BILLY BUNTER

Weblog: The football punter

I'm hoping that positive thinking will pay off

PART of a punter's mentality is inevitably based around trying to be positive after setbacks and I had high hopes that Barcelona's back-to-back defeats would have duped bookmakers into thinking the Catalans are suddenly rubbish as much as it appears to have duped some idiotic pundits.

Unfortunately, bookmakers are not idiotic kneejerk pundits (that's as close to a compliment about The Enemy as I'll get) and I think the prices offered about Barca are close to spot on.

Any positivity about smashing into them at short prices seeped out of me once I had that Lionel Messi had been suffering with "a gastric issue".

I've had enough gastric issues to realise the severity of this problem, so don't expect me to make any jokes about how messy things could get for him.

According to the BBC, Roberto Di Matteo has 'promised a positive approach' to the game, but when I clicked on the story about that it seemed that all he said was that Chelsea will have to score a goal to progress. Er, they scored in the first leg and I don't seem to remember much particularly positive.

Anyway, nit-picking with the Beeb aside, I agree that Di Matteo's team are bound to be more attacking, simply because I expect Barca to score at least twice so there'll come a point when the Blues have to go for it.

I reckon the goals should flow, because the second Chelsea abandon their safety-first approach the floodgates are bound to open and I'll be basing my punting strategy around that.

So in contrast to the first tie I'm confident it's going to be an entertaining tie with more goals than bookmakers expect.

How's that for a positive approach?