Perverted Enthusiasm

We have a new entrant in the Friendly Tipster Competition. Geoff has submitted the required paper work, backgrounds checks are complete, and here are his Draw selections for this weekend:

Barnet v Macclesfield Town (3.6), Bolton Wanderers v Everton (3.5), Atalanta v Napoli (3.3), Hertha Berlin v Bayer Leverkeusen (3.6), Liverpool v Manchester City (3.5), Swansea City v Aston Villa (3.5), Siena v Internazionale (3.4). The prices are as of the time of writing. Other matches with no firm prices were Stockport County v Southport, Livingston v Ross County, Airdrie v Arbroath and Start v Tromso. I'll check those matches closer to kick-off for prices although I have no idea what the liquidity is on non-league, Scottish or Norwegian games! In the interests of time, I may at some point have to limit both the number of selections allowed, and the leagues from which selections can be made, but for now I'll leave it as it is.

You'll all be interested to know that Sunday's Liverpool v Manchester City is a meeting of the joint leaders in the EPL Elo ratings. Liverpool's move to the top is clearly not all down to results, but the supporting numbers suggest that the results will come. I have them priced at 2.75 and they are currently trading around the 2.93 mark, while I have Manchester City at 2.71 which is bang on where the market has them. The draw looks a tad short.

The dice have been thrown again to select three random draw picks, and they are Athletic Bilbao v Granada (4.6), Stoke City v Blackburn Rovers (3.75) and Nuremberg v Kaiserslautern (3.55).

Letters to the Editor

Devilonline asks: "How can I view XX draws tips please?" and the answer is that these are available on a subscription basis, and anyone interested can e-mail me for details at calciocassini @ aol.com - after removing the spaces of course. Historical results can be found at Gold All Over, and if you are already a subscriber, please check your e-mail. Last week we had one subscriber miss the Friday night winner.

Here's another letter to the editor, or more precisely an article by Brian Glanville, presumably a southerner, in the Football League Review of March 1969. Older readers may remember that several clubs would attach these to the programmes back in those days, and they are interesting, and often amusing, to look back on.

"I have before me yet another report of a squalid incident of violence by football fans. This time the culprits were supporters of Exeter City, whose crowd, ironically, was awarded last November's John White Football League Supporters' Award for sportsmanship."

 And later

"The cult of teenaged violence in, and outside, the football stadia seemed to begin, like so much else, in the North, and it wasn't long before it had spread South. In his excellent, diverting book The Soccer Syndrome, John Moynihan humorously bewailed the fact that you couldn't imagine a Chelsea fan with the sheer, perverted enthusiasm to uproot a lavatory bowl from a supporters' train. Well, you can now."

I'm guessing the book was out of date not long after publication, and the police inquiry into the uprooted lavatory bowl was stopped as "they had nothing to go on".

Finally, it's quiz time. If Player A has a higher batting average than Player B in 2009, again in 2010, and again in 2011, will Player A always have the highest batting average when the three years totals are combined?

There's a poll for you to cast your vote.