Weekend review; learning from school boy errors

Running balance: £1,708.41

Right, I never like dissecting a losing session, let alone when it includes my worst ever daily loss. Well, as I write this, I'm feeling slightly lucky. Even though from 5 settled bets this weekend, I won 2 and lost 3 and am down £155.13. That is because Manchester Utd pulled off one of the biggest smash and grab performances I've seen this season against Arsenal, and instead of potentially being down £338.46 over the two days, I'm only down the aforementioned £155 and change. That result also saved me from the embarrassment of losing 3 consecutive £100 bets for the first time. Hat's off Arsenal, you gave a remarkable display despite being cruelly defeated in the week. You have to remember that a lot of the pre-season talk was of Spurs taking Arsenal's "Big 4" spot, and it being the end of an era with Henry departing to Spain. If Arsenal's notoriously tight board can find it in themselves to spend on one or two key players in the summer, I think they can challenge more seriously next year.

The real error of this weekend was obviously selecting 5 games yesterday, and not just the one as I usually do. It's gone against all the success I've had in the last couple of months and I quickly realised this was an error as soon as the games kicked off yesterday. Over the next couple of months, I'm going back to picking the one, strongest bet every day.

Ironically, if I had put this into place yesterday, I would have been ok, as the Palace v Scunthorpe game was the one I had felt most confident with (that's an honest admission, Neil Warnock knows how to get out of this division).

Looking at the three games I lost, there was two distinct errors I made:

1. With the Hull City and Southend selections, I made the mistake of putting too much emphasis on the home teams form only. Both these teams had been on fire of recent and both had moved into the play-offs after being in mid-table for most of the season. However both were playing teams who were showing a good bit of form themselves in QPR and Northampton. But I had dismissed this as they were both also in a position where they had nothing to play for, in regards to either promotion or relegation. Sadly it seems that both the home teams suffered with end of season nerves, whilst the away teams had creative license, as they were free from such pressure.

I realised this twenty minutes into Soccer Saturday, when both Hull and Southend were 0-1 down and struggling. Still, its good to pick this up now, as over the course of the next couple of months, this will be a key ingredient of many of the games I look at.

2. The Cambridge defeat was arguably down to a little bit of the above, with Stafford already down and little to play for. The key difference was that Stafford had lost 5 or 6 in a row and were in no form at all. The main error I made here was I made too much of Stafford's lack of form, and not enough on how Cambridge had been playing. If I had, I would have seen that, aside from their last 2 games, Cambridge had only got 1 point from a previous 12, and had lost recently to the woeful Farsley Celtic.

Having said that, I still think that Cambridge should have comfortably won this, so I wasn't surprised about Cambridge manager Jimmy Quinn stating after the game that he was disgusted with such an abject performance.

So, there we have it. Despite all the above and the three figure loss, I still think I have enough time to turn this around in the remainder of the month, so let's go onwards and upwards. Less greed, more research and focus on one selection a day.