online sports betting news

2010 SPORTS BETTING PREVIEW

The turn of the new year is here, and top of the headlines will of course be the 2010 World Cup, being held in South Africa. After all the qualification dust has settled, the thirty two teams involved, know their opponents, and begin their final preparations ahead of the June 11 kick off. But there is much more to look forward to on the sporting front in 2010, and here we take a look at some of the highlights of the forthcoming year of sport, and provide you the opportunity to get some early ante-post betting action on some of the major sporting events to come in 2010.

FOOTBALL:

• World Cup 2010 will dominate the headlines for much of the year, and the opening game between South Africa and Mexico on June 11, will herald in another exciting tournament of thrills and spills. For once, England go into the competition on the back of more than just the optimism of a nation, they  actually look as if they have a good chance of winning the tournament for the second time in their history. They will of course have to overcome favourites Spain (9/2 at William Hill) and Brazil (11/2 at Ladbrokes), but England (11/2 at Boylesports) are looking to be in better shape than they have done in previous tournaments. They have a manager with tactical nous, and a good blend of experience and youth. They should go deep, but how far, is the question.
• The African Cup of Nations, which takes place in January, always attracts a lot of interest, simply because of the rise in popularity of the African based players across Europe. With the likes of Chelsea’s Didier Drogba and Michael Essien among the top African names playing in the Premier League, the tournament itself courts controversy over its timing. Clubs across Europe lose their best players for the beginning of the new year, which is always a tough time, and therefore there have been calls to get the tournament moved. Still, it will showcase the best Africa have to offer, and with the World Cup being held on the African continent for the first time in history, there will be keen eyes upon Ghana (13/5 at 888Sport), Cameroon (6/1 at Stan James), Ivory Coast (13/5 at Stan James), Egypt (9/1 at Paddy Power) and Algeria (12/1 at Blue Square), who are England’s group opponents at the World Cup.
• The English Premier League will continue to take heavy betting, especially because of how open things are this year. It looks as if there will be a real scrap for the top between Chelsea (10/11 at 888Sport) and Manchester United (5/2 at Boylesports), but Arsenal (4/1 at Paddy Power) cannot be discounted either. Everyone is losing unexpected points, and the standards seem to have dropped. With defending champions Manchester United having lost 5 games already, there looks to be more twists and turns to come. A lot will depend on how Chelsea cope during January with the loss of Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou, two of their three first choice strikers.

CRICKET:

• The Ashes will again be the highlight of the year, which take place in November. The coming together of Australia and England, is always a fixture which will whet the whistle of cricketing fans, not only from those two nations, but from across the World. England regained the Ashes in the summer of 2009, much to the delight of the home crowds across the UK. It was a battling series, maybe not as much glamour and hype as previous encounters, but one that makes the return date in Australia a tantalising one. England lost heavily there last time out, started out by Steve Harmison’s wayward first ball of the first test, and captain Andrew Strauss will want to ensure that they at least go there and put up a staunch defence. England are 6/4 at SkyBet to Retain the Ashes. But, if you want Series Wins, then Australia are 4/7 at Stan James, and England are 9/2 at Victor Chandler. A drawn series will fetch you 5/1 at Totesport. England have another very busy fixture list for 2010, with test series to come against Bangladesh and Pakistan and a one day series against Australia. All of that takes place before the Ashes of course, and will prove to be another very long and tiring season for the players on an England contract.
• The IPL will have all the glitz and glamour that cricket is not particularly used to. The Indian Premier League attracts some of the greatest talent from across the world, to take part in its exciting Twenty20 league format. There is a wealth of money at stake, with players being paid high contracts to take part, but from a cricket fans point of view, it provides some exhilarating excitement nonetheless.
• The Twenty20 World Cup takes place in April, with Pakistan (6/1 at 888Sport) looking to retain the title which they surprisingly won at the 2009 tournament. This not a format of the game at which England (12/1 at Stan James) have a good track record, and are easily out powered by the likes of Sri Lanka (5/1 at Sporting Bet), India (9/2 at Sporting Bet), South Africa (4/1 at 888Sport) and Australia (11/2 at 888Sport), who will all be heading a tight field to the win the tournament being held in the West Indies.

TENNIS:

• The only question on the lips of UK tennis fans, is whether or not great British hope Andy Murray will be able to win his first Grand Slam tournament. Murray’s chances at the Australian Open (11/2 at Boylesports), Wimbledon (5/1 at Sporting Bet), the French Open (16/1 at William Hill) and the US Open (9/2 at SkyBet) are the biggest dates in the Tennis calendar, and the ones the Scot will be targeting the hardest. He will have his hands full though, and winning next year, will, in all essence, be a bigger achievement than if would have pulled out a victory in 2009. Why? Because the players at the top of the men’s tennis tour is simply getting stronger. Not only is there Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer to cope with, there is the likes of Del Potro, who Murray encountered several times in 2009, to contend with. He will remain one of the top favourites going into the tournaments, and his first chance will come in the Australian Open. Murray is 7/4 at BetFred to win 1 Grand Slam in 2010.
• After the incredible coming out of retirement for Kim Clijsters who won the US Open, Justin Henin has been inspired to make a comeback on the women’s tour and is 5/1 at Stan James to repeat Clijsters’ feat at the US Open. Her main aim though will be to win the Wimbledon crown (7/1 at Totesport), as that remains the only Grand Slam which she could never lay her hands upon.

RUGBY UNION:

• The Six Nations will dominate proceedings on the international scene, and once again, England manager Martin Johnson will come under the very hot spotlight. After looking lack lustre and directionless through the Autumn Test, how much longer will Johnson survive if England do not start pulling together something in the Six Nations? Yes, he had injuries to contend with, but that does not excuse the often baffling tactics being put to practice, as was seen in the Autumn matches. England, on the basis of those games, have a long way to go if they are going to challenge for the title. England’s first match is against Wales at Twickenham and that could be the springboard to a little optimism and progress, or simply a jump into the shallow end for Johnson and his backroom staff. Current champions Ireland (11/4 at Stan James), along with France (7/4 at Stan James) will head to the tournament as the strongest teams, the Irish just edging it as favourites. England are 9/2 at Boylesports, Wales are 4/1 at 888Sport and Scotland are 22/1 at Boylesports.
• The Guinness Premier League has come under some criticism, with pundits concerned that is it not as strong as it has been in the past, and that quality is slipping? This sounds terribly similar to the case of football’s English Premier League. Still, the participants and managers in the league will beg to differ, certainly those battling for the top. Saracens (9/2 at Coral), Northampton (9/2 at Bet365), London Irish (3/1 at Ladbrokes) and Leicester (5/2 at Ladbrokes) will all fancy their chances of claiming the honours, while Leeds Carnegie look favourites to be relegated (2/5 at Totesport).
• Rugby Union’s equivalent of the Champions League, the Heineken Cup, continues on into 2010, with the cream of the domestic European teams battling it out. French side Biarritz (7/1 at Sporting Bet) and Welsh side Ospreys (18/1 at Ladbrokes) are looking strong in the competition so far, but the experience of Irish side Munster (7/2 at Sporting Bet) should see them go deep into the competition. From an English perspective, it will be London Irish (14/1 at Totesport) and Leicester (40/1 at BetFred) leading the charge.

FORMULA ONE:

• The big news is that the legend of Michael Schumacher is back behind the wheel of a F1 car. Schumacher takes a drive for Mercedes (which is the Brawn team with which Jenson Button won the title with in 2009), and that will, no doubt, inject a great deal of interest into the new season. There will be much speculation over how many races the great German one will be able to win (Over 2.5 at Bet365 is 5/1), and there will be some money going on him to win the Driver’s Championship (5/1 at William Hill). He will have a fight on his hand against his aging years, trying to battle against younger men, but his meticulous drive for perfection is one that will no doubt make the best constructor on the circuit, even better. Britain will have two World Champions running through the season, and the Jenson Button (15/2 at Stan James) v Lewis Hamilton (11/4 at Stan James) will be as great a battle to watch, as the one between Fernando Alonso (4/1 at Boylesports) and Michael Schumacher will be. Button and Hamilton will both be driving for Mclaren Mercedes. Richard Branson, after backing Brawn’s successful season last year, will be entering into unknown territory with their own team. After entering their Virgin Racing team into the fray, Branson made a bet with Lotus’s Tony Fernandes that his team will finish ahead of them, the loser having to take a tour as an airline stewardess on their rival’s airline.

ATHLETICS:

• A big year for Athletics, with the Winter Olympics kicking off in Vancouver, Canada in February. The Winter Olympics usually is not usually a great hunting ground for the stars of British Athletics, but lo and behold, there could genuinely be some gold medals coming back from the tournament. Shelley Rudman is one of the leading contenders to win the skeleton bobsleigh, where competitors throw themselves a twisting track of ice at one hundred miles an hour. Other hopes come in the form of Scottish skaters, John and Sinead Kerr who set their mark on the world with a top ten finish at the World Championships. Nicola Minichiello and Gillian Cooke are looking in good form to push for a medal in the Women’s Bobsleigh and Scotland are the current Curling World Champions, which should see them enter the Winter Olympics as one of the favourites. As for the Nations, Germany (6/5 at SkyBet) are expected to amass the most medals, followed by the USA (9/2 at SkyBet), Russia and Canada (both 5/1 at SkyBet).
• The Commonwealth games, held in India in October 2010, with Britain’s athletes being represented well at the Sports Personality of the Year 2009. Heptathlete Jessica Ennis would be Britain’s biggest hope over there, but she may not attend because of her training schedule. World Champion triple jumper Phillips Idowu should be in with a great shout in India, as well as Britain’s headline swimmers, Rebeca Adlington and Michael Rock. The young student recently beat US legend Michael Phelps in a meeting, by a second. In the pool, young Diving star Tom Daley, who may arguably be the best diver in Britain since Cristiano Ronaldo moved to Madrid, should be expected to make a splah.

I begin this week’s contribution with a somewhat overdue apology. I’d like to say sorry to my old boss for making him cover an extra shift on a New Year’s Day in the 1980s. I very much doubt he’ll be reading this so I think I’m probably safe now in admitting that, when I said I was stuck in a snowdrift 70 miles from the office, I was actually trying to sleep off a hangover from a Hogmanay party that had got wildly out of hand. Now you could say this displayed a rather cavalier attitude to work on my behalf but, in my defence, I had toiled all the way through the Christmas holiday that year and my unscheduled day off did highlight a niche in the betting market  which has only recently been filled. That particular New Year there was an awful lot of snow around and all of the football, rugby league and horse racing had been either postponed or abandoned. Which meant, in those days, that the only sport you could watch on TV was skiing. Alas, sat in the pub chasing the hangover with some liquid hair of the dog, there was no way you could get a bet on the downhill or the slalom, not legally anyway, which someone diluted the whole experience in my opinion. Of course, things have changed for the better nowadays and I’ve noticed a couple of prominent layers have already priced up this weekend’s World Cup events in northern Italy involving the sport’s best men and women. It’s the men’s downhill at Val Gardena that interests me most. With overall World Cup leader Benjamin Raich of Austria skipping the event along with nearest rival Carlo Janka of Switzerland, the door may have been left open for defending World Cup champion Aksel Lund Svindal to regain the initiative. At 5-1 with bet365, Svindal was second fastest in early practice at Val Gardena yesterday and, with Bode Miller (a general 14-1) and fellow American Steve Nyman (22-1 with William Hill) still on the comeback trail following injury and Swiss veteran Didier Cuche (6-1 with William Hill) suffering with damaged ribs, the Norwegian may find his toughest rival on the Saslong course is Austrian Michael Walchhofer (2-1 with bet365) who is bidding for a third consecutive downhill beneath the Gruppo Sella.

Now I’ve heard two trains of thought regarding England’s World Cup draw. On the one hand, euphoria that Fabio Capello’s men somehow avoided dangerous wild cards like The Ivory Coast, France and Portugal in their first-round group, but in the opposite corner nervous fans who point out that England’s potential first match in the knockout stages of the tournament will be against either Australia, Germany, Ghana or Serbia. I suppose it depends if you’re a glass half-full or glass half-empty kind of guy as to what your viewpoint is on this but surely the World Cup finals are all about making progress one step at a time and, on that score, England just can’t complain about the hand they’ve been dealt. The Three Lions are now no bigger than 6-1 with Coral to win only their second World Cup and a best 4-11 (Skybet and Paddy Power) to win Group C ahead of the USA, Algeria and Slovenia. The Americans, England’s first opponents in Rustenberg on June 13th, are generally regarded as their most dangerous group rivals and can be backed at 5-1 with bet365 and Betfred to top the section, while Slovenia are 12-1 and the Algerians 25-1. One should never underestimate any country who have made it through to the finals of a major tournament but if England don’t make the last 16 with the minimum of fuss they will surely never be forgiven. Slovenia, who failed to muster a single point in their only previous appearance in the finals, and Algeria, easily the weakest of the African nations to qualify, both needed a play-off to reach South Africa, while the USA eventually struggled to top the North and Central American qualifying group despite winning their first four games without conceding a goal. American soccer fans still fondly recall their country’s famous win over England in Brazil in 1950 and several of their key players nowadays ply their trade in Europe. But the majority of their squad are still based in the less-than-competitive MLS and even though they had an excellent Confederations Cup campaign recently, where they beat Spain and ran Brazil close, they will surely struggle to contain a full-strength England who’ll be backed by a huge following in South Africa. I’m sure we’ll cover the 2010 World Cup in more depth next year but other early odds that catch the eye are hosts South Africa to win Group A at 8-1 with 888sport and Blue Square against woeful France and regular under-achievers Mexico and Uruguay (they are only 4-1 with Ladbrokes), and the Netherlands at 4-5 with Paddy Power and Victor Chandler to win Group E. The Dutch are in a different league to fellow Europeans Denmark on their day and, now that they’ve found a level of consistency in tournament finals, should know too much for Cameroon and Japan.

There will be plenty of nerves on display in Lisbon, Athens, Dublin and Moscow this coming Saturday, with eight teams battling it out for four World Cup places. These matches are sure to be popular as far as pre-match and In-Play betting is concerned, so we’ve taken a look at our favourite bookmakers to find some top promotions.

Over at bet365, they are running their usual Bore Draw Money Back offer, where correct score, HT / FT and Scorecast bets are refunded if a match finishes 0-0. We would say that these type of matches have a much stronger chance of finishing goalless, especially as the first leg games are bound to be tight and cagey. Teams will be afraid of conceding and you can bet that the likes of Bosnia and Slovenia will be setting up defensively against Portugal and Russia respectively.

Meanwhile, Paddy Power have come up with a typically crazy promotion for the Ireland v France match, which ties in with the X Factor! John and Edward are one of the favourites to be eliminated and, if they are evicted on Sunday, then your losing First Goalscorer, Correct Score and Scorecast bets will be refunded. The pair were close to being axed last week so this could be a popular promotion.

Meanwhile, although Ladbrokes don’t have any set promotions for the four matches, they are providing a unique type of bet. The Quatro enables to you to select a combination of the winning team and the amount of goals scored. For example, they offer odds of 2.50 that Ukraine win or draw in Greece PLUS there are two goals or less in the match. Similarly, Ladbrokes offer Goal Time Quatro, so for example you can back Republic of Ireland to score first PLUS the first goal being scored after the 27th minute. At odds of 4.00, it’s not a bad shout.

My personal hunch is that the matches are likely to be low-scoring. If you look at the previous first leg scores in the play-offs, there are often few goals involved and it could therefore be worth looking at the Under 2.5 Goals prices. Stan James are offering some great odds on this market, going best price for the Greece v Ukraine and the Ireland v France matches. Doing four lines of trebles on the quartet of games would return a profit if three involve two goals or less and the Bosnia manager has already stated his intention to pack out the midfield in Portugal.

Over at Unibet, they have priced up some goalscorer match bets, with Kevin Doyle being paired with Thierry Henry and Robbie Keane going head-to-head with Nicolas Anelka. Meanwhile, Canbet customers should be aware that you get a 10% bonus on any winnings from a multiple bet. Providing you include at least three selections and that your accumulator amounts to odds of at least 6.00, you can get 10% added to the pay-out.

Of course, all of the bookmakers we mention will be offering In-Play betting on the four World Cup qualifying matches, while bet365 will be streaming the games from Moscow, Lisbon and Athens so that you can watch and bet on the action!

World Cup Qualifying

Saturday 28^th March

Holland v Scotland

I thought I’d get this pick in early as I am certain that the price of the bet will fall before kick off on Saturday

George Burley’s Scotland face the daunting task of attempting to get a positive result against a Dutch side who have a 100% record thus far in qualifying. The away side, however, have had a mixed bag of results with only a single victory from their three games played to date, which also included a disappointing home draw with Norway, last time out.

Burley comes into this game with a depleted squad. Stephen McManus, David Weir and Kirk Broadfoot look certain to miss out whilst Paul Hartley and Kris Commons have also pulled out of the initial squad. These call offs come are even more disheartening when you take into consideration the players who have been missing for a number of weeks and would almost certainly have played. James McFadden, Shaun Maloney, Barry Robson and Lee Miller would almost certainly have been included in the squad but for long term injuries.

The Scots should be able to call upon captain Barry Ferguson and Kenny miller. The Rangers duo had been doubtful but are both expected to start on Saturday night. Scotland look likely to adopt their favoured 4-5-1 formation which brought them much success in the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign under Walter Smith and Alex McLeish. Miller will be deployed as a lone striker with Ferguson, Scott Brown and Darren Fletcher playing as a central 3 in the middle of the park.

Burley has made the decision many expected by deciding that Rangers keeper, Allan McGregor will start in place of Craig Gordon who has not played since February. McGregor is an able deputy but this will be his first competitive start for his country and it is probably one of the most difficult fixtures he could have wished for.

Dutch coach, Bert Van Marwijk only has the one absentee to date. Atletico Madrid defender, Johnny Heitinga will miss out for the home side but there are numerous replacements waiting in the wings in what is a squad packed full of talent. Four players from Real Madrid join a quintet of players from the English Premiership. Aside from Ruud Van Nistelrooy and Edwin Van Der Saar, it is a similar squad of that which was very impressive at Euro 2008.

The Amsterdam ArenA will play host to this fixture and it is a stadium which will hold few good memories for a lot of the Scottish side. The last time the national team played there, they were crushed 6-0 by a rampant Dutch side in the play-off for Euro 2004. This Dutch side may not have as well known names as the team back then, but it is certainly not lacking in quality. Klaus Jan Huntelaar has found his scoring boots recently after a January move to Real Madrid. The striker has notched 8 goals in 11 appearances for Madrid, including a brace in his last outing. He will be raring to go and will want prove himself as a worthy successor to the now retired Van Nistelrooy. Liverpool duo, Ryan Babel and Dirk Kuyt will also be full of confidence after their clubs recent exploits.

Even if Stephen McManus does recover in time, Holland will have far too much for the current Scottish squad. An expectant home crowd will be expecting an early goal from their heroes and for them to build upon that. With the pace of Arjen Robben and the ability of midfielders Van Der Vaart and Snijder,  a comfortable win for the home sides beckon.

The Evens of offer at  Paddypower  for Holland – 1 on the handicap*, should not be missed.

My selection – Holland -1 to beat Scotland

*Handicap betting means one team begins with a goal meaning the other team starts with a deficit of a goal. In this case, Scotland have an imaginary 1 goal lead at the start of the game which means Holland need to win the game by at least two goals for the bet to be a winner.