or two but without committing a huge amount to the attack. They’ve won several games 1-0 lately and I think the value here is the betting for Man Utd to win to nil, which is currently available at 3.00 on Betfair. Lets try a tenner on it.
2nd December, 4pm
November done and dusted then, and the final score was a disappointing £14 loss. Luck wasn’t with us on several of the bets, with great saves, bad misses and the width of a post costing the bet on a number of occasions. This was summed up in the last bet of the month, which was Chelsea v Liverpool to be over 2.5 goals. It finished 0-2 to Liverpool, but included a missed penalty and a host of missed chances.
Moving into December lets see if we can get off to a winning start with a look at the Premier League this weekend. The first game of the weekend is Newcastle at home to Chelsea, and something just doesn’t look quite right with the prices for this game.
Current Betfair odds:
Newcastle 3.85
Chelsea 2.18
Draw 3.5
Its a huge price on a decent Newcastle side, against Chelsea who are in a bit of a rut at the moment. Not only are Newcastle playing the better football, but they are still above Chelsea in the league! For me, the Chelsea price is based on past glories, and I won’t be touching it.
Last time out Chelsea scraped a 1-0 at Blackburn, which is hardly a result to write home about. Unless something drastic changes, I can’t see them returning from Newcastle with the points. At home the toon have been strong, winning 4 of their last 5, with the other a draw against a decent Spurs side.
I’m not going to suggest backing Newcastle outright, but want to weight it slightly towards the win. Therefore, todays bet is £10 on Newcastle to win, and another £10 on the draw. At the above prices, the win is worth an £18.50 profit, the draw £15.
The other option here is to lay Chelsea for a possible loss of £20, this would return a profit of just under £17, so is right in the middle as you’d expect. Either way is fine, lets hope it gets the weekend off to a good start.