The Road to Riches Weekend of 10th-11th June

Coming up this weekend

• Horse Racing, On the flat at Beverley, Catterick, Chepstow, Haydock and Lingfield and over the jumps at Bangor
• Football, the Champions League final in Istanbul, Manchester City v Inter Milan
• Cricket, the World Test Championship final at the Oval continues, Australia v India and next week the start of the Ashes.
• Tennis ATP Libema, Stuttgart and Nottingham Opens
• Golf the US Open next week in Los Angeles

Royal Ascot

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Free Tip

The Ashes

Outright odds for the five Test Ashes series that begins at Edgbaston next week are England 5/4 Australia 13/10 and the draw 6/1. Recent England form, they’ve won 10 out of 12 Tests under Stokes in their “Bazball” approach and recent Ashes form, England have won four of the last five home Ashes series and drew the last one at home, would support England’s favouritism. However England lack the depth that Australia have, an issue that could be accentuated by playing the whole series in a six week span ahead of August being given over to the Hundred. In any case, Bazball now meets its biggest Test as the top six faces combinations of Cummins/Starc/Hazlewood/Boland and Neser.

In the very short-term England have injury issues. Leach is out, Anderson has been out, Stokes hasn’t bowled since before Christmas, Archer is absent and we should expect more rotation in the England bowling line up anyway, it being a big ask to expect Anderson at 42 and Broad at 36 to play five tests on the spin and combinations of Potts/Tongue/Woakes and others are going to be required over the next six weeks. Australia have an injury issue of their own with Hazlewood missing the World Test Championship this weekend.

I am tempted to think the outright series prices are the wrong way round, and Australia for the series at 13/10 is a much more attractive price than England’s. Weather allowing I don’t see any draws, the pace of scoring these days means many games aren’t going to go five days. If I was after a correct score, Australia 3-2 at 6/1 (Bet365) would be the play.

Aside from dealing with Australia’s bowling attack England’s key priority is going to be restricting the two major Australian batsmen Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne. Their test match statistics tell the story.

Smith averages 60 in 169 Test innings, Labuschagne who first came into the side as Smith’s concussion replacement in the English Ashes series four years ago, averages 58 in 64 Test innings. In the Top Australian series batsman market the two are unsurprisingly favourites, with Travis Head the most attractive price of the next three realistic winners in the market but a point and a half lower than last week since his big hundred this week at the Oval:

Smith 6/4

Labuschagne 5/2

Head 13/2

Khawaja 7/1

Warner 8/1

Bar 22/1

Since the last English Ashes series Labuschagne has spent four years at Glamorgan dealing with the Dukes bowl and pulverising county attacks, is a fixture at 3 in the Australian line-up and is set for s huge series.

10 points Marnus Labuschagne top Australian series scorer at 5/2 William Hill, StarSports 21/10 Betfair Sportsbook/Paddy Power 

What-Ifs?

Some of the key questions facing England ahead of the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston next week

Who will replace Jack Leach?

Leach is an important bowler for England, he’s bowled 200 more overs than any other bowler under Ben Stokes’ captaincy and holds up and end allowing the fast bowlers to be rotated at the other, keeping them fresh. Especially if Stokes cannot bowl, see below, this is a big loss. During the winter both Rehan Ahmed and Will Jacks played, but Ahmed is inexperienced and Jacks more of a part-time spinner. Moeen Ali has been persuaded out of Test retirement and into the squad for the first two tests as a stock bowler and also he lengthens the batting. It remains to be seen whether the final side will contain the extra seamer with Stokes and Root in support or contain Moeen.

Will James Anderson be fit and for how long?

Anderson suffered a groin strain playing for Lancashire a few weeks ago and was kept out of the Ireland test as a precaution. All the signs are that he will play the first Test but at 42 years old the nature of this series, five Tests in six weeks, does him no favours. It remains a long shot that he would play all five Tests.

Is Ben Stokes going to be able to bowl?

Stokes struggled badly with the chronic injury to his left knee during the winter and then bowled one over for Chennai Super Kings in the IPL. He didn’t bowl in the Ireland Test and visibly winced a couple of times in the field. He expects to be ready to bowl in the Ashes, important as in doing so it balances the side from the all-rounder position but it remains to be seen whether he’ll be hobbling around and putting himself through 12 overs a day during the series.

Should Zak Crawley have been dropped?

Crawley averages 27.6 in Tests and hasn’t convinced yet in the way that his opening partner Duckett has. Perhaps he has survived for now due the paucity of other opening options capable of playing in a Bazball style, which doesn’t suit Burns, Sibley and Hameed to name a few and the reluctance to make room for a Foakes, say by promoting Stokes to opener.

Was making Jonny Bairstow wicketkeeper the right call?

Bairstow’s four centuries and average of 75.6 last summer playing as a specialist batsman meant his return to the side was assured once he had recovered from injury. In his absence the huge success of Harry Brook at 5 created a logjam of middle order batsmen that Bairstow has been introduced back as batsman-wicketkeeper at the expense of the unfortunate Ben Stokes.

That probably costs the side in the field at some point in the Ashes series but could all being well mean a couple of hundred runs extra from the number seven position.

Do England still want flat pitches despite losing express pace options in Jofra Archer and Olly Stone?

Stokes admitted last month he wants pitches to suit his fast bowlers and quick pitches would suit his fast-scoring batting line-up. Have the injuries to Archer, Stone and the fragility of Wood all three the main “enforcers” changed that?

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The Road to Riches Weekend of 3rd-4th June

Coming up this weekend

• Horse Racing, On the flat at Doncaster, Epsom, Lingfield and Musselburgh and over the jumps at Hexham, Stratford and Worcester
• Football, the FA Cup Final Manchester City v Manchester United
• Formula One, the Spanish Grand Prix
• Cricket, the England-Ireland Test continues at Lords and next week the World Test Championship final at the Oval, Australia v India
• Tennis the French Open concludes
• Golf the Canadian Open on the USPGA and the Scandinavian Mixed Open on the DP World Tour

Royal Ascot

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Free Tip

The Derby by Neil Channing, Saturday at 1.30pm

Sleepwalking

It all started with the King Power Helicopter crash in 2018, with Leicester City robbed of a ruthless and decisive chairman (for example prepared to sack Ranieri the season after winning the title) replaced by his son, less effective, less dynamic and less involved than his father. That the crash was followed by the COVID pandemic that so affected the finances of the parent company duty free business and left the new young Chairman observing events remotely for a year was unfortunate, but the tale of Leicester City’s relegation is one of complacency, mismanagement and failing to spot the signs of impending trouble.

In the 9 years the club was in the Premier League it, famously, won the League, finished 5^th twice subsequently, the FA Cup, the Community Shield and reached the Champions League Quarter Finals.

Problems began in the Summer of 2021 when, in the wake of a £60m summer spend the club began hitting FFP ceilings. That £60m was by and large spent poorly, in a couple of cases on panicky defensive buys such as Vestergaard and Bertrand in the midst of an injury crisis. Signing ageing players on expensive contracts, plus others like Soumare and Daka who failed to settle, reduced the flexibility to keep building the squad as other teams around them strengthened.  The result was the transfer window of last summer which saw no incoming players and the important loss of Schmeichel, still in contract, who was never replaced. No Schmeichel and the loss of Jonny Evans for virtually the whole season since October, had a huge effect on a defence that was young, unsettled and no longer well protected, as the form of defensive midfielder Wilfred Ndidi was a shadow of that of two years previously.

Fofana was sold for a price it was impossible to turn down, and ultimately some of those proceeds were invested in three defenders in the January transfer window, Faes, Souttar and Kristensen. Two of these players were out of the side once Dean Smith arrived and Faes was partnered with a revolving door of other centre backs in the last third of the season.

Poor recruitment led to a subsequent tightening of the purse strings and this had been on the cards since the 2020-21 accounts where the wage to turnover burden was 85% when UEFA’s cost control regulations were being set at 80% and then 70% going forward.

Aware of all this the ambitious Brendan Rodgers visibly became half-hearted, publically criticising players at times, pointing to an unbalanced squad at others and telling press conferences that the club had reached its ceiling. Fans agitated for his removal, but the club was drifting off-the-field with no sign of the decisiveness required to make such a decision and such was the size of potential pay-off that it was difficult to afford this under FFP anyway.

The board meanwhile was dropping the ball on expiring contracts, notably Youri Tielemans who was much in demand 18 months ago, wanted to leave but wasn’t sold and now leaves this summer out of contract after a series of half-hearted performances during the relegation fight.

Eventually a change of manager came when there was really no other option, but with only 9 games to go. Turned down by Benitez and, in a sign of how far things had fallen, Jesse Marsch, in came Dean Smith suggesting that 11 points were needed. He was right, but the side only achieved nine points under him.

Through the season the side only won 11 points from matches against sides that also finished in the bottom six, the worst of any of those teams. No points were won over the season against Bournemouth and Southampton. The defensive stats were horrific. The club broke the record for the most goals conceded from the first seven games of a Premier League season and had four separate four game losing streaks. Nine home games were lost and there was one clean sheet in the last 22 league games, and that one was when it was too late, at Newcastle in the penultimate game of the season.

Putting the ball in the back of the net has not been such a problem, with 51 goals scored a total bettered by only 8 other teams this season. Only two other clubs have been relegated from the Premier League having scored 50+ goals. The fact that they have a decent attacking record yet were relegated emphasises just how defensively inept Leicester have been.

Ultimately Leicester became the first team in the Premier League era to be relegated after five straight top half finishes, and a cautionary tale of the risks of standing still and/or poor recruitment such is the inequity of the FFP system for smaller clubs.

The club enters the Championship with a huge rebuilding job on its hands. The Wage bill, bloated by nine years in the top league and trying to compete in the top half, is £182m the highest of any club relegated to the Championship. Parachute payments of £40m aren’t going to touch the sides of that. The club has taken out loans secured against Premier League TV revenue through to 2026. Sales of top players are inevitable, as are significant cutbacks off-the-field and a delayed stadium expansion and only some player contracts contain relegation clauses. Jamie Vardy owes the club nothing, but the sight of him charging around Home Park, Plymouth and the New York Stadium, Rotherham next season at 36 years old on £140,000 a week with his contract not expiring for another year will be an indication of the difficulties at hand beyond the obvious sales of Maddison and Barnes and the free transfers of Tielemans and the 9 other out of contract players.

Clarity of though, a plan and a direction with the right people to implement it, both in terms of football management and cutting the cloth of the business to new circumstances, is urgently needed but such is the scale of the shock of this relegation (not necessarily to the fans, but apparently to the board who have sleep-walked into it, happy to show pre-match montages of former glories on video screens before games but at no point make many sensible decisions in the last two years) that that might be overly optimistic.

I’d consider “doing a Burnley” and bouncing straight back unlikely such is the scale of cutbacks that need to take place not even considering whispers that the Thai Chairman would sell if an opportunity presented itself.

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The Road to Riches Weekend of 27th-28th May

Coming up this weekend

• Horse Racing, On the flat at Chester, Goodwood, Haydock, Salisbury and York and over the jumps at Cartmel and Ffos Las
• Football, the final weekend of the Premier League, fixtures include Brentford v Manchester City and the play off Finals
• Rugby Union, the Gallagher Premiership play off final, Saracens v Sale
• Formula One, the Monaco Grand Prix
• Cricket, the IPL final in Ahmedabad
• Tennis the French Open
• Golf the Memorial Tournament on the USPGA and the European Open on the DP World Tour

Royal Ascot

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Free Tip

Gallagher Premiership Final Saracens v Sale, Saturday 3pm at Twickenham

The top two sides in the Gallagher Premiership league table this season meet in the Play-Off final this weekend. Saracens beat Northampton 38-15 in the first semi-final and Sale beat Leicester 21-13 in the more attritional second semi-final where defences were to the fore.

This has been Sale’s best season for 15 years built on a crop of good young players and specifically the league’s best defence and the game management skills of George Ford at fly half once he returned from his injury. Over the regular season Sale conceded 50 points less than any other team in the league and 85 points fewer than Saracens.

Sale have four players in the Premiership's top 10 for turnovers won per 80 minutes this season: both Curry twins, Bevan Rodd and Sam Dugdale, though Ben Curry is out injured for this game. However, such aggression has come at a price for Sale. They have conceded an average of 11.1 penalties per match, the highest total in the league.

Traditionally Saracens titles have been built on forward strength and Owen Farrell’s kicking. Indeed both teams essentially play a structured game. However this season Saracens have developed a slightly more expansive playing style with attacking intent.

Saracens' average carrying return per match has increased from 676 metres in 2021-22 to 778 this season, while their tally of kicking metres has dropped from 877 to 826. They were the top point scorers in the regular season and scored the second most tries. If the game gets unstructured on Saturday then Saracens are likely to have the edge.

Saracens have only lost two matches that Owen Farrell has started this season, against London Irish and at La Rochelle in the European Champions Cup. A more experienced side now with a couple of strings to their bow I like them to win the match by a score or two, in the region of 6-15 points

8 points Saracens to win by 6-10 points at 5/1 with William Hill, 9/2 generally

8 points Saracens to win by 11-15 points at 15/2 with William Hill, 7/1 Betfred

Ashes to Ashes

A feature of recent series is that Australia have scored runs in plentiful quantities led by the brilliant Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne and also because England have been nowhere near as capable as their counterparts at the task of keeping their best bowlers on the field.

With a few weeks left to go until this summer’s series Jofra Archer has already been ruled out, James Anderson has a groin injury, Mark Wood has left the IPL early and now Ollie Robinson has an ankle injury. Robinson, if fit, looms as a significant threat to Australia on English surfaces, nibbling the ball around at good enough pace but this season has also needed a cortisone injection in his back to be able to bowl. Aside from these players two other England quicks Olly Stone and Jamie Overton, are also on the injured list. Captain Ben Stokes has missed most of the IPL too and has carried knee trouble for a couple of years.

Australia meanwhile have strength in depth behind the settled starting line up of Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood and Lyon. Michael Neser has been brilliant for Glamorgan and looks ideally suited to English conditions, a Terry Alderman-like operator and Sean Abbott has been in good form for table topping Surrey and there is Scott Boland too who declined IPL and county stints to be ready for the Ashes.

Since 2017, England have had to play at times without Anderson, Stuart Broad, Archer and Wood at key times at home and away. Stokes had called for a group of up to 8 fast bowlers for the upcoming five tests that take place over a six week period. That now looks highly optimistic. It’s likely that Anderson and Robinson won’t be asked to play in the one-off Test against Ireland that begins the Test summer, saving them for the first Ashes Test but also pretty unlikely that Anderson at 40 will play five Ashes Tests in quick succession, with the schedule truncated ahead of the Hundred beginning at the start of August.

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The Road to Riches Weekend of 20th-21st May

Coming up this weekend

• Horse Racing, On the flat at Doncaster, Newbury, Newmarket and Thirsk and over the jumps at Bangor and Uttoxeter
• Football, Premier League fixtures include Manchester City v Chelsea
• Rugby Union, the European Champions Cup Final between Leinster and La Rochelle
• Formula One, the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola
• Cricket, the IPL continues and the start of the T20 Blast
• Tennis the ATP Geneva and Lyon Opens and French Open Qualifying
• Golf following the USPGA next week sees the Charles Schwab Challenge on the USPGA and the Dutch Championship on the DP World Tour

Free Tip

IPL KKR v Lucknow Super Giants Saturday 3pm

The last weekend of the Group Stages before the Knockouts next week. The Gujurat Titans have already Qualified for the “Qualifier 1” game in Chennai in which the top two in the group table meet with the winners going straight to the final in Ahmedabad. These two teams are battling for a place in the Eliminator game between the 3^rd and 4^th place finishers, where the winner advances to play the loser from Qualifier 1 and the loser is out.

Lucknow beat Mumbai on Tuesday to go to 15 points with this last game left. Despite the injury to Rahul combinations of Mayers, Pooran, Stoinis and De Kock have led LSG to many successes and batting is their strong area.

In their 13 games KKR have only won 6 but beat Chennai away last weekend to remain in the hunt for the knockout stages. In their batting line up both Singh and Rana have over 400 runs each and in the bowling ranks they’ve had to overcome a comparatively lean season for Sunil Narine with only 9 wickets in 13 appearances. They’ve done so through the performances of two other leg spinners. Suyash Sharma with 10 wickets and notably Varun Chakravathy with 19 at 8 runs per over. A former CSK net bowler, he out-bowled CSK’s spinners to win the match last weekend and will have more opportunities this against Lucknow’s big hitting line up.

Chakravathy has many more variations than when he was a younger player. Of his 19 wickets so far in this IPL the leg break has only accounted for 9 of the wickets and he bowls the tough overs too, 5 of his wickets have been taken from overs 16-20. Bowling when the opposition is taking risks, and with the extra variations has allowed him to keep taking wickets even on home pitches, not always the most conducive to slow bowlers.

10 points Varun Chakravathy Most KKR wickets at 11/4 wth Betfred, 5/2 with Betfair Sportsbook and Paddy Power.

Hundreds and Thousands

Just after the launch event for this season’s Hundred competition the ECB were briefing to journalists that the tournament might be heading for significant change already, having only run for two seasons, and possibly being scrapped completely.

Over and above the criticisms of the Hundred the essential problem that English cricket faces is unchanged. Between the feasible playing months of April and September running four full scale competitions across the various formats is not conducive to a sensible calendar. None of the County Championship, feeding into a Test Team, the Royal London, feeding into a national 50 over side and particularly the World Cup and a T20 tournament feeding into that World Cup can be scrapped yet all of August is currently given to the Hundred, a format no other country plays.

Though a mid-season World Cup has made this year an anomaly, the key elements of the English football calendar, a league split into four national divisions that start in August and end in May, an FA Cup that leading teams enter in January at the third-round stage and a League Cup have been unchanged since 1960-61. Cricket’s administrators though never seem sure what should be played and when. They face the challenge of a ever increasing numbers of overseas franchise competitions, the latest of which in the US is set to run in our summer months and provide more competition for talent.

The latest mooted changes to the Hundred follow the appointments last year of Richard Thompson and Richard Gould, noted Hundred sceptics when they worked together at Surrey, as the ECB’s chair and chief executive. Earlier this month the publication a report by Fanos Hira, chairman of Worcestershire found that projections made by Deloitte when they assessed the Hundred’s viability in 2016 have proven extremely optimistic. In the first year the competition generated only 41% of the income predicted with losses of £9m. The report says that fir the Hundred “organic growth options appear limited”, and external investment is needed if the competition is to boost salaries capped at £125,000 for men and £31,250 for women to a level capable of attracting the world’s best players. This year’s first edition of South Africa’s SA20, which like the Hundred is played over almost exactly a month but opened itself up to IPL franchise owners, paid its stars as much as £400,000.

Early discussions have concerned potentially rebranding the Hundred competition as an English Premier League and expanding to 18 teams, with a new promotion and relegation system introduced, possibly changing to a T20 format and removing the Blast and with it the pressure on the current calendar.

The Hundred has had some notable successes. With the help of heavily subsidised tickets and its place in the peak of summer it has attracted large numbers of people who had not previously attended live cricket. It has also brought live cricket back to the BBC. Last year, live coverage was watched by 14.1m viewers, of which 31% were women and 42% watched no other cricket in 2022.

The introduction of the Hundred was controversial and unpopular, and many county members preferred to attend the Royal London running concurrently, in some cases played by second XI’s with the the star players away at the Hundred.

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Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated on 1^st January 2023. They can be found by clicking RESULTS

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A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £61,936 a 1448% increase 

The Road to Riches Weekend of 13th-14th May

Coming up this weekend

• Horse Racing, On the flat at Ascot, Haydock, Leicester, Lingfield, Nottingham and over the jumps at Hexham and Warwick
• Football, Premier League fixtures include Everton v Manchester City
• Rugby Union, the Premiership semi-finals
• Cricket, the IPL continues
• Tennis the ATP Geneva and Lyon Opens
• Golf the USPGA Championship at Oak Hill

Free Tip

Gallagher Premiership Semi Final Sale Sharks v Leicester Tigers Sunday 3pm

Sale warmed up for Leicester’s visit by thumping the bottom placed Falcons 54-12 and have home advantage here by virtue of finishing second in the league table with the Tigers, last year’s play-off winners, third.

Leicester have lost 8 league games this season and dealt with the loss of their coaching staff to England mid-season. Their strengths are in the pack and at half back where South African marquee player Handre Pollard pulls the strings. Sale match up with those strengths well with a big physical pack and George Ford, who joined Sales from Leicester this season, at 10. They come into the game on the back of their most successful season in 15 years.

Outright prices for the game are Sale 8/13 and -3 on the handicap, Leicester 11/8 and it should be close with Sale rightly favourites at home. It could be as tight as one score, and unlikely to be more than two given how closely the sides match up.

The key differentiator could be defence. In the league this season Sale conceded 435 points to Leicester’s  490. In their last five visits to Sale Leicester have scored 5,3,10,26 and 5 points and in the two games between the two this season Leicester scored less than 2 points per visit to the 22, season lows

16 points Sale to win -3 Handicap at 10/11 generally

Draft Day

There is much NFL excitement over the draft and it is great business for the NFL. This year the draft recorded an audience of over 54m viewers over the three days and 312,000 fans attended in person at Kansas City

Even better business for the NFL is how rookie contracts work since the past two collective bargaining agreements. The rookie wage scale now operates to (1) mandate all drafted players sign four-year contracts; (2) prohibit renegotiations of these contracts for at least three seasons; and (3) pre-determine the financial compensation of every drafted rookie.

As to that predetermined compensation, the 2023 class is going to make virtually the same as the 2022 class, which made virtually the same as the 2021 class. For example, this year’s top pick, quarterback Bryce Young, will have a signing bonus of $24.6m, only 1% more than the $24.3m received by last year’s top pick, defensive tackle Travon Walker.

Why so nominal an increase? This is continuing fallout from the 2021 COVID-19-related cap decline of 8%, when the NFL and the NFLPA made the decision not to change the rookie salary formula for that season. Rather, they decided to claw back increases for future draft classes, keeping the rookie bonus increases at only 1% while the overall cap increases were 14% in 2022 and 8% in 2023.

Speaking of team advantages on rookie pay and rookie contracts, last week was the deadline for NFL teams to exercise fifth-year options on first-round picks from the 2020 draft. And the results are stark: Just 12 of the 32 players picked in that class were optioned. Only 14 were non-optioned on deadline day; five are no longer on the team that drafted them, and one signed a new contract to bridge the option.

In the recent CBA, the NFLPA made some gains by requiring the option year to be fully guaranteed. In the past, it was only guaranteed for injury; teams had low risk in exercising the option. Now they have to think hard about putting a big number on the player a year out, even if it could come back to haunt them, as it did with the Giants and Daniel Jones (the non-exercise of a $20m option cost the team $82m over the next two years).

If you had asked any of these non-exercising teams after the 2020 first round whether they felt confident that they would exercise the option on that player in May 2023, they would have all said “Of course!” In practice, it was a disappointing draft class.

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Betting Emporium results

The detailed results page has been updated on 1^st January 2023. They can be found by clicking RESULTS

If you bet £10 per point on every recommended bet since launch you would be winning + £61,936 All bets have an ROI +2.91%

A £4000 bank betting £10 a point on all selections would now be worth £61,936 a 1448% increase