One...Two...Three...Bang...

Well when things aren't going well for your football team, it's always nice to look back at one of their greatest ever goals. This is one of the best ever in the Premiership, it was goal of the season, it would certainly be shown more if Wayne Rooney had scored it...he might actually be the only person in the league today who could score it..

'Super' Mario Stanic banged this in on his debut. I am sure at the time we must have been thinking that the new messiah had arrived to walk the Stamford Bridge turf..

Pops it up (puts the kettle on) another keepy uppy (makes a cup of tea) and another (has a biscuit) and finally launches it. He also had the most symmetrical face in football...that probably sounds weird.

Stanic Goal

Financial Charts...Racing Charts...

There has been a fair bit of discussion on the subject of using financial charting / technical analysis techniques and applying them to pre race trading charts. There are obvious advantages of having a good charting suite for the exchanges.

On the exchange graphs, you will very often see prices bounce off resistance and support points during the course of the day as the markets develop, but liquidity isn't great early on. There is no doubt that you get traders who simply won't let a price fall below or rise above a certain price.

Drifting horses often continue to drift and shortening horses often continue to shorten - in certain types of races. So trends often develop.

Volume is also underestimated. It is important in financial trading and I would use it in pre race trading on horses.

Yet where you can be profitable on being a pure financial charting analyst with some basic knowledge to back you up, I am not sure the same is true in the horse racing markets - especially if you are using exchange charts which do not give you a realistic view of picture due it being 'compressed' over time. Some popular software like Bet Angel can solve this problem.

It got me thinking about general trends regarding my horse racing results. I started doing daily results charts recently for one of my systems - it is a very consistent and profitable system. It also has roughly the same high number of bets each month - many hundreds. In the monthly charts I couldn't see any real pattern. September's chart is below.



October and November (to date) results charts are similar. I then decided to do a cumulative chart for the last eleven weeks or so:



Bingo! well...maybe. There is a kind of diagonal channel that has developed. Maybe there is something in it...if you are having close to the same number of bets each month, high turnover, on the same types of horses, on the same range of prices and the same kind of monthly profit - maybe you can expect similar patterns. (Summer results will probably be different to winter).

In the future, will it be possible to judge rough entry points and back or lay my picks accordingly?

Bit of fun!

Pat Eddery...

RIP Pat Eddery. One of the greats.

(Everything has already been written about the man. Go on to You Tube for some of his great rides.)

Jose...

Jose in a brighter moment...

Well I suppose it's only fair to stick my head above the parapet, after all I am fairly quick to praise Chelsea and Mourinho when things are going well...It is now Chelsea's worse start since 1978/79, 'the good old days' and I think I watched them get relegated that year...

So what to do? If Jose had lost the dressing room, then I think he would already be gone...but not all the players look happy...so watch this space. As a fan, we need to keep him. Who else is there? Who else knows the league backwards? Who else can we trust to deliver a dynasty? I don't think a new manager would necessarily be a good thing in the longer term..

Personally I'd just like to see a couple of extra players brought in during the transfer window - just to add a bit of competition for places if nothing else...but will they want to come!

We looked a hell of a lot better at Stoke - should have had a result - but when it's not going for you...I fear the international break has come at the wrong time for once.

On Jose's behaviour..well he hasn't been a shining example. Part of it is to deflect attention from his team but not all of it...he is running on emotion just a bit. The man, however, remains a genius, so you have to expect the eccentricities. 'Winners hate to lose'. The managers who go on a losing run and take it gracefully in typical 'nice guy' British fashion, almost never turn it around and end up getting fired.

As far as the Premiership goes, CFC were the 'representatives'. Now there is no one. Lets face it the standard in the league is on the decline - we are about to lose a Champions League spot. Chelsea were really the only team able to compete on the global stage...it's a bit of a disaster all around. City might come good this year in Europe - maybe I've finally been wrong about them :) It would be good to see an English team in the CL semis at least.

Role Models...

So it would be nice if every teenage girl had a good role model. The problem is that all the 'decent' ones aren't usually on prime time TV on a Saturday night - Jessica Ennis, Serena Williams and more, tend to be on TV when kids are at school. That means that often the only option is the 'X-Factor' mob, or some of the other people on reality TV panels.

In a recent survey of teenage girls - over 80% stated that they would ideally like to 'marry a footballer'. That was more or less the extent of their aspirations. It is entirely possible that the sample was taken in areas of the country where options might be more limited. It does, however, speak volumes. Regardless, you would think that you'd have more chance of becoming an athlete than marrying your 'ideal person' - train up girls!

For my daughter, Cara Delevingne is the flavour of the month. Cara is probably a really nice girl, but does she deserve to be idolised? I am going to take some 'gentle' action.

One woman I follow is Ronda Rousey (UFC). Ok, there is a lot of debate about the morality of 'female combat' (Olympics aside) and the UFC can be a bit of a circus - but 'Roudy' Ronda is great. She's hard, trains like an animal, is tough as nails, yet still kind and sensitive. She is also a supreme athlete and, in that department at least, a great role model of kids.


Cara...Cute but you've got nothing on Ronda..


Nicole...You've got nothing on Ronda either..

Rousey has had a few 'blips' along the way - mainly in personal relationships. Who hasn't. We should cut her a break. Her father broke his back sledding with his daughters and, having learned that he would be a paraplegic, committed suicide when Rousey was only eight years old. She struggled until six years old with apraxia (unable to form intelligible sentences due to the umbilical cord being wrapped around her neck at birth). Later, she dropped out of high-school. Yet she persevered, mainly in sport, and many years later she became the first American to win an Olympic medal in judo since its introduction as an Olympic sport in 1992.

She has been drafted in to a few movies of late and also does the 'obligatory' scantily clad photo shoots that seem to accompany all athletes these days. I just hope she stays focused on her main career.


Go Ronda...That's more like it.

On November 14th (that could be the 15th Down-Under) she fights Holly Holm in Australia, in Melbourne's 70,000 seat Etihad Stadium. It should be sold out.

I will be watching with my daughter - she's an athlete in the making. I just need to get her off her ipad..

Don't miss the start - I don't expect it to last long.

Australia v New Zealand...Pick 'Em?

New Zealand should do a job on Australia at the weekend but things are rarely that simple. Cheika is an excellent coach and he possibly has the 'men of the tournament' in Hooper and Pocock - those two at least can match the All Black for intensity. Australia have had the tougher games though - and that could count against them. You also feel that the Kiwis are peaking at the right time..

It is the relentless intensity that basically makes the All Blacks who they are - virtually invincible. They are everything that England and some of the other home nations are not at present, sadly.

Why are the All Blacks so successful? They are true to their roots. If you were given the basic rules of rugby and then told to go out on to a field and play - with no coaches or refs, what would you do? You'd run like hell, pass, catch and try to dodge tackles. Sod the set pieces, the kicking and defence concerns. That's how they teach the game to kids in New Zealand. Add to that the fact that every primary school in the country has a playing field...and you begin to see how the opportunity for youngsters is there.

Growing up playing rugby is all about handling the ball (having fun). I don't believe that in New Zealand they bother with 15-a-side until they get to eleven or twelve years old. Even then, penalties aren't kicked - the ball is handed back to the other side to run with it again..

Add to the mix a few strong, fast 'islanders' and a picture of dominance begins to appear.

New Zealand is a small country with a small population and one of the only ways to measure themselves against the rest of the world is through Rugby - they don't measure up badly.

So it's simple really:

1. Have fun.
2. Run, pass, catch.
3. Have some pride.

I don't know how we teach rugby over here these days but the overriding images I have of e.g. my son - was him standing out on the wing in mid winter, hands freezing, on a full size pitch, with twenty-nine other kids and never touching the ball once - because the skill level wasn't there for the ball to travel down the line. What a joke. Not surprisingly he gave up to play football instead.

System News...

Just a bit of info on one of the systems that I run. It's a high volume (large number of bets) system that takes a fair bit of work. I'm not going to give away the details for obvious reasons and in any case the majority of people wouldn't be able to run with it because it takes a fair bit of racing knowledge in certain areas. I put this video up on You Tube to highlight a few points on expected fluctuations in betting generally, how with this system you can in theory 'model the month' based on results (not generally adviseable with most betting / systems!) and how you have to stick with your betting through the good times and the bad - as long as your research shows long term positive results!

I currently run it with £100 stakes, due to other trading activities, but you could in theory stake at least five times that with no negative effects. At ten times I imagine that you might struggle at times to get all your money taken when you need it taken - I'll let you know if ever I get to that stage!

So don't go buying some rubbish system on the web for £39.99, as there are plenty of tools out there to help you to develop your own!