Due to my recent success at the bookies I’ve decide to look at a few of the World Cup group stage odds and see if anything catches my eye. The World Cup can throw up some strange results so there’s not too much harm in placing a few outside bets. Here are a few I’ve chosen from Ladbrokes.com:

Germany vs Costa Rica is a 9-1 away win.
England vs Trinidad is a 10-1 away win.
Brazil vs Australia is a 10-1 away win.
Brazil vs Japan is a 11-1 away win.

I looked at WilliamHill.co.uk and BlueSq.com who only gave odds on matches up to the 14th of June. Don’t they want me to bet? BetFred.com wouldn’t give me any match odds at all. They did have a list of leading Goal Scorers though with Luca Toni at 16-1 and Cisse at 40-1. Hmm, could be worth a punt.

And who will be the eventual winners? Well Brazil or Germany are favourites but maybe France still has a little steam left in them or Italy perhaps? Japan are 200-1 which is worth 50p!

Yes! A nice £200 will be coming my way due to Graeme Dott’s triumphant win over Pter Ebdon. He was 15-7 in front at one point with only 18 needed to win so I thought the money was in the bag. But alas there was a huge fightback from Ebdon that went on till 12:52AM, which included the longest frame ever at the Crucible (74 minutes).

My next bet? Well I’m thinking of putting a few quid on a longshot for the FA Cup. Currently I’m thinking West Ham 2 - 1 Liverpool with Reo-Coker first scorer. If I can get over 40-1 I’ll put a fiver on that too!

So much for the FA wanting to appoint an Englishman or a Briton. It looks like Luiz Felipe Scolari is going to be the new England manager. The FA have just offered him the job.

I presume that Martin O’Neill didn’t want the job and they felt that McClaren, Curbishley and Allardyce were not up to the job. I’m a big fan of Sven and think he’s the best England manager I’ve ever seen but I thought that maybe it was time to give an English manager a chance. And Scolari will be a mistake.

The good thing is that he looks exactly like my Dad. If my Dad grows his moustache back he could get lots of work during retirement as a Scolari lookalike. Excellent.