Good morning!

Right, for this morning’s post I’m going for a bit of story-telling, nooone dislikes reading a nice story so hopefully, this will see you through for today. as well as another two additional posts to this one! If you want dedicated, cutting-edge journalism, then this really is the place to be!

For the past three, maybe four weeks or so, me and a mate have been doing an accumulator for each round of domestic league matches and Champions League matches, putting £2 a turn on for a total of four matches. (two quid each) With me a footballing messiah of knowledge and my mate a seasoned ‘watcher’ of football matches. it seemed a dead cert that we’d be raking in the winnings, I mean, how hard can it be to win a bet on only four matches?

As it turns out, it’s pretty bloody hard! Last week for example, a four-match bet would have brought us £15.81, with Liverpool playing at home to Swansea amongst our fantastic four. Due to not being able to predict the future, I couldn’t foresee that Michael Vorm, a nobody before his move to Swansea City in the summer, was to have the game of his life, keeping an expensively assembled Liverpool XI at bay. Naturally, I was more frustrated than Luis Suarez himself. On paper, how hard could it be to beat a newly-promoted team at home when you’ve just spent big money on certain players? To be fair I can answer that, it’s because Jordan Henderson is a £6 million player, not £20 million worth of footballing talent, whereas Andy Carroll should be sued under the Trade Descriptions Act for not doing a thing for Liverpool after they spent £35 million (plus big wages, so the total outlay is a significant amount more than £35 million) for his ability to head a ball with force. To my recollection, Carroll hasn’t used his head all that much and as such, he’ll be in court anytime soon with Kenny Dalglish glaring at him menacingly.

Okay, so I’m going ever-so-slightly off track there, ripping Andy Carroll to bits however, I feel that’s mainly due to my pain from not winning what on paper, looked a solid bet. Rather than being lambasted a ‘know-nothing hack’ by my mate for my somewhat ill-fated predictions, I should have been swimming in a pool of money.

It wasn’t just that bet either that’s completely stumped me in recent weeks. Of late, Barnsley have failed to beat a poor Bristol City on their own turf, Arsenal failed to beat Marseille… Ah yes, this is my next minor point: Never bet on your own team. Since the new season began, bar the Blackburn match, I predicted the first six Arsenal matches correctly and that’s not the problem. The problem is, when you expect to win money after you’ve made a bet on your own team to win, but end up equally happy with a draw instead, though all the while knowing you’ve lost £2. That feeling was pretty alien to me; wanting to throttle Robin Van Persie because he missed (for once) a half-decent chance and kidnap Aaron Ramsey for pondering too long over his decision to shoot or pass to a better-placed Theo Walcott in the second half was enough emotion for me, but that was coupled with me thinking, ‘you know what, four points from two matches against Marseille is bloody good’, was enough to make me think, ‘enough of this’ and since then, I’ve refused to place a bet on Arsenal. The pressure is too much and personally, I rather value my own health.

Over the weekend however, I made a small return on FA Cup matches thanks to the free sports betting tips at ‘Onebooker’. Now before finding this website, I admit to never having used outside help for bets before, I was just too proud, but there are benefits to it boths ways so I’ve found. Firstly, and most obviously, I won the bet, which I thank Onebooker for, as they gave me the best odds for certain games and all four games I selected and for once, I triumphed. As you’ve read, I’ve had no luck whatsoever in the past, so it’s either blind coincidence that I’ve won this time, or thanks totally to Onebooker for advising me not to be an idiot and place money on dead duds. However, if I hadn’t have won, I equally could have blamed Onebooker, thinking to myself. ‘pah, they ruined it for me’ and thus being able to shift the blame from my shoulders, meaning I feel no guilt for throwing away a £2 coin from my life.

Finishing off now, I remember two years ago my Mum actually placed an accumulator, just checking boxes at randon in the hope they’d come up trumps. Every single match bar one between Bolton and Burnley came through!!! Instead of winning £80, my Mum was furious with the people of Burnley and as such, she now refuses to drive withing a ten mile radius of the place through a burning hatred of Burnley. At the time, Bolton were in form and Burnley, well, they just weren’t. As I said about Liverpool above, it was a ‘cert’ on paper…

So how important has the weeky accumulator become for your average football fan? As long as their not betting on their own team, I think the accumulator has a vital place in every spectator’s weekend. Rather than just absent-mindedly watching the Football League Show & Match of the Day on a Saturday, you could scream at both shows in sheer frustration for the referee costing you a bet for the absurdity of a certain decision.

Has the weekend accumulator become part and parcel of your life? Is it now a neccesity for a round of football?

See you in the comments…