Dunno about you, but I can’t wait for Saturdays, settle down in front of Soccer Saturday with the King of football pundits, Jeff Stelling (is there anything that man doesn’t know?) and listen to the previews, commentaries, updates and general banter. It is the high-point of my week and given a choice between a live game and Soccer Saturday, 90% of the time it’s SS.
Until recently that is. Now don’t get me wrong, I think the huge wads of cash floating around football means we get to see some of the best players in the world playing in probably the most exciting league in the world (Top 4 domination aside, but all things change)…but the FA Premier League’s attempts to court an overseas audience, no doubt in the interests of the clubs, seems to be ignoring the local punter more and more.
I know that the 12.45 game on Saturday, the 17:15 game on Saturday, the Sunday Lunchtime kickoff, the 4pm Sunday game and the occasional Monday night games are for TV, and often timed to cater for a valuable overseas audience, but the FA need (more…)
Ok this has sod all to do with long odds, but it’s bloody hilarious! This ref in a pucker league match in Belarus was so p!ssed up he could barely walk and had to be escorted from the pitch. It’s worth every moment of the 1:28 viewing time just to see the poor geezer waving to the crowd as he leaves the pitch.
A classic. One might argue a number of Premier League refs appear under the influence when you look at some of the decisions but never quite like this.
Having watched Turkey on the opening day of the 2008 European Championships in Swizzerlund unt Osterreich, I thought what better way to celebrate their performance than by a video of all the Top Diving we’ve seen in the Prem in recent years. Tuncay could take a leaf out of these boy’s books before he goes freestylin’ in the penalty area.
I ought to add, thet albeit it’s an excellent video, it’s clearly been made by a Londoner as there is not one Man Utd player featured! Even Ronald’oh seems to have escaped this one. But Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool fans…prepare to suffer. Well worth it though:
Stumbled upon an interesting service today that provides all sorts of stats for would-be footie punters on English football. Actually, Stats On Sport provides statistics across more than just footie with Cricket, Golf, Grand Prix…all sorts of sports available. The idea behind the site is to give punters access to just about everything relating to individual matches, team stats, head-to-head stuff and pretty much anything that you could use to make a calculated bet.
Ignoring the fact that the bookie is always right and picking the favourite represents the best chance of winning, the “long shotters” should find this pretty useful I’d say. Just looking at the football stats and you get previews of upcoming games, match data, info on previous encounters between the teams like goals scored, form etc. Can’t see any mention of how many surgical supports Petr Cech has worn in the past season, but I guess (more…)
Came across this audio interview on the BCC today. It’s an interview with Warren Aspinall, ex footie player who talks frankly about his gambling addiction and how close he came to suicide. Clearly been very affected by it and even at 20 minutes, it’s worth a listen.
Quarter Final stage of the Champions League and the English press are all bigging up the teams they normally love to knock down a peg or two and article after article speculating on who is the best in Europe…which is the best league in Europe, the best player in Europe…yada yada yada.
So when it comes down to the “Best Team” in Europe, how do you define that? How will we ever know? In my eyes, the Champions League does not provide proof of the best team in Europe. Best on the day perhaps…but not the best overall at all times with all-comers. Until such a time as we have a European league, with 30 or 40 games played over a full season, no knockout stages and a pucker full-on league programme, we’re never going to know.
I was just reading that Dida has had his ban reduced to one game for acting the death scene from King Lear up at Celtic the other week. Quite frankly, wo cares if it’s one game or 10, that footage will be with him forever as an embarassing ball and chain. It reminded me of Rivaldo back in the 2002 World Cup (hmmm…both Brazilian) and I thought a bit of Youtube-ing might lighten my day - so here are some links to videos of the best actors, cheats and frauds we pay millions to entertain us week in (more…)
Well I guess it was only a matter of time, but I see BetDirect have an online casino with a number of the traditional fruit machines in there. I mean, yeah all the bookies now have online casinos, but it seems like Blackjack, Roulette, Video poker and the Vegas-style slots have some competition.
I’m reliably informed that the online versions of these fruities are just as streaky as their pub-based counterparts…no surprise there then…but they do have expected payouts in the 94-96% range apparently, so I guess that’s a bit better. And no more of this 30p/£500 max stuff: you can bet up to a whopping £25 a spin and win up to 500x the bet…er, I make that 15 grand. Not that I think (more…)
For the UK punter looking to place a bet online, there is obviously a big choice in this day and age with all of the big highstreet bookmakers and some lesser-known Internet-only bookies gathering like vultures to capture the new breed of high-tech armchair punter. Not that the Internet could be termed high-tech anymore I guess, but hey, you know where I am coming from!
One of the neat aspects about the highstreet chains is that a punter can bet online and either cashout via a card (or eWallet if you’re really tech savvy!) or they can nip into the local bookie and access their online cash from there which is pretty neat. In fact it goes a step further with bookmakers like Ladbrokes in that you can also play online poker with them or play a bit of blackjack, roulette or some fruities (more…)
OK, I don’t normally do horsies but not only was it was great to see Frankie Dettori cruising home on the 5/4 favourite “Authorized” in the Derby at Epsom just now but to see the BBC making a bit of a cock-up, or more aptly, cock-down, of the coverage was the icing on the cake! Watershed? What Watershed?
Frankie had been waiting for this - everyone wanted him to notch it up at the 15th attempt - and he duly obliged with a clear victory of several lengths over his nearest rival. To add to the glee, this is really going to shake up the bookies and (more…)
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Ok this has sod all to do with long odds, but it’s bloody hilarious! This ref in a pucker league match in Belarus was so p!ssed up he could barely walk and had to be escorted from the pitch. It’s worth every moment of the 1:28 viewing time just to see the poor geezer waving to the crowd as he leaves the pitch. 
Stumbled upon an interesting service today that provides all sorts of stats for would-be footie punters on English football. Actually, 
I’m reliably informed that the online versions of these fruities are just as streaky as their pub-based counterparts…no surprise there then…but they do have expected payouts in the 94-96% range apparently, so I guess that’s a bit better. And no more of this 30p/£500 max stuff: you can bet up to a whopping £25 a spin and win up to 500x the bet…er, I make that 15 grand. Not that I think