Thursday, September 30, 2004

Bets, bets, bets.

A couple of bets make real appeal to me.

For some reason Sporting Index really fancy West Ham to finish very highly in the Championship. The reason is totally beyond me.

So far they have gathered 18 points from 11 games for an average of 1.64 points per game (ppg). To reach Sporting's sell total of 78 points they will have to improve slightly to average 1.71 ppg for their remaining 35 matches. For a team so high in the table West Ham have scored very few goals (13). They really haven't got a cutting edge. And any team who has Bywater in goal and features Repka at the back will always concede. They have won 5 of their 11 games, which is pretty good, but those wins include narrow victories against Rotherham, Crewe and Burnley who are among the weakest teams in the division. When facing the top teams they have not performed so well. They were outclassed 3-1 at home by Wigan, they drew 0-0 with Leceister when facing 10 men for virtually the entire match and were reportedly very lucky to edge Reading 1-0.

All in all I am pretty sure Sporting have overrated West Ham. I considered selling them on the Championship Index but I think a simple points sell is the better and safer bet.

20pts sell West Ham Total points (@78 Sporting)

One long term NFL bet appeals to me pretty strongly too. Detroit are overrated by Sporting Index for the NFC North. They award 50/25/10 for the finishers in the division. Minnesota are rightly very hot favourites for this section. But, I think Detroit are too close to Green Bay for second favouritism. Detroit won their first two games. They were lucky against Chicago, being totally outplayed until a blocked FG changed momentum. Week 2 saw them beat Houston handily enough, but statistically Houston were more than their match. Detroit's shortcomings were then cruelly exposed by Philly in week 3 who totally killed them.

Detroit's best player Charles Rogers is injured. QB Joey Harrington is still prone to expensive mistakes and their defense looked like swiss cheese against Philly. They have a very tough schedule in the next 8 games and could easily lose as many of 7 of those games. I think third is absolutely the best Detroit can hope for, and last place in this section is a very real possibility.

10pts sell Detroit NFC North index (@17 Sporting)

As for the bets I advised earlier it's a pretty mixed bag.

West Brom look a very short price to be relegated from the Premiership this season, but I'm still quite confident they will finish above the dreadful Crystal Palace.

Bournemouth sold their best player (Carl Fletcher) which was quite disappointing, but they have just knocked Blackburn out of the Legue Cup and demolished Doncaster 5-0 which suggests they are coming intoi a bit of form. I don't think they will be far away at the end of the season and the playoffs is a real possibility.

As for the Championship, the fact QPR are flying at the moment shows what a weak league it really is. Wigan do appear a class above, but apart from that any of about 14 teams could occupy the next 5 spots which score points in Sportings Championship Index. I think the buy at 12 is a really solid investment and could pay massive dividends at the end of the year. Plymouth started the season on fire. They have cooled off considerably in recent weeks, but they are certainly one of the 14 clubs who could finish in the top 6 who will be challenging for promotion. I am hopeful rather than confident.


2 Comments:

Blogger steve said...

Hi Keith,

I've not been following the champtoionship too much, with, em, both my teams in the premiership. I thought long and hard about putting a fair sized bet on at the beginnng of the season. I fancied both Sunderland and Leicester, but did neither. After Wigan's demolition of West Ham I had a small bet on them, but I have no real confidence in seperating the teams. Do you think the 7/2, or more, still available on Wigan is an excellent bet? I've got a couple of faiirly unattractive tips.

Tip: Lay Rooney at 20-1 to be top goalscorer.

This is a crazy price.

He's 5 goals behind several players already.

It is unlikely he will start more than 75% of all premiership games, especially the easy ones.

Has he has scored more than 10 goals in a season. Sure he'll score more at Mancs, but not 20 more.

I think he will be move out very quickly once folk realise he aint going to score a hat trick every game.

Arsenal still feel great value at around 1.75 for the premiership. United are a big lay at 6.8 imo. Chelsea seem a little big at around 4.1. I'd sure like an 8/11 Chelsea v Man U season match bet.

Another value bet, I believe, is one I had at the beginning of the season. Unfortunately I wish I'd waited a couple of weeks: I bought Newcastle at 60 points, I think that is the current price. I can see them in the high 60's, but not the low 50's. Unforunately they should have a lot more points than they do: Sir Bobby was unlucky.

Don't be shy in writing up sports tips in the future!

chaos

11:27 AM  
Blogger Andy_Ward said...

Just one point with West Ham, they have brought in Davenport, who looks a good player, for the season and shovelled Repka out to right-back where he can't do so much damage.

We'll see on the 16th !

Andy.

12:19 PM  

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