Mug Punter Morris looks back at a week, where Arsenal upset many a accumalator

I believe it was a rather rotund philosopher of intellectual magnitude unseen before who commented on football being a funny old game. Or was it the little fat one out of the Krankies...who knows? We all know it was their annoying Scottish counterparts who were the brains of the operation anyway. But for in said phrase lies a golden nugget of information that will stand the test of time. Football is a funny old game. Unfortunately though for the discerning punter like myself the ha ha element of funny has been thrown out the window and now funny is associated with misery. Show me a snuff film and I'm cracking up!

Last weekend, the obvious selections shone through like a beacon across Gotham city, Arsenal, Man Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea. Chelsea away to Stoke has got to be a pretty confident selection in anyone's books but always that outside element of a draw. Man Utd at home to Bolton, a bit dodgy just to expect a home win at not great odds but chasing ludicrous amounts of money lost over previous weeks any debate about it not being a home win has been isolated and sectioned in the dark corner of my mind. Liverpool away to Everton, chancy as investing in 4 chicken wings and chips for £1 from Kennedy fried chicken (bearing in mind the chips cost 85pence on their own) but given the odds a pretty good bet in my opinion. Arsenal at home to hull city, let me re-iterate that ARSENAL AT HOME TO HULL CITY. Stupid odds again but if that's not a home win I'm a monkey's uncle.

Yes that's right I am now the proud uncle of a monkey, I swing from tree's eating banana's like the rest of my hairy bastard friends, and am possibly looking at a lucrative career as a stunt double for Dr Zaius in planet of the apes: the musical.

Surely this is standard stuff. Arsenal with their exciting, flowing, sublime at times (sublime at times being a phrase I must have heard a million times describing Arsenal's football used by commentators to big up their vocab-ul-ar-y innit!) football, to beat Hull City. Hull City, in all my ignorance a team made up of farmers (Dean Windass), miners (Dean Windass), and out of work bare knuckle boxers (Nicky Barmby.....nah it's dean Windass again isn't it). Don't get me wrong I like the bloke, I am truly impressed that a man of his age and bullock like physical presence is a top flight footballer, why this impresses me so much is beyond me but it does...it's actually because he's a slimmer, more athletic, older version of myself, the blokes a bloody role model. Had anyone bothered to tell me that Hull City was made of footballers other than Dean Windass, they could have even added that it is quite a formidable bunch of players that have rarely utilised this season the skill and prowess that Windass brings to the game, and then I may have reconsidered. Unfortunately for my bank balance though my mind's eye had played out a game of youthful exuberance beating seven shades of shit out of a single hulk like creature given a pair of novelty foam finger gloves.

Upon watching the actual game itself and spending an hour or so afterwards coming to terms with the result, I made what I believe to be a crucial decision in my future career as a mug punter. Make use of little things like current form, league table standings, goals for and against home and away, and essentially some degree of investigation into which team is playing which. It doesn't matter that at the start of the season one team are plausible if unlikely title contenders and the other are plausibly for the drop, it doesn't matter that one manager is considered a professor of football while the other clearly has David Brent pegged as an iconic figure in his life, and it certainly doesn't matter that for a lifetime you've heard week in week out about one team but not the other.

I have now learnt a valuable lesson, which much to my dismay I've always known but taken me 20 odd years to realise...do not back a football team on name alone.

Hold on though, who is this bate Borisov. Gonna have to get heavily involved in a Juventus away win here, it's like buying money!