France: Coupe de la Ligue
In general terms, these CDL games are more open and produce more goals than league fixtures.......
Toulouse- Bordeaux
These two meet again in Bordeaux at the weekend and I feel that is the match which Les Girondins will be focused on. They played in Paris against the champions PSG on Saturday and spent a lot of time chasing the ball ( just 36% possession) in a stretched game where both played more than a half with ten men. Toulouse had a shock home defeat to Lens on Friday and they will surely want to get back on track as soon as possible, in front of their own supporters and have the benefit of an extra 24 hours recovery time and no travel, whereas the visitors have been clocking up the motorway miles (1,500 km + since Friday). They arrive without suspended defensive midfielder Andre Poko, just one recognised central defender and without influential right winger Diego Rolan who has scored or assisted in three of Bordeaux's five wins.
The hosts are also a little short in the centre of the backline, but have at least been able to pick from three and did not consider leaving out senior central defender Dragos Grigore with the weekend in mind, which might be adding 2+2 and getting 5, but implies to me they are interested in the competition to a greater degree than Bordeaux.
1.5 units Toulouse -0.5 ball 2.16 asian line/Sportmarket Pro.....there is quite a bit of 2.20-2.30 around elsewhere.
Toulouse : Vidal, Boucher - Grigore, Ninkov, Spano, Sylla, Akpa Akpro, Moubandje - Aguilar, Sirieix, Bodiger, Ben Ali, Trejo, Regattin, Doumbia - Pesic, Braithwaite, Ben Yedder.
Bordeaux : Carrasso, Prior – Contento, Faubert, Mariano, Pallois, Poundjé, Yambéré – Badin, Kaabouni, Khazri, Plasil, Sertic, Traoré – Diabaté, Maurice-Belay, Sala, Touré, Shamal.
The European Tour season and the Race to Dubai will finish three weeks on Sunday, it has been a long time coming, but worth waiting for and we can finally collect on our long term bet on Rory McIlroy (see below), which has been a "winner" for months. The season ends with two events in China, the BMW Masters this week and the WGC-HSBC Champions event next week, which take place on different courses in Shanghai and are followed by the Turkish Airlines Open from Antalya and the season ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.
McIlroy is not playing the first two events and someone will see that and email me this week in a blind panic, but Garcia and Stenson, currently 2nd and third on the list, miss out this week too (
leaderboard) and it matters not anyway, as even if anyone else won all four remaining events, which would be like winning the lottery without buying a ticket (!), it would still not be enough to pass the young Ulsterman. Rory is a winner, we are just waiting to collect.
I will definitely be putting up another strong money list bet ( not Rory btw) early in the New Year and long term readers know how well we have done with all of these in the past, I spend a lot of time looking at the RTD and US Money List markets and whilst everything you bet should, ideally, be a personal decision, I do urge strongly everyone to consider getting involved.
I have told you many times before how important I feel practice and training sessions are and how good things that happen through the week or pre season can be continued on game/match day and if you have ever watched a couple of such sessions you will realise the difference between a good and bad one. Players spend perhaps 5-20% of their working life actually playing,the other 80-95% preparing and it stands to reason that good or bad sessions will have a knock on effect. If you look at the McIlroy post below you will see how well he felt the off season had gone for him and I spoke yesterday about how
professional Wahington QB Colt McCoy had looked in practice all week and he led the Redskins to a huge "shock" win last night. There is a lot of good free information out there if you look, whereas my notes costs a whopping 1€ per newsletter !
Good Luck.
European Golf Tour: Race to Dubai (Written January 15th)
This is effectively the season long European Money List , which will be decided in Dubai on November 23rd, hence the name, you will be able to follow the updated ranking each week on the European Tour website,
on this link. We have done very well on these markets previously and went very close with Justin Rose last year,
you can see that preview here, it gives a good deal of background information to the identikit winner, especially the first paragraph so take a look.
In that preview I wrote this ...Top three in the "Race" in 2012 were McIlroy- Rose- Oosthuizen, in 2011 Donald-McIlroy-Kaymer, 2010 Kaymer-McDowell-Westwood and in 2009 Westwood- McIIroy-Kaymer. Prize money required each year to win has increased from 4.2m, through 4.4m, to 5.3m and up to 5.5m in 2012. Therefore, we know two things, it is going to be very hard for any newbie to break into this exclusive club as they will not have enough ranking points to qualify for all the big eight events and to win this, you are going to need to earn circa 5m euros, so, we are left with very few names. It is hard to see Rory McIlroy not going close, but the 23 year old world number one, who has just signed a ten year circa £160m contract with Nike will definitely not be playing anywhere just for the money and said last month "I've done my schedule. I'm sticking to it and I'm not letting anyone persuade me to go anywhere else,I've learned my lesson over the last couple of years. "He added that he intends to play less and concentrate on quality more than quantity, obviously in european terms he will play the big eight, but is very unlikely to match the 15 tournament starts he made last year. However, he will not need to and is certain to finish top three again, baring injury, but his odds are too low for me to wait 12 months for a payout, especially when they offer almost no value, but his claims are obvious and he is a worthy favourite.
The top three last year was Stenson-Poulter-Rose and the winner earned 4.1m euros, which was the lowest winning total since the switch to the new format and it is unlikely to be enough this year. Last year the low odds for Rory McILroy made the book, he was circa 2.5 to win and that looked terribly short ahead of what turned out to be a troubled early 2013 for the still very young Ulsterman. However, there is no golfer on the planet with more potential and he is still years away from his peak, he finally got his act together at the end of last season and looked back close to his best. He seems fully focused on his game again now and whereas that sub 3.0 quote last year looked tiny, his odds for 2014 look huge. He was very happy with his game at the end of last year and said after Dubai... "For the most part I'm just really happy that my game is back where I want it to be and that's all I really care about." He won the Australian Open just a week or so later.
He has put a lot of the distractions behind him now and returns to action in Abu Dhabi this week and plays again at the Dubai Desert Classic at the end of this month, an event he passed up last year. His full schedule has not been announced, but he has made it clear he is upping it and looking to play far more events in 2014. He earned 5.5m in 2012 and anything close to that, would see him home. He is getting help on keeping a positive mental attitude on course, his love and legal life which are long stories, both appear settled and more importantly, he has got the clubs that he wants, the switch to Nike was a nightmare. When Tiger Woods did the same thing, he changed each club individually, Rory did the whole lot at once and it was a massive error, it took months of fine tuning to work out and that, combined with his head being all over the place, was a recipe for disaster.
He is hugely confident about 2014 and I understand he is looking really good in practice, he has spent two weeks in the UAE to fine tune for this competition and more importantly hit the ground running. He has two second places here in Abu Dhabi and could easily win this week. In interview yesterday he said he had “worked his ass off” since arriving in the UAE and added “I feel like I’m starting this year on such a different sort of platform. “Everything feels like it has fallen into place and I can just focus on my golf.“I know that everything else away from that is in a really good place. I’m happy that I can go and try and play the golf that I know I can. I’m happy. So there is no reason why I shouldn’t be smiling. I’m feeling good about my game. I feel good about where I am mentally. I feel good with everything that’s going on off the course. It’s hopefully shaping up to be a good year.”
Winning this week would be a bonus, but is not really necessary, so I will pass on that and just go with the long term bet.... 3 units Rory McIiroy to win the Race to Dubai...5.50 + there is 6.0 around.
