Tonight's Matches

Brazil looked reasonably comfortable last night in the opening match. Great strike from Neymar in the first couple of minutes, and the last goal was very slick also.

By the way, don't worry about getting an early night tonight in preparation for work in the morning, and forget all about that boring golf competition that's going on somewhere in America. Instead, settle down to BBC2 and BBC1 at 8:00 and 11:00 this evening and watch Mexico v Italy and Spain v Uruguay.

Everyone's is predicting a low-scoring affair in the first match, and that may well be the case. Personally I'll be scalping this match only, which will allow me to dip in and out of the match as the action rises and falls (hopefully it does rise occasionally). The advantage of scalping the whole match, of course, is that I'm not taking a position throughout the entire course of the match. I'll just be making hay during the appropriate trends of the game.

With regards to the second match, I said yesterday that I'm interested in Uruguay, and indeed I am. Up front they have Diego Forlan and Luis (Red Rum) Suarez, and they are both prolific for their national side, even though as a team they are struggling to make it to next year's World Cup.

Spain are obviously favourites for this match but, all things being equal, you would expect both teams to get out of the group, with Nigeria and Tahiti failing to progress if the form book is right. A draw wouldn't be a particularly bad result for either team, but with this competition not having the same kudos as the major ones, I'm hoping that all the teams will play with a little more bravado and openness than normal.

So, with the array of attacking talent on both sides (Suarez especially will want to impress the likes of Real and Barcelona), alongside some signs of occasional defensive frailties, I'm guessing there might be one or two goals in tonight's match.

Dave from Betfair Football Trading - the highs and lows is a great advocate of, what he has termed, the Scatter Gun, whereby you back pre-match 1-1, 2-1 and 1-2, and then perhaps 20 minutes in when the odds are good enough, a little back of 2-2 also. This is his mainstay strategy and it's held him in good stead. If you're not familiar with it, then I suggest you pop over to his blog and devour everything on there. Do note, however, that this is a trading strategy and not a set-and-leave approach. You need to manage these scores in-play.

I'm not sure the starting odds are quite right as far as Dave might be concerned (perhaps Spain would be a little short for his liking), but personally I think this is a reasonable fit for this match and that's what I'll be going for. I'll obviously also do a bit of scalping on this one also, as it can help iron-out the kinks in pretty much any chosen strategy.

Good luck tonight if you trade.