To hell in a handbasket

This is the poor soul who has landed himself right in the middle of a storm of protest in a place he probably couldn't find on a map before he arrived. Yes, please welcome Mr. Maricio Pochettino.

Huh? Who?

Precisely. Who the hell is Maricio Pochettino? Why have Southampton sacked a decent manager who looked like he was finally starting to get to grips with life in the Premier League, only to replace him with an unknown Argentine who doesn't speak English, has no knowledge or experience of the Premier League and has only ever managed one mediocre Spanish club who sacked him after he left the team nine points adrift at the bottom of the La Liga table? It is quite beyond reasoning.

Talk about a steep learning curve. Pochettino must have the abilities of a mountain goat to survive this tenure.

And what complete and utter wanker made this decision at Southampton? Where in the hell is the logic? Where is even the smallest scintilla of loyalty and common-sense? Southampton fans, former players and managers have been quick to castigate the Southampton board and howl in protest. And who can blame them? I'm a Spurs supporter but I do have deep sympathy with anyone following the Saints. With Adkins, I'd have given you a decent shot at staying in the Premier League this season. There was no guarantee of that, of course, but as mentioned, they did appear to be turning a corner.

With Pinocchio (as he must surely be called) how will they fare now? Well, I suppose it all depends on how motivating/demotiviating this absurd action is for the players. How frustrating is it going to be having to converse with your manager through a translator? How easy is it going to be performing for someone with no real pedigree or track-record? How easy will it be to adopt to a foreign manager's methods and tactics? Only time will tell.

For the fans sake, I hope he proves competent, but I now fear for their survival. The ship has well and truly sailed in the port of Southampton.

Breaking News: water is wet

Yes, water is indeed wet, it gets dark when the sun goes down, big tits are not good on a man and smoking 100 Rothmans a day is not healthy for you.

... oh, and yes, Luis Suarez is a diver.
Hm? What was that. Suarez is a diver? Are you sure? Well, yes, apparently the man who is whiter than white has confessed all when giving an interview to Fox Sports Argentina, admitting that his ridiculous swan dive when playing against Stoke was indeed an example of, how shall we say?, not so honest behaviour. That's right, Suarez is a contestant that didn't quite make the grade to appear on Tom Daley's reality television series Splash!

Of course the fact that Suarez has finally done the decent thing and admitted what every person on the planet already knows is not the interesting thing about all this nonsense. No. It's Brendan Rodgers sham anger at Suarez's admission, calling it "unacceptable" and letting us all know that the matter will be dealt with internally.

It seems that simulation begets simulation. Suarez's fake pole-axing after being assaulted by a feather, followed this week by Rodgers fake ire at finally finding-out in print what he'd seen first hand anyway. It's beyond belief.

Being the wise monkey with his hands over his eyes is not a sensible or credible approach, and it's halfway down the road to Kenny Dalglish's style of "deny everything" management. Perhaps Rodgers still believes the Earth is flat because he hasn't been up to space and seen it for himself? Maybe he's still holding-out hope that the Loch Ness monster will be found. And perhaps he still thinks that Liverpool are a big and important club.

In my view both Suarez and Rodgers should receive some kind of sanction for their gross dishonesty. Neither are oil paintings, so maybe they should be forced into this years annual gurning competition as a penalty - although Suarez does have an unfair advantage there.

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A couple of comments now. The first on my post about maintaining records of all betting activity:


Laurie Wakeham17 January 2013 02:27

I too have spent ages setting up spreadsheets.I have created a new one for 2013,along with a statsitics and prediction model spreadsheet(during work hours as im bored to death and need a new job desperately).

I'm hoping these pain staking hours of inputting statistics will pay off this year.So fingers crossed. Altho i still have to do an unders/over model too,but cant be arsed at the moment as its just too hot and being couped up in dark cave whilst its 40 degrees outside just isnt healthy,(almost as unhealthy as my betting account).

Good luck on your effort Laurie, although putting-up with that heat must be troublesome. You poor dear! And here we are in England, lucky enough to be enjoying snow blizzards and temperatures of -10 degrees. How you must envy us.

The other comment I have received recently was from Swearbox in response to my post on his blog:

Swearbox16 January 2013 19:22
"Don't spend more than three or four minutes reading the absolute shite in there as it will surely melt you brain. "

Hmmmm...I can't make up my mind whether you are referring to my blog posts or the comments that follow some of them. Hopefully it's the latter but clarification would be great.

As far as it becoming a 'mini-forum' then that's fairly accurate. As you pointed out in your piece above I am currently banned from the forums and have been for the best part of a year now. So if I have something to say that I would have said on the forums I say it on my blog. If others want to comment then I welcome that and it's fair to say that I don't spend too much time on moderating comments though I did go through a period where I had to censor a bunch of posts due to repetitive stupid remarks aimed at mr Bob Vegas that were uncalled for.

My own moderation policy has led to a tremendous amount of 'same old same old' crappy flame wars and my advice is if you don't want to read that then don't read it. In between the insults the comments also serve as a place where pleasantry is exchanged too (shock horror)! Having said that the meat of the blog is the posts and not the comments and I try to make it an interesting read and I've had many folk tell me they enjoyed reading it. 

I'll conclude by saying thanks for putting me in the spotlight...I'm not sure what sort of a readership you have but I suspect it's not huge as my stats don't show a tremendous influx of traffic coming from your site...nevertheless your post did generate some interest so thank you. If you really do find my blog distasteful then you always have the option of removing me from your blogroll which is entirely up to you but I would say that we're in the business of helping each other not obstructing each other. Anyway I'll shut up for now and end by wishing you the best for 2013 and beyond.

There are a few points here, so I'll try to address them. First, yes I was referring to the comments section of your particular post and not your blog in general. I'd have to agree that some of your posts are worth reading and you  can be entertaining. 

I do also take the point about bloggers generally supporting each other and I have no intention of removing you from my blogroll. I don't recall whether I'm on yours or not, but if I am and you decide to remove it, then that's entirely up to you - but it will not result in you being removed from mine. I am childish in many ways, but that would be a step too far, even for me.

My post was largely meant to highlight the low and very poor standard of the Betfair forum, which one of your posts appears to have become an extension of. My target was the lame bunch of people who don't seem to have anything better to do than cause trouble amongst themselves.

Other than that, there does seem to be a bit of "dick checking" hidden within your comments, and a "my dad is bigger than your dad" aspect. What do I mean? 

"'Im not sure what sort of a readership you have but I suspect it's not huge as my stats don't show a tremendous influx of traffic coming from your site"

That sounds like a challenge! I've only been going just over a year now on this blog, but attract between 450 and 500 hits each day and have around 90,000 overall. Judging by the small number of posts you generally make, I'd be surprised (but not shocked) if your equate to that.

... so you see my dick is indeed bigger than yours, and my dad could almost certainly tear your dad a new arsehole.

Cheers.
 

A record disaster

As most normal long-term bettors and traders, I keep regular records of my bets and trades. Probably like most of you, I've also spent a great deal of time creating a snazzy spreadsheet to suit my needs and my betting style. Over the years, I've built-up a full record of all my bets, the type of bets, which markets/trades are successful and which are less profitable or fail.

This of course is absolutely vital as our brains can fool us into thinking that we're doing well in one particular area (a couple of big wins has the ability to blind us) when in fact we're in the red. Over the years, I've dropped countless strategies that I "thought" were doing okay, but the stats proved otherwise.

Recently however, I've got myself into a bit of a sticky patch. I've always been prudent in updating my stats after each day's trading, but for some reason I've recently allowed myself to become lazy in this respect. My stats are very important to me, but I've now created a situation where I have masses of results to input and, much like a tax return or doing one's expenses (which incidentally I'm also behind on!), it has become something to avoid. Now after each day's trading, I feel a pang of regret and also slightly nervous at the thought of attacking my overdue stats.

I'm back in my hotel tomorrow night, and with a very slim football card, I shall bite the bullet and start working my way slowly through my stats backlog. It's not something that I want to do, but it's absolutely vital if I am in any way serious about my betting.

It's an old cliche, but if you haven't started logging your bets in a bespoke spready, then I would urge you to start doing so. I'm personally vowing never to get behind again - once I've finally got myself straight.

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It was about this time last year that I said to myself (and I think I may have even declared it on this blog) that I was going to get up and running with some serious tennis trading during 2012. Well, as we all know, I'm full of shit and beyond some vague Slam bets, I haven't really taken it seriously. Firstly, I just haven't found the time as I do spend a lot of time on my beloved footy, but also (in hindsight) I do believe it is sensible to stick with a speciality. My speciality is not tennis, it's football. It's the one sport I love watching and trading, but even if I wasn't trading it, I would still watch it and absorb all that's on offer. I suppose I just have to be honest with myself and state that I will never be a serious tennis trader. It's not my first love.

Regardless of all that, however, I will be "auto-trading" the early stages of the Australian Open. This was first highlighted by Peter Webb, but rounds One and Two throw-up a few 1.03/4 "certainties" that just have to be layed. And when I say layed, I mean lay them with a view to backing later if/when they start shakily. For example, Murray plays tonight and can be layed at 1.04. I fully expect him to win, but if his opponent should start well, or Murray starts slowly, then there will be a small drift to be taken advantage of. Laying five or six of these means only one favourite "wobble" will be enough for some green. If there is no wobble, there is still plenty of time to get out for a very small red.

Personally, I'll be firing-up Betangel and doing all this through automation. Hopefully I can wake-up in the morning and seen some profit somewhere. Either way, the liability is neglible:

Haase v Murray (1.04)
Darcis v Kohlscreiber (1.17)
Paire v Federer (1.04)
Sela v Davydenko (1.17)

When is a blog not a blog?

Answer: when it becomes a weird losers forum for the twisted, vindictive, mindless individuals who surely have no home life, no friends, and absolutely no edge in the betting game.

What am I on about? Well, I pop onto the Betfair forum every now and then, even though it is serious decline and is seemingly about to become completely moribund. Anyway, when I did have a look recently, I saw there was the usual break-out of spats between the various childish people on there - with one long-running argument between a couple of people who seem to have nothing better to do than spend all their time on the forum. Jesus, do these people even have time for betting?

I think I signed up for the Betfair forum at the beginning of 2008, and in those five years I think I've made less than 200 posts. But there are posters on the BF forum who have only signed-up a few months and yet have thousands of posts, and appear to have opinions on absolutely everything.

Don't ask me why, but I did revisit the forum again recently, and noticed that one of these individuals, a particularly sad specimen who used to trawl any running thread to see where he could make trouble, had managed to get himself banned from the forum.

Swearbox from the blog The Expat Punter, and someone who also managed to get himself banned from the Betfair forum, posted an entry on this individual (HERE) - and it duly sparked a running flame war in the comments section of that post that continues even now. There are now over 800 comments for Swearbox's post, including multiple comments from the subject of the post, who of course has nowhere else to peddle his poisonous views.

So now that blog has seemingly turned into a mini-forum of some description - although I do warn you. Don't spend more than three or four minutes reading the absolute shite in there as it will surely melt you brain. Talk about old women, it's unbelievable. Backwards and forwards, going over the same ground time upon time. It's breathtaking how much time some people are willing to dedicate to absolutely nothing.

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Yes, we were all greeted with this familiar page again today, and on this occasion the timing could not have been better (or worse). Three O'clock on a Saturday afternoon. Oh dear oh dear.

Luckily I only had a few straight bets on (some dutch's) that I had no intention of changing, so I wasn't affected, but I do know a great many were as they were locked-out of open positions for the whole of the first half of matches.

Yes another PR disaster for the greatest betting exchange in the world.