I'd given up on this one...

I have had a week away on a training course which has meant no trading or posting for the past seven days or so. During that time I was reminded of things long forgotten in my professional life, met some great people and ate and drank far too much! I love a full English breakfast, and the only time I have one these days is when on residential training courses or before a day's golf!

Back to the business in hand. Firstly, congratulations to Chelsea on a fine win over Liverpool to lift the FA Cup once more. If they can show the same spirit and resilience in Munich as they did at Wembley I've got a feeling their season might not yet be over...

Secondly I returned home to an email from The Geek telling me that his 'Toy' is no longer going to be available free of charge, accompanied, purely coincidentally I'm sure, by mails from both Bet Angel and Bettrader Evolution offering savings and promotions on their respective products. Whilst it obviously hurts a bit to learn that something that has been free is now going to cost, I can't say that I'm surprised. It is a fantastic bit of kit with lots of nice features, and, once I'd found out how to turn the silly noises off, one I'd grown very fond of using. The Toy was launched during the so called 'forum wars' period a couple of years ago and has undergone several revisions since. The only thing that BA offers over it, in my opinion, is the ability to integrate with Excel and to track multiple markets. I don't think Evo offers any real advantages so it will be interesting to see if the many current GT users stick or twist once they have to start paying. I offer my thanks to The Geek for developing and supporting this software over the years and hope that by charging for it he is able to extend its functionality still further as time goes by.

So what had I given up on? A while ago, with this post, I declared that Man U were a lay for the Premiership title, being too short in the low 1.4's. I duly did lay them for a reasonable sum of money. Results then conspired against me and Utd's price continued to shorten. Looking at the remaining fixtures I honestly saw no reason to get in any deeper, and, in truth, reduced my liability a little as the title race looked to be over. Then enter the Moyes Boys stage left and the whole thing was turned completely on its head! At that stage the key match was obviously the Manchester derby on Monday night, which I watched with my training course colleagues in a busy hotel bar. The only decision to be made now is whether to lock in the profit with Manure trading at 8.6 or to look maybe at letting it run and cover the liability (if I feel the need) with a correct score trade on the draw and QPR winning scores on Saturday afternoon...