Back At Newton Abbot
The bookies claim that £350million will be wagered on Saturday's Grand National - that is more than the combined total of the four days of the Cheltenham Festival, while the turnover for the Derby is £100million. The television audience worldwide will be over 600 million which makes it easily the biggest race of the year - with figures like those, it beggars belief that we cannot make the sport of horse racing more popular.
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I see that the England cricketers suffered yet another embarrassing loss yesterday as they were beaten by Holland in the Twenty Twenty Cricket World Cup. This must be one of the worst losses by any England team at any sport. If it was a football team, the management would have been sacked months ago. I lived in Holland for a couple of years and never saw on cricket pitch the whole time I was over there. Such results are an absolute disgrace - strong words, but they need to be said.
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At the other end of the spectrum, what a great success by West Ham as they beat Sunderland! Having said that, in fairness they both looked like bad teams. I cannot believe that Sunderland did not start with Adam Johnson - he was the best player on the field by a mile and if I were manager of a big Premier League side, I would certainly be interested in buying him. West Ham are starting to look comfortable in mid division and it would appear that he is fulfilling the requirements of the West Ham chairman - if your aim is just to stay in the Premiership get Sam Allardyce as your manager. Play ten at the back and leave just one up front - it's boring football but effective for Big Sam's style of play.
There is a good match on tonight as Manchester United take on Bayern Munich. The coverages starts on ITV at 7.45pm and it will show us if United have improved at all.
