Sports Handicapper

Tottenham Hotspur trip to the Emirates Stadium on Saturday & I think Arsenal fans will constantly remind them that they’ve not won a league title in fifty years. To be precise, the Spurs have only won 2 league trophies in their entire 118-year history (1950-1951 and 1960 1961). Pretty poor for a club with such a great history and support.

Spurs have been fairly inconsistant over the last few weeks and with such a bad record away at Arsenal, Spurs fans will be hoping that the good Spurs turn up on the day.

There is some hope for them though – Arsenal have previously lost two home games to poorer sides this season and a third could be on the cards.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has a few selection dilemmas for the preparation of this weekend North London derby, live on Sky Sports on Saturday afternoon (12:45). Laurent Koscielny returns from suspension & could replace either Sebastian Squillaci or Johan Djourou. Jack Wilshere was sent home from the England camp this week and given his ability, he could be a great loss to the Gunners in the middle of the park.

Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp will be without midfielder Tom Huddlestone, who suffered an injury blow in last weekends game against Blackburn & he’s expected to be sidelined for at least two months. Jermaine Jenas is a possible replacement for Huddlestone, but Redknapp’s woes lies in the heart of their defence. Former Arsenal defender William Gallas may make his return to the Emirates and is bound to get a frosty reception. It waits to be seen if Harry takes a risk and plays the Frenchman.

I always look forward to these great derbies and I believe this could be a cracker. From a betting point of view, I would say leave it alone.

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It definately makes sense to wait for a few weeks into the season before placing any significant bets. I would suggest waiting at least five or six games in order to see how teams settle down and to see if there are any underlying trends that surface.

The betting public always overestimates how good certain teams are and always overestimates how bad teams are. It is therefore worth waiting to see how certain teams perform both Home and away at least a couple of times. Teams are rarely as good as people think and therefore the Draw can sometimes be where the value is. Draws are an unpopular bet and the Bookies often price this incorrectly in order to sell the bet.  Bear this in mind before backing strong favourites at home against, so called bad teams.

It is also worth saying that when betting fixed odds football you should always bet at the best odds available. Most people don’t do this. If you are serious about betting then you should have accounts with all of the major Bookmakers and you should use sites like Oddschecker to see who is offering what.  Do not  forget that you can transfer you money in and out of these accounts, so you don’t need to have piles of money sitting around.

Taking the best odds available will seriously improve your bottom line.

The other mistake that most rookie bettors make when starting out is having no money management in place.  Staking is probably the most important skill to master when betting. I would suggest that you use TSM The Staking Machine software for this purpose. It has nearly all of the best staking plans built into it. You can use the famous Kelly criterion for instance. This is a complicated stake to work out manually but can be done very easily with the TSM. Anyone serious should consider this as part of their betting tool kit. They have recently added automation as well which means you can hook it up to the Gruss Betfair software. Useful if you have a system that you could automate.

So, it Friday and we now only have hours to wait until the new season starts. I for one cannot wait. Even with the distraction of the World Cup in the Summer, it feels like along time coming.

Will we have another topsy turvy season like last year?

To kick us off we have a great game in store. Last years 4th Spot Tottenham Hotspur play at home against big spenders Man City. 64 million pounds has been spent by Man City in a desperate bid for the Title and Champions League Football. Last year they were beaten to 4th by Spurs in a tight battle almost down to the wire. Can Man City take revenge? Its a mouth watering prospect and is Live on Sky on Saturday morning.

Spurs do have a magnificent recent record against Man City having won 11 of their last 12 meetings and their home form is generally very good. Harry has not added much to the squad so far but Spurs do have strength in depth. Great Pre season form from Robbie Keane and Dos Santos has made Harry think again about moving them on.

Mancini has on the other hand has spent the summer restructuring his entire squad. The signings of Boaetang,Tore, Kolarov, Milner and Silva are a clear intent of City’s ambitions this year. Its yet to be seen if this group of players have gelled, so all in all this makes for an intruiging encounter.

From a betting perspective, I think that this is too tight to call. I expect there will be goals , so a possible bet on Over 2.5 Goals maybe worth a small bet.

Here we go…wooo hooo.

ps..

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