In the days before the gambling industry took over the world, offering betting from the comfort of your own anywhere, you needed to ‘go to a gambling establishment’ to place your bet. You could ‘just pick up your phone’, back in 1975, but only to call the bookies. That phone had no other capabilities. And he’d tell you to come on in because they don’t offer credit. Oh. You could bet at football matches, on the ‘first goalscorer’ or the final score, or you could bet in casinos. That was it really. No apps? No Betfair, no Bet365. You actually had to steal money from your mother’s purse to go to Joe Coral, rather than just ‘borrowing’ her credit card whilst you’re watching Sunday Afternoon Football. (SPONSORED BY BETFAIR; WE MAKE IT EASIER FOR CHILDREN TO GET ADDICTED TO GAMBLING!!!).

I was never a gambler; it didn’t appeal. But I like ‘odds’. Just statistical probabilities of possible outcomes. You can say: “Spurs are great and Arsenal are shit!”, and even though that is possibly, currently, somewhat incorrect, the ‘odds’ would quantify it. They would put the odds of a Spurs win at 55 to 1. Or thereabouts. Bet a quid, you win £55!!! A good bet? Or is it easier to throw a fiver down the toilet?

And the best bet, which I never made, but which people spoke of with reverence, was ‘an accumulator’. On the app sites they have all manner of complex betting schemes on every outcome from every event, even ones pretty unrelated to the outcome of the game in question. Like you bet on ‘how many corner kicks a team has’. Who cares? But an ‘accumulator’ was great. You made three bets. If your horse won the first race, your winnings would go as your stake on the second. And if THAT won too, the whole pot would go onto the third and final. Meaning for your original, say, fiver bet, if the first won at 8 to 1, and the second at 5 to 1, there’d be 200 quid going on Right Slag in the 3.45 at Haydock Park. And if she won at 6 to 1, you’d win 1200 quid for a fiver stake. Brilliant. If any lost though, you got nothing. The usual outcome of an accumulator. But gamblers live to defy the odds. Which always favour the bookies.

Last weekend was for me an ’emotional accumulator’. My first ‘bet’ (my heart) was on Brentford beating West Ham. And they did!!! Which we needed so badly. My next, (my soul) obviously, was for Spurs to win at Villa. AND THEY FUCKING DIDDDDDDD!!!!!! Yet to capitalise and reap the total and full benefit, all that heart-and-soul-ness went onto the Manchester City game, that they beat Everton. That would put pressure on Arsenal and give me all my organs and stuff back to use another day. They bloody drew. Arsenal had already won. And then last night they won again.

Not only did they win, they actually looked on a different level from Athletico Madrid. They were, quite frankly, just brilliant across the entire pitch for the entire match. So much so that my emotional accumulator was torn between recouping some of the losses from the Man City game, and just totally losing all my stake because Arsenal winning never gives me anything but upset and annoyance.

Does this make me a bad person? Or just a good Spurs fan? Is there any difference between the two??????

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx