BILLY BUNTER

Weblog: The football punter

Here's hoping big Bayo
is ready to rumble

AS MRS B would tell you, there's nothing wrong with a man who likes his food and the occasional flare-up. We're the salt of the earth.

And so it doesn't matter if this evening's top-of-the-bill Liechtenstein v Scotland clash doesn't live up to much because by then the lunchtime clash between Northampton and Crawley should have kept us all royally entertained.

Cobblers boss Gary Johnson is a jolly chap – and he's going up against Steve Evans of Crawley, who can come across as a jolly angry chap during matches.

Johnno raised the stakes for some touchline shenanigans with his tongue-in-cheek comments about his rival at a midweek press conference.

When asked if he considered Evans a love-him-or-hate-him Marmite character, the Sixfields supremo joked: "He's not Marmite – no-one likes him!”

At this point I should probably come up with a cracking little line about backing something on the spreads, but a simple bet on the home team will do me nicely.

Because believe it or not, Evans has a rival inthe market for being the biggest character on display in the basement battle.

Step forward Adebayo Akinfenwa, Northampton's man mountain of a front man. He doesn't move those tree-trunk legs that often, but when he does by thunder the seismologists monitoring Mount Etna know about it.

The big fella takes a lot of policing and I reckon he can bag the first goal of the game.

Crawley's own top marksman, Matt Tubbs, also sounds like he should be a larger-than-life character, but while he clearly feasts on goals, Mrs B says he looks like he needs feeding up and is wrapping up a parcel of meat-paste Tubbs sandwiches as I type.