Sweet FA

I was up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to work out my football bets before heading out for the day. I could find only two games in which I fancied ‘more than two goals’, but there were several short-priced teams that I wanted to back. The problem was that most of them were in other European leagues – and I always hate backing sides when I don’t know the team news (or even if I do know it, how important the players that are missing are to their team).

I was soon scouring websites devoted to Serie A, La Ligue and the Bundesliga. The problem was that they weren’t in English – so I was none the wiser. My shortlist was ‘more than two goals’ in the Walsall v Scunthorpe and MK Dons v Bradford FA Cup matches, and Chelsea, Reading, Wolves, Barcelona, Wolfsburg, Genoa and Sevilla to win.

To combine them all in a single bet would mean a lot of permutations (and consequently a low unit stake or high total outlay). But my recent poor performance made me scared of putting ‘bankers’ in (which reduces the number of bets, but means that if a banker fails to win, the entire bet is a loser).

After much deliberation, I decided to combine Wolves with the two FA Cup games in a £25 treble. I dropped Wolfsburg (thinking that playing a league game on Saturday afternoon, only 42 hours after a UEFA Cup match, left them vulnerable) and combined the other six in fivefolds (£3) and an accumulator (£10). My total outlay was £53. It was then off to the Lord Mayor’s Show and to watch West Ham play Everton.

Running total: ask me tomorrow