On the 24th May 2008 Ricky ‘The Hitman’ Hatton will be taking on the Mexican Juan Lazcano at the City of Manchester stadium to defend his IBO light-welterweight title.  Everything about the planning of this fight suggests that he has learnt from his defeat against Floyd Mayweather in Vegas last December.   Back on UK soil, and fighting in his hometown of Manchester, Ricky is also dropping back down to the light-welterweight division, where (on the strength of his undefeated record) he is most comfortable.  Essentially a ‘thank you’ to his fans for their support during his professional career, the bout should prove to be exhibition stuff from Ricky. 
 
His opponent Juan Lazcano is a former WBF and IBA lightweight title holder and has won 37 out of his 42 fights, with 4 defeats.  There has been some criticism over Ricky’s choice of opponent, with some critics saying that Lazcano was chosen purely to guarantee victory for Hatton’s homecoming fight.  Before the contract was signed with Lazcano, WBC junior welterweight champion Junior Witter was in talks for the fight.  A tough boxer, Witter’s record of 36 wins, 2 draws and only 1 defeat speaks for itself and when negotiations collapsed he claimed that Ricky backed down from the fight because he was scared of losing in front of his fans.  Witter has branded the upcoming title fight a “total joke” but one shouldn’t write off Lazcano’s fighting ability.  With sports betting websites offering odds on a home win for Hatton at 1/7, the bookies certainly think victory is assured.  Blue Square’s round by round betting odds suggest that the bookies anticipate Lazcano to last the full twelve and with 42 professional fights under his belt and over 15 years professional experience to draw on Lazcano should put up a decent fight to entertain the crowd.

For the first time in European Cup and Champions league history the final of the Champions league will be an all-English affair, between Manchester United and Chelsea.  Taking place on 21st May at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow anticipation is reaching fever pitch, with a pair of tickets to the final going on ebay for well in excess of £1000.  Cheap flights to Moscow are being snapped up by fans and Russian authorities are expecting in the region of 50,000 Brits to make the trip over for the final.  These numbers are based on ticket allocation so the actual numbers may be even higher, which has given the stern Russian police something to think about. 

Manchester United go into the final undefeated in their 2007-08 season, after Paul Scholes scored an absolute belter against Barcelona in a tense 1-0 victory on aggregate that secured their place in the final.   Chelsea have lost just one game on the road to the final (the quarter-final first leg against Fenerbahçe) and they looked on blistering form in their 3-1 win over Liverpool in the semi’s.

 

Football betting websites are expecting record numbers of bets to be placed by punters for the final.  Some of the bets that could be worth a punt include first goal scorer Christiano Ronaldo at 11/2, Didier Drogba at 7/1 and a 2-1 score line to Manchester United at 9/1 or Chelsea at 10/1 from Blue Square betting.  With the trophy at stake I expect the game to be tight with only one or two goals reaching the back of the net.  With two teams so equally matched the likelihood of the winner’s being decided in extra time is quite high (11/1 on Blue Square), which would make for an exciting, if nerve-racking, finish.

With summer well on its way it is nearly time for that great British institution, Wimbledon tennis.  Always an exciting tournament, this year’s men’s singles has the potential to be the most memorable since wildcard Goran Ivanišević landed the title in 2001.  The unstoppable force of Roger Federer, Wimbledon’s ‘resident’ champion since 2003, will be looking to make history by beating Björn Borg’s record of five consecutive wins at SW19.  However, Rafael Nadal will be doing his best to stand in Federer’s way by scoring his first Wimbledon title, after two successive runner-up positions.
If you are into your sports betting then Federer is still the safe bet for outright winner, despite his recent relatively poor form and failure to secure a title in 2008 so far.  Blue Sq currently has Federer 4/5 favourite to win Wimbledon in 2008, with Nadal at 6/1.  On the strength of Nadal’s previous performances (he has reached the Wimbledon final twice, in 2006 and 2007) and his impressive recent form (he claimed victory over Federer at the final of the Monte Carlo Masters, the first title of the 2008 tennis season) bookies are tipping him as a serious contender for the title.

 Federer’s defeat in Monte Carlo was the world number one’s third loss in a row against Nadal, and with the legendary Björn Borg coming out to publically back the Spaniard for victory at Wimbledon in 2008, he must be confident of going one step above his previous placements.  Other genuine threats to Federer’s crown come from the up-and-coming Serbian, Novak Đjoković, who won the Australian Open in 2008, and America’s Andy Roddick who has been enjoying a recent return to form.  Some book makers are tipping Đjoković as the main contender to Federer (with odds as high as 3/1), but at the age of twenty, he may still be a little too young to clinch the title in 2008.
    
One of the most distinctive characteristics of Wimbledon is that the matches are played on grass (the only of the four Grand slam tournaments where this is still the case) and this should be bared in mind when hypothesizing about the eventual winner.  Đjoković remains comparatively inexperienced on this surface compared to his counterparts.  Having many years experience on grass to draw on, Federer is probably the most confident, but Nadal is capable on any surface, and in my opinion, the major threat to the Austrian.  What’s more, having reached the final twice before and with such a close match in 2007, Nadal may be able to draw on past experiences and go one better this year.  However, Federer is not a man to be underestimated and with a place in tennis history at stake, plus of course the small matter of the £750,000 prize money, you’d be foolish to write him off as the main contender for the title.

All indications are that Martin Johnson will take over the role of England Rugby manager. The RFU has given Rob Andrew their support to bring Johnson onto the team and the man himself has given signs that he is keen to take over the position.

There was an initial meeting between Andrew and Johnson just over a fortnight ago and since then Andrew has laid out a ‘much fuller brief to enable the former captain to lay down foundations that might help England emulate the success of the 2003 side.’

Well, I hope it works out for him. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. And that is a crucial point; shoes not boots. Brian Moore has already commented on the necessity of a distanced relationship between players and management, one that through ‘creating a temporary “them and us” situation can [become] a valuable psychological tool available to a captain’.

What Moore is highlighting is that Johnson cannot be mates any more. He has to be tough, clinical and detached, and will probably have to drop some of his former team-mates and friends to forge a decent team. He will have to fully adapt to his role as a manager and the un-studded footwear this entails if he is to have any measure of success.

The harsh reality is however, that he will probably fail. He is fairly inexperienced, certainly as far as management decisions are concerned, and he has an almost impossible legacy to live up to. The British public, press and pundits alike are absolutely ruthless when it comes to managers and if Johnson doesn’t get England into the World Cup finals in 2011 (as Woodward and Ashton have done) he will be deemed a failure.

I never thought I’d ever feel sorry for a rugby player but you can see the kind of position Johnson is in; damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. Either his professional life has to give way to his professional one, or vice-versa, and which ever way round this occurs, it will probably taint his career for the rest of his sporting life. Poor bloke, what has he got himself in for.

The advent of online betting on the Internet has changed the face of gambling in this country. Once limited to a flutter on the horses or the outcome of football matches, betting opportunities now extend to almost every sport imaginable, anywhere in the world, and there is no shortage of imagination on the part of the bookies to make all manner of bets available to an ever growing army of online betting enthusiasts.

Darts is a perfect example of this and there can be little doubt that the huge growth of public interest in darts in recent years has been fed to some extent by people being able to bet with ease with a laptop on the knee while they watch the quite extensive coverage darts now gets on mainline TV.

Online betting sites such as Blue Square cover not just the big world events such as the PDC World Championship but also open up the world of Premier League darts with tournaments going on all year in all parts of the country - including their own sponsored BlueSq UK Open at the Telford International Centre. You’ll find many sites offering odds on all manner of international matches including the PDC US Open in Connecticut and many other Internationals across Europe and the Far East – sites like FreeBettingOnline.co.uk offer a good overview of the different betting sites available, as well as details on where you can pick up free bets.

Most darts betting is focused on the PDC World Darts Championship which occurs at the end of the year. Darts legend, Phil Taylor is currently the favourite to win at 2/1 with James Wade and Raymond van Barneveld  at 9/2. Much can happen over the year, however and it’s worth following the Premier League fixtures to see the ups and downs of form that will occur. Hero Phil Taylor is offered at 5/6 to win the Darts Premiership but he’s coming to the end of his career now and there are a number of young pretenders snapping at his heels.

Many bookmakers offer live online betting in darts tournaments so you can follow the play and lay new bets as events unfold and odds change. This can be a very exciting experience but you need to be quick witted to keep up with the changes. Betting-directory.com for example offers direction not just to a full range of relevant sites but also lists the odds available from them on a particular event and even lists the free bets on offer to new customers signing up for the first time.

Opening an account on an online betting site could hardly be easier with just a few details to be entered, a credit card, a couple of clicks and you’re away. No more trudging down to the betting shop on a rainy afternoon to hang around in a smoky atmosphere and no telly to watch. Now you can invite your friends round for drinks and watch the event live in your own front room.

And then there’s the vast number of sites offering betting advice. You can easily check out the latest gossip, inside stories, tips and statistics to help you make your decisions and increase your chances of coming out on top.

 

All odds taken from Blue Square online betting 

Fernando Torres has set Liverpool alight this season. So long criticised as a one man team, Gerrard has found himself accompanied by a world class forward for the first time since the departure of Michael Owen and the two together have been the driving force behind Liverpool’s season.


Obviously Benitez would have hoped that his team would be closer to the title this season. Torres didn’t play enough earlier in the season as evidenced by Liverpool’s poor form, that has only been resolved now that Benitez has settled on a formation and a team and given his players the opportunity to perform week in, week out.

So the Champions League is left as the only reasonable avenue for success, and Liverpool find themselves against an Arsenal side that until recently looked like it was reeling. The performance against Bolton was not fantastic, but Arsenal showed the grit that has been lacking from their performances in recent weeks and the morale boost from such a remarkable victory could swing the balance back in the favour of Wenger’s men.

In Torres though, Benitez has the form player on the pitch. He has pace, technique, an eye for goal, and even poses a not inconsiderable threat in the air. If Arsenal manage to restrict Torres in both the home and away legs they will go through, but the likelihood of that seems low, particularly if Gerrard finds his best form.

Torres is certainly one of, if not the best, buy of the season, and if he continues to improve then next season he will truly be a force to be reckoned with. For the moment he could quite possibly take Liverpool all the way in the Champions League, there is no defence in the world that will not have problems with him.

Blue Square Football Betting currently offer odds of 6/1 on Liverpool to win the Champions League

England’s lacklustre display against an admittedly talented French side produced few positives which Capello can take forwards into his next match, a friendly against USA. It did, however, prove conclusively that Wayne Rooney is not the type of player that functions as a lone striker.

Rooney is, obviously, an extremely talented player, but as he has proved on occasions with Manchester United this season, his enthusiasm to get hold of the ball at all times can prove his undoing. In the breakaway goal from which Portsmouth won their penalty in the FA Cup this season, instead of following his man back, Rooney burst across the pitch in hunt of the ball, and thus found himself out of position.

A similar thing – though less grievous – happened in Paris tonight. A low cross from the left resulted in Coupet tipping the ball clear, just past a sprawling Beckham who had cut in from the right flank. The ball rolled clear and Abidal, the French left back, broke up the wing to provide an option for the French as they carried the ball clear. To his credit Rooney sprinted back to cover Beckham, only for the ball to be won by the England midfield who then looked to hit the French on the counter. Only Beckham was in the French third and he was returning to his position on the flank.

Capello’s new look England side are supposed to be playing the ball on the ground more, keeping possession and trying to pick holes in the opposition. This is fine, except every now and then they resort to the high looping ball forwards, and at Rooney this is as good as giving the ball to the opposition on a plate. Rooney is the perfect player for the kind of game that Capello wants to play, just look at the way United tear teams apart on the break, but he is far too fond of dropping short to retrieve the ball to work as a lone front man.

To Capello’s credit, he acknowledged this at half time and brought Rooney off to have a look at the little and large combination of Crouch and Owen. One would imagine that the Italian will not field many sides without Rooney and so this ploy became what it will only ever be, a Plan B, nonetheless though whilst United can function with one up front and two others in forward wing positions down the flanks England apparently cannot. Firstly, the national team does not have players of Ronaldo and Tevez’s talent, nor does Capello have the time to allow an understanding develop across his front three that Ferguson has been able to build at United.

Rooney is, however, England’s only world-class forward man and that poses Capello a problem, England looked solid, relatively well-organised and showed patches of the kind of football which the Italian is aiming for, but all the same they also looked toothless and Rooney up front alone is not the solution to the problem.

The idea of the Olympic games being held in Beijing has been a controversial idea since it first emerged that the Chinese capital was bidding to host the biggest sporting event on earth. The idea of China’s questionable human rights record was at the centre of these criticisms, with plans such as those to hold the beach volleyball in Tiananmen Square receiving denunciations from human rights groups throughout the world.

The hope was that with the eyes of the world watching them the Chinese government would be forced to improve their record with human rights. With recent events in Tibet and Amnesty International declaring that China is clamping down on dissent in order to portray a harmonious and stable image, a report has recently been published declaring that a positive human rights legacy will be practically impossible to achieve.

World leaders, most notably US President George Bush, have come under pressure to boycott the Games’ opening as a sign of discontent with the Chinese government. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has already declared that she will not attend, and the signs are looking increasingly likely that French president Nicholas Sarkozy will follow suit.

China has responded by declaring that Amnesty International is prejudiced against China and that any attempts to put pressure on Beijing ahead of the games will not have any success. Amnesty International in return have pointed out that the idea of the Olympic games as a positive force for change is being undermined, as a wave of repressions has spread across the country simply because the world is watching and the Chinese government want to put on a good show.

In truth no country will boycott the Olympic games in China, irrelevant of whether morally they should do. They are too big to be stopped, and though certain individuals may call for a boycott, it will not happen on a wide enough scale to have a significant political impact. In fact, the most telling political impact of the games may well be that of China topping the medal table in it’s own backyard.

Perhaps it’s just me but I can’t help but think that tonight’s international has an almost inconsequential feel about it. The game is a friendly and I suppose it would be hard for followers of the English national team not to have developed a slightly jaded attitude towards such fixtures having endured years of inconclusive and at time offensively abject performances. Should such games be considered opportunities for experimentation, a chance to test fresh blood and trial new formations or maybe to do the opposite – to establish a well honed first team used to playing alongside each other? This is the oft cited dilemma is the core of the problem – what are friendlies for?

The thing is, despite this widespread sense of resignation (there can be few of us who settle down to watch an England friendly genuinely expecting a thrilling spectacle) such is the media fueled hysteria that surrounds the national game, accentuated in this case by the dreaded prospect of this summer’s England-free European Championship, we seize upon any such occasion to draw unrealistically definitive conclusions about the state of our national team.  An unexpectedly impressive performance will be heralded as the dawn of a glorious new era and an insipid, lackluster game will inspire another round of tabloid doom-mongering and calls for an inquest into ‘grass-roots’ failings.

Whilst tonight’s game might struggle to assert itself amidst the din of end of season excitement I think that for once this is a friendly that might justifiable be deemed a telling measure of England’s prospects. It is, after all, only our second outing under a new regime; we’ve grown used to Capello’s emotionally removed presence by now; the lurking figure in the stands, quietly considering his options. Like Juande Ramos at Spurs he seems to represent a new, more disciplined and stand-offish approach; could this be what we need? Will this reserved, tactically measured version of our national sport rescue us from whatever enigmatic failings have previously held us back?

France should pose a sterner test than Switzerland, Capello’s first opponents and to beat them in their own back yard would be a pointedly significant achievement. France might be considered a waning force these days; memories of the all-conquering, cosmopolitan team of a few years ago, of Zidane, Desailly and Thuram, are starting to fade, even the then second wave of stars – Henry, Vieira and Trezeguet – are by now on their way out. Tonight’s game, albeit an ultimately inconsequential friendly, could mark a significant turning point; for England a chance to feel that the possibility of developing, unhindered for now by the mass hysteria of competitive football, is real and for France an indication that something new is required.            

Tonight’s odds: France 11/8 England 21/10 Draw 2/1

Odds taken from Blue Square Online Betting.

There’s a fairly obvious reason for football’s burgeoning popularity in the sports betting market – everyone thinks they’re an expert.
It should hardly come as a surprise that there are far more people out there who fancy their chances of winning a football bet than, say, horse racing. Football is, you might have noticed, hugely popular which means there are millions of potential punters out there, in comparison horse racing remains a fairly specialist area of knowledge.

Fundamentally, having a bit of knowledge about whatever sport you’re betting on is a good idea so you’d imagine that there should really be far more football bet winners than there actually are. After all, if you know a bit about the game you’d probably fancy your chances of being able to correctly predict the outcome at least three or four games out of ten, if not the exact result then at least the winning team. For most punters who place the odd football bet however I’d guess that regular success is surprisingly hard to come by.

So, for anyone who finds themselves wondering why they can’t translate their formidable football knowledge into reliable betting profits, here’s a few pointers:

•    Keep things simple: There’s  a vast array of ridiculously complicated bets out from the ‘Goliath’ to the ‘Super Heinz’ and whilst it might be tempting to keep adding extra’s until the potential winnings are enough to retire on what you’re actually doing is making the likelihood of winning at all incredibly remote. Any practiced punter will tell you that the key to turning a regular profit is to keep things simple.
This is particularly true of football where punters are presented with a multitude of betting opportunities from who’s going to score the first goal to what the half time score will be. You’re honestly better off sticking to a simple bet on the winner – a small profit is better than no profit.

•    Similarly, don’t be tempted by a long shot just because the potential gains are bigger. A long shot is a long shot for a reason and bookies know what they’re doing – betting on a 60/1 outsider is, in most cases, a mistake.

•    There’s nothing wrong with making the occasional bet for entertainment but if you want to turn a regular profit from sports betting you really need to snap out of that way of thinking – bookies will always take a more objective profit driven point of view, as a punter you should be doing the same.