Watching paint dry. Arsenal v Aston Villa + betting tips on the Champions League

I thought for some reason that Snipster was doing the blog today, so I’m sorry for its lateness. I was walking around a DIY shop trying to find bathroom paint which wasn’t in either; 2.5L cans (too big) or in a ridiculous colour. When Snipster text me asking “when is the blog going up?” I answered “I don’t know, when are you putting it up?” you can imagine the rest of the conversation. As I am on holiday at the moment it does seem fair that I should do the blog. The fact I’m on holiday is also the reason I was buying bathroom paint in a DIY shop. Holidays for married men are either, family holidays away, lads weekends away, or stay at home and complete a never ending list of jobs the wife has compiled. Why oh why didn’t I go on a tour of Amsterdam, Berlin and Ibiza? In the end I bought a 2.5L tin of paint in “duck egg” and it was decided I should use the extra paint on the kitchen. Smashing!

On to football... well its all a bit doom and gloom at the moment. I realise that the last two blogs of mine were also a massive fun sponge but thats what happens when we lose I guess. Like picking at a scab, football fans seem to take a lot of masochistic joy out of the dark times. Odd really, but maybe thats where opinions are born from and the “I told you so” voice inside of all of us has some credence.

Going through all the other doom merchants blogs and press I did discover something that brought me a glimmer of hope and give me a strange appetite to gamble. I’m not a betting man normally, I like a flutter on the grand national, a lotto ticket when its a triple rollover etc etc but aside from that I wouldn’t normally go out of my way to place my money on something I have no control over. If it is likely to come in, the odds are not worth it. If the odds are worth it, it is never going to happen.

I will admit I have strange quirks to my personality, and this might not make sense to some people. But when I get home every day I empty my pockets onto the sideboard in my bedroom and put my lose change into a tray. I don’t take the money out again the next day it just stays there and eventually when the tray is full it gets counted up and the money gets spent on something fun. There ends up being lots of small change in there 1s, 2s and 5p’s. Here is a picture:

So one of the news articles I read, said that Arsenal are now massive odds against, like 100/1 or something to get past Bayern. Now normally I would think “wow, we will never win, the odds are to high, only a mad man would put money on that happening”. But I have all this spare change.... so I’m thinking “well how about I just put the 1, 2 and 5p’s on, it might only be £3 but at 100/1 I will be laughing. So I split the bigger coins and took the smaller ones to a shop with one of those money counter things in it and here is the print out:

As you can see its a bit more than £3... but £2,500 return it quite tempting and might fund a Amsterdam, Berlin and Ibiza trip in the summer. Or am I mad and should I just use the £25 on the paint I bought for the bathroom / kitchen... hmmm...

****** Update - the odds are not that good, I have found us at 23/1 to get to the quarter finals and 300/1 to win the Champions League but not 100/1 to get past Bayern. Shows my experience in betting. Might buy a new paint roller ******

We have a important match against Villa on Saturday. They have had a couple of better results recently and might fancy putting us under some pressure to see if they can capitalise on our recent poor form. I don’t think they are a very good team though and we should have enough to beat them. We need to gain momentum and confidence as we are traveling to spurs next and that is a must win match (as long as we don’t drop points tomorrow). We have to win, there is a lot of pressure on the team to perform. They will have to shake off the nerves and play to their best from now till the end of the season. We have to get 4th, we have to beat spurs and we have to finish above them in the league. Then we can rebuild in the summer and the world will be a better place.

We will back with a “We’re on our way” podcast later today/first thing tomorrow so check back for that. 
See ya then.

Pumpkiii

You can follow us on twitter @pumpkiii or @snipster