Saturday 5th April

Wigan v Birmingham City- WIGAN to win @ 2.00

Blackburn v Tottenham Hotspurs- BLACKBURN to win @ 2.40

SLIM PICKINGS to win Grand National @ 13.00

MASSA to be on pole for Sunday @ 2.75

WIGAN v Birmingham City

As Fulham and Bolton continue to shoot themselves in the foot it seems as if Steve Bruce’s current and former teams will both be playing Premiership football next season. Argy under-21 star Mauro Zarate pleased the St. Andrews faithful no end with his brace against Sven’s faltering City side, and should cause Melchiot and the rest of the Wigan defence plenty of headaches this weekend too. Nevertheless despite possibly finding a new goalscoring hero, Birmingham have been very poor on their travels. Bruce’s Wigan side on the other hand are playing some decent football and had they scored their penalty away at in-form Pompey could have come back from Fratton Park with a creditable point.

This won’t be a classic by any stretch of the imagination and you won’t be surprised to hear that’s it’s not on the box, but it’s a Premiership match nonetheless and we expect Wigan to edge Birmingham in a keenly contested match.

BLACKBURN v Tottenham

Blackburn have proven to be a solid and quality outfit under Mark Hughes. With attacking options such as Bentley, Roberts, Santa Cruz , Benni McCarthy and Pedersen in their ranks goals haven’t be a problem for Rovers.

Despite having those players at their disposal Blackburn had a blip in their last home game as they drew with seemingly doomed Fulham. This could explain the pretty generous odds of 2.40 available on Blackburn with some bookies.

On the other hand Spurs boss Ramos has probably already decided which players will depart in the summer and with Spurs counting down the days to the summer holidays they seem to be lacking the motivation and hunger which was visible during their win over Chelsea at Wembley.Spurs’ players seem to think the season ended after their Carling Cup win back in March. Unfortunately for North London pie eating champ Paul Robinson and the rest of the Tottenham squad the season actually ends in May and not March. We can’t see them getting anything out of their trip to Ewood Park.

GRAND NATIONAL

At 6/1 Cloudy Lane is the favourite and many are backing him as he has won everything we have seen him in so far and the fact that he jumps for fun makes this race ideal for him. However, despite him being the heavy favourite it doesn’t mean you should put all your money on him. In the past 50 years only 5 favourites have actually gone on to win the race.

As far as the rest of the field goes we reckon the best offer is on Slim Pickings at 12/1. He’s a great jumper and having run only four races this year is in tip top shape for the big one.

If you want to take a punt on a real outsider, put a quid on Idle Talk at 67’s and that should pay for an evening’s drinks down the local boozer.

FORMULA ONE- QUALIFYING

Although Kimi Raikkonen is definitely numero uno in the Ferrari team his pointless (in the Championship of course) team-mate Felipe Massa seems to have a love-affair with Bahrain. We don’t know if the warm climate has a negative effect on the Ice-man from Finland while nicely warming up the Brazilian but whatever it is Massa seems to be on course for Pole on Saturday.

Massa came out firing in the Friday practice sessions and was over a second quicker than championship leader Lewis Hamilton. Afterwards he said “I like it track, I always go very well here.” The fact he won from pole last year suggests he wasn’t lying either. Hamilton will be hoping that he was carrying more fuel than his Ferrari rivals and that he’ll be closer to his arch-rivals come Saturday.

However, although we doubt he’ll be over a second slower than Massa and Kimi it lloks unlikely that he’ll be on pole let alone on the 1^st row of the track. Therefore Massa at 2.75 to be on pole seems to be the way to go. Kubica in the ever improving BMW to qualify ahead of Hamilton is another decent little side bet.

Enjoy Saturday’s sport and keep on betdreaming