The boys look ahead to our top of the table clash with Nottingham Forest on Sunday and a weekend of sporting action elsewhere.

A small win for Andy on the Reading game last week moves him to a profit of £75.39, Brian’s profit margin for the season is now an impressive £500.63 with money still invested in rugby and football bets.

Brian Power

The biggest gamble of the weekend for me will take place at 1pm on Sunday. I will be at a fortieth birthday lunch for the wife’s cousin at her house with all the in-laws and other family members. The gamble is does she have Sky and will I get to see the game? I have asked Mrs P to check with her and if she doesn’t ask where is the local pub. That was met with one of those looks that made a Shaun Derry stare look like a glimpse from Bonnie Langford. The game itself will be a tight affair but I think home advantage could swing it and I am going to have a tenner on the halftime/fulltime score and will stick again with Kaspars for first goal.

Elsewhere there is some decent racing at Newbury and over the water in Ireland and the Totesport trophy is the big race of the day. Tony McCoy rides the JP McManus owned Get Me out of Here for trainer Jonjo O’Neill and with five wins out of eight starts including two out of two at the Berkshire track points to a drop of value at 9/1. I will also have a Lucky 15 across the two big cards of the day.

The Six Nations continues and my tips for the tournament Ireland struggled to victory in Rome and will have to improve when taking on the French in Dublin. I was going to select Brian O’Driscoll as first try scorer last week but left him out of the selections and he duly obliged and is 14/1 this week but am going to go for David Wallace at 28/1 to cross the line first. The moral is never change your mind about a bet.

With morals ringing in my ears I almost changed my mind about my football selections as I have three solid selections in Colchester, Villa and Leicester plus one I am not so sure of now. West Ham head to West Brom and the 3/1 on offer for the Hammers seems decent but as I cobble this together Albion have announced Roy Hodgson as manager and you never know what effect that will have on a team. I won’t change my mind on this occasion and let’s hope this leads to a successful week.

For the weekend:

£2.50 first goalscorer Gorkks 33/1

£10 win Draw QPR 9/2

£10 win

3.35 Newbury Totesport Trophy Get Me out of Here 9/1

£1 Lucky 15

3.00 Newbury French Opera 9/1

3.50 Leoparsdtown Might be magic

2.45 Leoparsdtown Shot from the Hip 8/1

1.10 Leoparsdtown Louiseville Lip

£2.50 David Wallace 1st try Ireland v France 28/1

£2 trebles and £2 acca

Colchester 21/20

Leicester 11/10

Villa 5/4

West Ham 3/1

Previously Advised:

£2 Lucky 15 and £2e/w acca

QPR to win Championship at 12/1

Huddersfield to win league 1 at 8/1

Rotherham to win League 2 at 12/1

York to win conference at 12/1

£16.50 Ireland to win 6 nations 100/30

Andy Hillman

Well a cracking result for QPR against Reading on the Telly on Friday night, and saved my betting week somewhat with a cheeky little £15 win on the QPR to win, draw no bet market. Obviously the ridiculous results involving Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool meant that most people’s accumulators were a write off, mine included. This week, we’re on TV again, this time on the Sunday against Forest, meaning that we will already have seen what everyone else in the league has been up to, and we could, in a perfect and almost entirely unrealistic world, end the weekend ten points clear of the chasing pack. Which, as those of you who stand anywhere near me in R Block may vouch for, is the only set of circumstances where I will even entertain the possibility of singing “The R’s are going up…”

In terms of the match itself, QPR are 6/5 across the board for the win, which seems fairly short odds for what threatens to be a fairly tight match between two sides that don’t want to lose. It’s for that reason I’m going to go for the draw, available at 12/5 with Victor Chandler. I’m tempted by the 1-1 as well, which is available at 13/2 on Betfair.

In terms of the goal scorer market, Stan James are offering goalless draw refunds on all goal scorer markets as standard this season, but there is an interesting, albeit very speculative offer available on BetFred this weekend – if you guess correctly the first goal scorer, and they then score again in the match, the first goal scorer odds are doubled. And if they score a hat trick, the price is trebled. Meaning that if Taarabt (11/2) to score first scores again, you get paid out at 11/1. And in the highly unlikely event of Taarabt scoring a hatrick, you’ll get paid out at 33/2. It’s never going to happen in a million years, but let’s stick a fiver on it and see what happens…

Elsewhere, the main game of the weekend is the Manchester Derby on at Saturday Lunchtime. Man City’s have a pretty appalling record at Old Trafford in recent years, and I don’t see that trend changing this time round either, but Man United are odds-on for the win. With both Berbatov and Tevez at the top of the goal scoring charts this season, I can see goals in this game, and I’m going for over 2.5 goals, available at 6/5 on Betfair.

Finally, my multiple for the week, and a straight six fold this week, which has more legs than I’m normally happy to use in a multiple, but all the legs seem fairly low risk – Arsenal, Cardiff, Hull, Liverpool, Luton and Rangers to all win is 7.43 on Betfair.

For the Weekend:

QPR vs. Forest - Draw - £10 @ 12/5 (Victor Chandler)

QPR vs. Forest - 1-1 - £5 @ 13/2 (Betfair)

QPR vs. Forest - Taarabt to score first - £5 @ 11/2 (BetFred)

Man Utd vs. Man City – Over 2.5 goals - £10 @ 6/5 (Betfair)

Sixfold accumulator - Arsenal, Cardiff, Hull, Liverpool, Luton and Rangers to win - £10 @ 15/2 (Betfair)

Photo: Action Images

Middlesbrough Polls