I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

Gambling is great. Living in the future, as we seem to now be doing, certain manly skills have become more important while others have diminished in value. Most of the people in my life, including and especially myself, could not survive in a normal national park for more than a couple days without provisions. This is not a problem ,though, as competency and understanding of the natural world is no longer a relevant skill for most of the people living in the Western World.

Sports Gambling is not such an archaic skill. This handy equation will explain why:

(Sports = War) + (Gambling = Predicting Winner of Combat = Figuring out which side to pledge loyalty to) = Survival.

====================================================================

End of Season Bets (All bets can be found on Oddschecker or William Hill):

1) Wayne Rooney is 8-1 to win PFA player of the year. He's in great form now, but with Berbatov in front of him, allowing him to play in his proper position, he could outplay Ronaldo this year. Since David Ginola won it in 98-99, only Van Nistelrooy and Gerrard have won the PFA award without their teams finishing in the top 2. That means it's probably a Chelsea or United player winning it this year, since they look highly likely to finish 1-2 in who the fuck knows what order. Lampard (The Chelsea player most likely to win it) at 8.6 to 1 is also reasonable. Torres and Ronaldo have already had injuries this year, and it's only October. Go with an Englishman this year. Also, less logically, the Capello resurgence could also stir up enough patriotism/irrationality to help one of his players win this.

2) Wigan are 15-1 to crack the top 6, but probably just as likely as anyone to finish 5th or 6th, save Man City or Aston Villa. At 15-1, it's worth a shot. Amr Zaki knows where the net is, and he's not been accused (by me) of having likely killed to protect some dark secret, like his father Alan Shearer (Who is accused of that, by me).

3) CL: Anorthosis Famagusta are 20-1 to make it out of their group. After 2 games, they are in 2nd place, but have the same number of points as Inter Milan. 20-1! 20-1! I would bet my child's value on the street on this, if I had a child.

4) Wigan are 5-2 to finish in the top half of the Prem. Koumas-Brown-Palacios-Valencia is the Beckham-Scholes-Keane-Giggs of mid-table football. This will not be the last bet involving Wigan.

4) Tottenham are even odds to finish in the bottom half of the Prem. They will improve enough to get relegated, but enough to get into the top 10. No. David Ginola isn't walking through that door. This will not be the last mention of David Ginola in the column.

5) Villarreal are 11-1 to win La Liga. Valencia can be had at 15-1. One of these two teams will win La Liga. Bet on both, smile when Senna or Villa lead their team to glory.

6) Wayne Rooney is 1-4 to lead England's qualifying campaign in goals. He has 5. Walcott with 3 and Joe Cole with 2 are the only players with more than one goal. Walcott is on the verge of getting benched, Cole is often injured, feuding with Capello and not a volume scorer anyways. Heskey won't score too often AND he takes time from others strikers. He's also consistently benefitted the strike rate of his partner for England. That is Rooney.

Only Andorra at home should really be a nonsensical blowout of the games left to go. If Defoe score 5 that game, this best could lost. Otherwise, it's basically a free chance to offset the losses you took in the stock market if you have stocks. If you do not have stocks, you also need to increase your amount of money and should thus make this bet.

7) Northern Ireland is fucking 50-1 on some sites to qualify. They can win their group outright, since everyone in that group minus San Marino is mediocre.

8) Russia is It Doesn't Matter Because Guus Hiddink's team will qualify for the World Cup. If he was coaching San Marino, or even Canada, they'd qualify. Russia will either pip Germany for the group or finish 2nd miles ahead of Finland and Wales and dispose of their playoff opponents easily.

9) Belgium at 40-1 to qualify is great value. Belgium and Turkey are going to duke it out for 2nd behind Spain in that group, unless Bosnia pulls a crazy upset. Say Belgium has a 1 in 4 chance to take it ahead of the more experience Turks and literally frightening Bosnians. Then say they have a 2 in 5 chance to beat a team such as Russia, Ireland or Scotland in a playoff. These arbitrary (but I bent over backwards to be fair, like Obama with the black community) odds clearly prove Belgium are good value.

10) Croatia are 6-1 to advance! They'll finish ahead of the Ukranians then win a playoff and make it. They were probably the 4th best team at the Euros after Spain, The Dutch and the Russians (Germany and Turkey rode luck and a history of anti-semitism to victories).

11) Ireland are 5-1 to qualify, despite the fact they already have a solid lead on Bulgaria for 2nd. Bulgaria are terrible and the good Petrov is out for a long ass time. Stephen Reid's injury doesn't help, but their attacking quartet (Keane, Doyle, Duff, McGeady) is only bested by Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, France, England, Germany and Portugal. So, it's 8th. That's less impressive than I thought it might be. Still, though. Almost twice that many teams qualify from UEFA.

12) Scotland, led by the future of football Darren Fletcher, are 10-1 to qualify. Their group is awful (Sleep on both Norway and Iceland), they have a small lead for 2nd place and if they get into a playoff, their 94th minute loss to Russia will remind you of the foolishness of hubris.