Weekend Jottings

There are just two flat cards this afternoon with the action coming from Newbury and Hamilton.  It's another good card from Newmarket with the second Classic of the new flat season, the 1,000 Guineas the obvious highlight.  Not only that, I notice that the five runner race at 3.35pm has four Aidan O'Brien representatives in there (with Ryan Moore and Frankie aboard two of them), whilst his son Joseph saddles the other runner.  So, between them the O'Brien family are responsible for the entire field...they must have a chance!

It's good to see that the ITV Racing figures are up.  The latest statistics show that their ITV and ITV4 audiences rose by 81,000 per broadcast.  It can't all be down to Matt Chapman!  Personally, I think the team do a good job and an average of 664,000 per each live show is a decent effort.  Even so, we still need to get more people engaged.

Why don't the government leave betting shops alone?  Messing around with the roulette machines is not doing a great deal of good.  The shops are now empty as a consequence as nobody is playing them anymore.  Whilst, that may be what the government wanted, it is going to mean a lot of shop closures and therefore job losses.  Dominic Ford, an independent bookmaker has had to close two of his three shops as a result of this stake reduction.  Mark my words, in only a few years there will hardly be any betting shops left which I think is a great shame.

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There are three Premiership matches taking place today with Arsenal and Chelsea looking like home bankers at 4/9 and 2/5.

Talking of football, I see that Leeds United's head coach Marcelo Bielsa has forked out the £200,000 fine the team was handed for 'Spygate'.  He was caught sending one of his staff to spy on Derby.  He went on to say, "The sanction was against the club and not me, but I'm responsible, that's why I paid from my pocket".  It must be nice to be able to find a spare £200,000 down the back of the sofa!

Spurs chairman Daniel Levy has said that he will give his manager Mauricio Pochettino a large amount of money to spend on new players...I don't think that he realises that £100 million will not buy a lot of players.  Perhaps someone should tell him?

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My favourite part of attending a marathon is watching the reaction of runners who grab my plastic cup of vodka!  Keep smiling...

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