1st Apr - 7th Apr
Forget things like ‘Crop Circles’, will someone please explain how Arsenal prevented Barcelona from scoring at least twice in the opening twenty minutes at the Emirates last night. My head said Barcelona before kick-off, but it was my bloody heart that sold £200 of their supremacy at 0.2 and £15 of their Win Index at 12.5. Amazingly, the sides went in level at the break at 0-0. However, Barcelona were trading higher in both markets than before kick-off and I was slightly stuck with my bets. Sadly, I was even more ‘stuck’ when Ibrahimovic lobbed Almunia 30 seconds after the restart to give the visitors the lead. When Xavi played him in again less than 15 minutes later, he drilled another one past the helpless Almunia and seemingly buried the tie.
I had done £187.50 on the Win Index for sure, but the big issue was how much damage Barcelona were going to inflict. I had a horrible feeling that 4-0 and 5-0 were suddenly huge runners and I was about to kiss goodbye to a bag of sand! If truth be told, I was considering pressing the ‘escape button’ when Walcott pulled one back and the great escape was suddenly on.
Then, when Puyol and Fabregas tangled in the penalty area, the match turned again and with minutes left, Arsenal were suddenly level from the spot. They had pulled off the greatest of ‘great escapes’ and saved me a fortune on the way. I am almost embarrassed to say that I made £40 on the goal supremacy bet and £37.50 on the Win Index one. Now I can afford to buy a gum shield for the second leg!
Friday 2nd April
Good Friday? Not particularly! We went ‘en famille’ to the Lambourn Open Day which was pretty wet and muggy. The going was definitely ‘good to soft, heavy in places’ and luckily we managed to slip away from the main parade ring before Nicky Henderson could parade a number of horses that cost me fortunes at the Cheltenham Festival. I cannot have been the only one in the field who had their bollocks on Binocular for last year’s Champion Hurdle and not a shilling on him this time – he was not a welcome site and I left rather a ‘hot cross bun’!.
Saturday 3rd April
Shamwari Lodge got the job done in the Snowdrop Stakes at Kempton and my £10 buy on the Index at 32 netted a decent £180 profit. However, Light From Mars was beaten into fifth in a blanket finish in the next and £130 headed straight back in the wrong direction.
Over at Haydock, I couldn’t believe that Noun De La Thinte could be backed at 11/4 in the five runner Novices’ Chase – that was until I watched the beast jump the two fences down the back! Another £90 down the drain, but I still had Salut Flo to come in the Daffodil Vase. Well, cut a long story short, it was a two horse race turning for home with Salut Flo apparently going better than Prince De Beauchene. The reality was he wasn’t, although he did hold onto second and a £40 profit.
The racing finished and I realised that I was exactly level – not a pound up or down. Had it been worth it… all the stress and excitement? Every penny! I’d do it all over again given the chance (although I wouldn’t back Noun De La Thinte this time around!).
Sunday 4th April
There was racing and football, but I left it all alone – Easter Sunday and all that. Instead created an Easter Egg hunt for the children in the garden on the pretence that the ‘Easter Bunny’ had hidden them. The slight problem was that Phoebe had seen me hiding them from the window. ‘Did you hide them or did the Easter Bunny do it?’ She asked before we got underway. It was an incredibly difficult one to answer, but I think I got way with it… ‘I’ve been out looking before you -naughty Daddy’’.
Monday 5th April
I couldn’t believe that Leeds United were such hot favourites away at Yeovil in the live lunchtime Sky game. In fact, the way they have been planning, I couldn’t believe they would be favourites anywhere. Well, I put my money where my mouth was (in between mini eggs!) and sold £200 of Leeds/Yeovil at 0.5 and also sold £7 of shirt supremacy at 7.
Well, I nearly choked on a mini egg when captain Richard Naylor headed Leeds into the lead in the 29th minute and virtually turned the TV off when he repeated the same trick five minutes later. It was Arsenal v Barcelona all over again!
Luckily, while fellow defenders Neill Collins and Leigh Bromby had numbers 33 and 26 on their respective backs, Naylor only has number six so there wasn’t too much damage done there. It was just the 2-0 bit that was the slight concern!
Good old number 14 Dean Bowditch scored for the hosts in the 66th minute which reduced the final loss on the game to £100 on the supremacy bet and yielded a £63 profit on the shirts bet.
Away from the football and only eleven of the 26 runners managed to finish the Irish Grand National. Sadly, one of mine (Across The Bay) was the first of the eleven that didn’t finish to exit the race (fell at the second). However, A New Story plugged on for fourth place and my £10 buy at 7 returned a nice £30 profit – which paid for exactly a third of my losses on Across The Bay. Nevermind, it’s the National that counts this weekend!
Tuesday 6th April
Barcelona v Arsenal – the second leg. This really was tricky after narrowly avoiding a bloodbath last week. The price that immediately sprung out at me was the chance to sell total goals in the game at 3.4. Yet, I remember making a vow to God during last week’s encounter never to sell goals in a Barcelona game.
Therefore, I decided to buy Barcelona’s corner supremacy at 4 and Arsenal’s booking supremacy at 14 - with a plan to take a profit in-running on both.
Well, like the Arsenal defence, I was so mesmerised by Messi that I forgot the pre-match plan. I was supposed to take a profit on my corner supremacy bet and had the opportunity to do so when the hosts got two early corners. Having bought £30 at 4, I could (and should) have sold £30 back at 5.5 and nicked a £45 profit. I didn’t and ended up losing £90 on the market.
However, Arsenal did get all 30 points awarded in the bookings market so my £10 buy at 14 returned a £160 profit. Why didn’t I buy Messi goal minutes though? They made up at 188 minutes and I could have made a 142 point profit! Having said that, if I’d picked 8, 9, 19, 28, 31 and 37 in last Saturday’s lottery, I wouldn’t be writing this!
Wednesday 7th April
Bye Bye United! No Rooney and no chance. I have sold £150 of United supremacy at 0.7 and another £8 of their shirt supremacy at 10. Hopefully that should give me some Aintree spending money. Speaking of which, I have narrowed the National down to two… Black Apalachi and Snowy Morning. If only Lionel Messi was running!
Comments
eifled | 11 Jun 2010 at 05:04