Week 6: Win At All Costs

by Rick Nash

Here's a list of things I've been clinging to, tearfully, since Man Utd's humiliating defeat at Man City last Sunday:

• Jon Jones is still the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion, just. 
• Dublin are All-Ireland Champions.
• My NFL and Premier League fantasy teams are finally kicking arse (Aaron Rodgers, Adrian Petersen, LeSean McCoy and Dez Bryant all making up the core of the former...yes, my league absolutely sucks at drafts).
• Speaking of NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles are now revolutionising offence in the league under Chip Kelly and look on course to get back to the playoffs.
• Actually forget that last one.
• I have my health.
• Oh, and United bounced back from their loss with a 1-0 midweek win over Liverpool upon the return of Luis Suarez, continuing Pool's recent, Walter White-like tradition of only meeting devastation when confronted with a possible solution to their ills. Seriously, the people that have brought this once-great club to their knees over the past decade? Rafa Benitez, Fernando Torres, Kenny Dalglish and Luis Suarez...four bonafide 'legends' of the club, like White, talented but ultimately destructive. I guess Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher can serve as Skylar and Marie in this metaphor: well-intentioned but incapable of stopping these monsters, as well as being kind of annoying and - in Marie's case as in Gerrard's - getting on the wrong side of the law on more than one occasion.

This is one of those seasons, though, where I have to take stock in the positives. Because the negatives are alarming. Not only is Lady Luck not on my side, Lady Luck left me at the bar with an empty-wallet, filled with booze that I paid for, laughing in my face for daring to think that I ever had a chance with her. 

I need a pick-me-up. I need a win. Not even a big win, just a win of any kind. As Ian Holloway would put it, "To put it in gentleman's terms if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good looking and some weeks they're not the best." Quite.

This week we're going to go for blunt and easy bets, just to get some money in the kitty and pride restored. This week we're going to win ugly.

Week 5: Head vs Heart

by Rick Nash

I was really, really happy with this week's picks...until I saw the potential winnings. €5 on these tips can earn you a whopping €324. Given my track record of outsmarting the bookies this season, that doesn't seem likely before you even look at the merits of each tip.

But this website lives for the long odds, so let's give it a whirl nonetheless. At worst, there's some well researched, great value, individual tips to behold here. At best, you feel really confident, put €100 on these bets and win €6,480. But please don't do that. If you're going to waste €100, I'd much rather you installed it directly into my bank account so I can turn a profit on this blog one way or another.

This week, a look at Saturday's UFC main event before we go toe-to-toe with the heavyweight clashes to come on this wonderful sporting Sunday ahead.

This Is The End

by Rick Nash

Look...I know I've spent an entire season bemoaning the 'gambling gods' and lamenting their hatred for me. I also understand that this is completely and utterly irrational, fixating on mythical figments of my imagination instead of blaming a combination of poor predictions and shitty luck.

But hear me out this one last time.

Desperately needing a win, last weekend I put a '#JustWin' treble on, not to get good value or win any decent amount of money (as is usually the goal), just to win. That would do.

My picks? Man Utd (won), Everton (won) and...Man City.

For fuck sa..

I then switched attention to the NBA Playoffs. My strategy with playoffs in the NBA/NFL has worked quite well for me in the past. It's simple: imagine you were a new fan to the sport, knowing nothing beforehand, what team would you say seems most likely to win? The reason for this logic is because playoffs in US sport are a different beast to anything we experience this side of the water. Teams that have had otherwise-terrible seasons can go on a run and win it all (shout out to the Baltimore Ravens, who beat my colleague Angry Andy's beloved 49ers in the Superbowl) in spite of form, strength of team or any other reasonable statistic.

With that in mind and, following a fantastic run in the Western Conference that turned them from nobodies into a side inspired by an emerging basketball superstar (Steph Curry), I placed the following bet:

Just put €5 on the Golden State Warriors to win the Western Conference @ 9/1. Sorry GSW, you guys were doing so well until now. #NBAPlayoffs
— Rick Nash (@AMTRick) May 13, 2013

The result? They lost their next two games pretty convincingly to the San Antonio Spurs and got knocked out. Noticing a pattern yet?

Then on Wednesday, I had what I saw as a controversial pick inserted into my online Paddy Power betslip, only to bottle it on account of another gambling rule of mine.

The rule: Never bet against Phil Taylor. (Hey, it worked when I called the World Darts Final to the exact score)

The pick: Michael van Gerwen to win the Premier League Darts playoffs.

Of course, this then ended up happening...

...and Michael van Gerwen is your new Premier League Darts Champion. DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN?! WHAT HAVE I EVER DONE TO YOU GAMBLING GODS!

...ahem.

Shades of 1998/99 for United...

by Rick Nash

We thought it would never feel so good again. Maybe it won't. But maybe it might...

Disclaimer: This is a Man Utd-centric column so, if you'd prefer to avoid my gushing, feel free to skip ahead to the picks at the end of the piece.

Sometimes I'll say something while watching sports (or write, in this instance) and think to myself, "Hmm...I wonder if that's true or if the combination of booze and goal-induced enthusiasm has me talking utter shite (again)?"

Last week was one such instance, when I put on paper what I've been saying all season: that this year, as a Man Utd fan, felt to me very much like 1998/99.

Being just 11 at the time, I had gone through brief flings trying to support other teams after the crushing disappointment of Man Utd's league loss to Blackburn in 1994/95 (which ended with the one player who had made me a United fan, Eric Cantona, suspended for attacking a mouthy Wimbledon fan).

Without an active favourite player, I turned to (of all places) Middlesbrough in my quest to find a team that worked for me. This was because, in the summer of 1995, they'd signed a Brazilian wonderkid Juninho. I'd read about the pint-sized sensation in World Soccer magazine, and seen brief clips of him playing for Flamengo on Channel 4's old, all-sports show, 'Trans World Sport', so gave them a shot. That was until Cantona made his glorious return from suspension to see off Liverpool and re-establish himself as 'Le King'. You can't ignore stories like that. Fortunately, we won the double that season so all of the self-inflicted heartbreak of 1995 was forgotten about.

Managing Expectations

by Rick Nash

That was the week that was...

• In Spain, about two-thirds of Real Madrid's members believe that Jose Mourinho is damaging the club. Rivals Barcelona continue to dominate La Liga, this weekend winning the Basque derby in impressive style (4-0 over Espanyol).
• Closer to home, Paul Lambert's time at Villa sunk to a new low with a humiliating semi-final, 1st leg defeat to Bradford in the Capital One Cup.
• Swansea continued to bring Rafa Benitez back down to earth by humbling Chelsea 2-0 - at Stamford Bridge - in the other semi. 
• Meanwhile, in the FA Cup, Newcastle were the highest profile Premier League side upset (by Brighton) in the weekend's opening tie.

Perhaps the one stellar point raised in last week's column (which was otherwise disastrous, picks-wise, with 5-upset bets yielding a grand total of €0) is that this is the year when the 'super manager' actually wouldn't be able to swoop in and save a struggling club. The expected turnaround that Harry Redknapp would bring at QPR appears to have fallen short. Martin O'Neill, previously hailed as THE 'super manager' for a struggling club, isn't having things all his own way at Sunderland. The managers mentioned in the above bullet points all continue to unceremoniously blunder, despite their considerable reputations.

We think that bringing in a big name boss who has done wonders at another club will turn around fortunes when a club is struggling, but in 2012/13, is that still the case?

The FA Cup-set Specials

by Rick Nash

NEVER ask Balotelli to do burpees...

Contrary to popular belief...I don't enjoy losing money.

So for me to sit here and even attempt an accumulator on FA Cup 3rd Round day would only serve to waste your time. I quit. I've tried it the past few years and found that trying to bet on a selection of games together, on the very DAY were upset results thrive, is like trying to order pizza on Christmas Day. You're there to eat Turkey, the day is pretty much designed for you to eat Turkey, so don't fight a losing battle and eat your Domino's some other time.

That doesn't mean you can't enjoy the Turkey, though.