Last week, as my fellow Predictorship players may already be aware, I decided to hurl myself headlong into the exciting world of online gambling in an attempt to turn my Premiership knowledge into hard cash. Despite having very little betting experience (I’ve, in fact, only ever won one bet ever which was placed on a greyhound called Brenda’s something-or-other) I decided that my meteoric rise into nose-bleed territory in the Predictorship would guarantee me sure-fire success.

My initial plan was to place twenty £1 bets: one for each of the predicted results, one for each of the predicted scores thereby only committing myself to a potential liability of £20. So, with this in mind, I set up about scouring the form statistics on www.football365.com and came up with a bunch of plausible scores - scores that I was willing to stake 20 quid on. Unfortunately, after setting up an account with www.betfair.com I discovered that the minimum stake was £2. After about 30 seconds umming and ahhing I decided that I’d go ahead with my original plan but with twenty £2 bets – I’d gone on about it all so much to Dave Roberts and any other Predictorship players around the office who’d listen after all. So £40 it was. Except that, in my excitement, I accidentally bet on one score twice (more on that later) and I ended up staking £42.

I had every intention of listening to all the matches I could live on BBC Radio 5 Live, I thought this would add even more excitement to proceedings. Unfortunately, due to a slightly excessive Friday night on the town, I ended up dozing off through most of Saturday’s matches. When I finally awoke I discovered that I’d already predicted two corrects scores. And it gets better still – that errant double bet was on Everton 2 – 0 Sheffield United – which was indeed the final score. Which meant I was in profit already – just as well, I lost out on the 5.15pm kick off as Fulham earned an away point at Villa Park (I’d predicted a 2-1 home win).

Sunday started well, I watched Manchester United beat Liverpool 2-0, as I’d predicted – the only downside to this was that I watched it with two of my friends who are Liverpool fans – they weren’t quite so pleased with the result. The rest of the day was quiet, I landed two more correct results but no more correct scores. Net result: £42 staked, £86 return giving a profit of £44. Not bad for a first timer.

Next week I’m going to reduce my stake to £20 by only placing bets on the correct scores – the odds on the correct results simply aren’t worth it. Although I may allow myself £3 on whatever turns up to be the highest odds score I’ve predicted just for added excitement.