Berlin Bomb

On the face of it, there's not much to cheer about right now. My home town is ablaze, parts of it at least, and the FTSE is in free-fall. In football, my football team throw away a lead, and after one game of the new season, I would not be surprised if they are playing league games next season against Crawley Town, a new rivalry - unimaginable just a few years ago - in the making perhaps, while old rivals Brighton have, I hate to say it, a brand new stadium, a decent team and a decent manager.

Actually, good luck to them. I'm a bit old for 'hating' teams or fans, and these days I respect anyone who supports their local team rather than say Manchester United (unless that's their local team of course) or whoever the team of the day is. In the early 70s, my Croydon school was full of Leeds fans, many of whom later became Liverpool fans, and who no doubt flirted with Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Arsenal and Chelsea before becoming the United fans of today.

Slightly better news from the Palace Reserves, where the young Iraqi kid Rahim Saeed, spotted by a Palace fan while in the British Army in the slums of Baghdad and flown back for a trial this summer, made his debut against Chelsea, coming on as Palace were 0-2 down. After scoring a late hat-trick, and winning the game for Palace 3-2, the manager was not surprisingly thrilled.

"You did well son", he said. "Get showered, and then go up to my office, call home and tell your family how well you did."

He did as he was told, and called home. "Hi Mum, it's Raheed. We played Chelsea today, and we were 2-nil down, and I came on and scored three and we won 3-2".

His Mum sounded less than thrilled. "Well, I'm glad things are so good for you son, but they're not that great here. The house has been set on fire, your Dad's been shot, and your sister's been raped."

Oh Mum, I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, well you should be - it's your fault we moved to Croydon in the first place."

Ligue 1 saw a loss of 1.15 points on the value Match Odds bets and a loss of 0.31 points on the Under / Overs. Not a great start, but including the Nancy v Lille draw, it was an overall profit from across the Channel.

I'm actually going to be taking a holiday for two weeks and three weekends, and while I will update the ratings and form figures, I won't be blogging or placing bets during this period. The International break is the first weekend in September, so it makes sense to me to wait until the following weekend before getting serious about these bets. By then we'll have a little form in most leagues, and the promoted teams rating will have stabilised. Hertha Berlin's already took a dive, as they managed a whopping four shots (none on target) and two corners in their home game v Nuremberg. It will come as no surprise that they lost. In France, newly promoted Dijon were already bottom-rated, and a 1-5 home defeat against Stade Rennes just confirms that opinion.