Nearly for Madrid (and me)

Mixed weekend on the betting front this week, did mainly 'Any Unquoted Score' on Betfair, again with limited success.

Was going to do either Chelsea or Arsenal for the Saturday 3pm bet, went with Arsenal as thought Birmingham might crumble a bit in 2nd half, and Chelsea scored after 15 mins so there was no value in the price (or so I wrongly thought). Just about my luck.

Won a few pound on Man Utd putting 4 past Bolton, lost on some correct score bets on Saturday afternoon's Premier League games, also lost on Barcelona for 'Any Unquoted' and lost on the correct score with Zaragoza V Valencia.

Did get my money back on Arsenal game, as laid the 0-1 to cover my bets, about 5 minutes before Almunia set up Kevin Phillips injury time equaliser. Wasn't too impressed though as did Arsenal 2-0 and 2-1 in-running and apparently Nasri missed a sitter to make it 2-0 just before Phillips' goal.

Laid Villareal at HT against Sevilla and was well happy when some donkey missed a sitter 5 mins into 2nd half for Sevilla, could have been different if he'd scored, so lost there as well. Also did Madrid on Any Unquoted and laid off my loses for a free bet, wasn't happy with 3-2 result though. Again, another close call.

All-in all about a tenner down which isn't a disaster (only using a small betting bank). The Man Utd win basically subsidised my weekends gambling.

Think I'm going to stick with backing the 'Any Unquoted Scores' for a while and see how it goes, it's more a matter of timing the bet properly. No point backing the likes of Madrid, Man Utd, Chelsea or Barca at the start, as sometimes the price is as low as 5/2 to 3/1, which is ridiculous.

Generally try to wait til the half hour mark and hope it's still 0-0. Or if theres an early goal wait for the hour mark and if only still 1-0, then get on. Not sure if it a sustainable long term bet, but going to give it a run for rest of the season, haven't bottomed out my account on it yet!

What about Arsene Wenger saying to a journo "Leave me alone with that, for fuck's sake," because the hack was trying to provoke him into saying Birmingham had kicked lumps out of his side. Makes a change, he is usually only too happy to point the finger at the opposition.