Week 5: North of the Border

With the great results gained by England and the surprise performances from players such as Emile Heskey and Gareth Barry I will be resisting the urge to put all my money on wins for Wigan and Aston Villa.

This weekend's Premier League fixture list is a little disappointing. Chelsea v Blackburn is the only match I would consider a probable result, but Blackburn have been playing very well so far, and it would be unwise to bet on them losing here.

In the Championship, the league has not yet settled down. There are no teams on exceptional form yet and several of the sides at the foot of the table are in false positions.

I rate the strongest sides as West Brom, Charlton and Wolves and none of these three are playing at home this week, so I have no matches to back confidently.

Scotland is my next option and luckily, Celtic play Inverness Caledonian at Celtic Park. Celtic have won 4 out of their first 5 matches and Inverness have lost all 5. I hope this weekend isn't the start of a recovery for Inverness!

The odds I presume will be poor, however, I feel confident about the result. I will bet the full 15% which means a £16.63 bet on Celtic to win.

Week 2: Opportunities Missed!

Last weekend virtually every prediction I made came true. Unfortunately I chose not to put any money on any of them.

The Manchester derby and Liverpool v Chelsea proved to be bad choices with City winning and the others playing out a draw, and the Tottenham match finished 4-0 to Spurs, after I said that they would probably thump Derby.

Another match which I considered, Rangers v Falkirk also proved to be very one sided - Rangers won 7-2!

Oh well.

At least I didn't lose anything!

Balance... still the same: £103.90

Week 2: Too tough to call

No obvious mid week fixtures and a poor set of matches for the weekend leave me considering not making any bets at all.

Liverpool and Chelsea play each other, Arsenal are away at Blackburn and Manchester Utd take on City in the Manchester derby.

This only leaves Tottenham, who play Derby County, as a team for me to back. I usually don’t have faith in Spurs, however after 2 early defeats they desperately need a good performance in front of their home fans to get their season up and running.

I expect them to beat Derby but the rules I set out at the beginning state that I can’t bet on a team with poor form even if it is this early in the season.

In Scotland, the fixtures are slightly better with Hearts playing Gretna and Rangers v Falkirk, however neither are good enough to risk a bet.

I’m going to have to wait until next week to have another flutter.