Ghoulish Night Ahead?

It's Halloween - the night for ghosts, witches, wizards, zombies, etc. In other words - a scary night!

Hopefully the night won't be too scary though as the Bookie Beater is going for a treble! Even more astonishingly, the Bookie Beater is heading to Italy as well!

Inter Milan face Genoa and are priced at 1/4: Inter Milan are the only form team worth backing in Italy just now. They don't concede goals and should be too good for Genoa, but hey - this is Italy, so anything can happen.

Villareal face Levante and are priced at 1/4: Villareal ought to be too good for Levante and the Spanish Primera has been a reasonable hunting ground.

Tottenham Hotspur face Blackpool and are priced at 2/7: This is a strange one. It's the Carling Cup which I typically avoid as the decent teams only seem to field reserves in this fixture. However, Spurs have just appointed a new manager - Juan Ramos. Surely his hotshots will want to impress on his debut? Failure to beat Blackpool could mean a lot of the players will be leaving Spurs in the January transfer window!

The Paddy Power pot needs a £11 bet and this treble equates to a little over 2/1.

Happy Halloween.

Italian Woes

The weekend saw victories for the Bookie Beater in the guise of Barcelona (2-0), Sparta Prague (3-1) and Celtic (3-0). However, the weekend was spoiled by a lacklustre performance from Standard Liege who could only manage a 2-2 draw with Mechelen.

It has been a tough season so far - much tougher than the last two years. It got me thinking about why it is proving more difficult to get results right this time round.

AC Milan losing at home to Empoli
AC Milan drawing at home with Catania
Sampdoria drawing at home with Hajduk
Inter Milan drawing at home with Udinese
Juventus losing at home to Udinese

There's almost a theme here! Why are the Italian clubs playing so poorly compared to previous seasons. Spain, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland are still good hunting grounds but Italy seems to throw up "odd" results too frequently this time round.

Inter Milan and Fiorentina are the only clubs unbeaten so far whilst AC Milan languish in 13th place in the league. Even Juventus have conceded more than a goal a game this term.

So... stay clear of Italy until the league position starts to settle down? Maybe. Looks like those clubs are jittering (a bit like Liverpool at fortress Anfield!).