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Man U odds against? Get on!

By Matt | May 20, 2009

THE SILLY season has come early in the oddsmaking industry, it seems. A raft of layers has priced up relegation-threatened Hull City’s must-win game at home to Manchester United and decided that Man U will roll over and let the Tigers beat them.

They’ve taken leave of their senses and should be punished for this foolishness. Odds of up to 7/5 can and should be snapped up about United winning the game.

In fairness, the bookies are only reacting to the popular misconceptions that a) Ferguson will rest players ahead of next Wednesday’s Champions League final, and b) a team with everything to play for will beat one with nothing at stake.

Both beliefs have no basis in fact but make for good newspaper stories like this one in today’s Currant.
Let’s take each misconception in turn:

Fergie will rest his ‘big stars’: and play who, exactly? He’ll have to go a long way down the squad list to find poor players. His ‘reserve’ side could feasibly include the de Silva twins, Dimitar Berbatov, Carlos Tevez, Park Ji Sung, Darren Fletcher, Anderson, Nani, Paul Scholes and 2009 Player of the Year Ryan Giggs. Sorry, Sun reporters, but no sane judge in the land would call that kind of team ‘weakened’ and no-one believes your story.
Let’s put that argument a different way: Fergie will play the ‘kids’ like he did on the day Everton knocked United out of the FA Cup with the same result. That argument assumes that Hull City are as good as Everton. Which, as a brief look at the league table tells us, simply isn’t true.
But the players will be saving themselves for Rome…. Which players? Rooney, Ronaldo, van der Sar, Vidic and Carrick aside, nobody is guaranteed a game next Wednesday. Rio Ferdinand probably is, but only if he can prove his fitness – which he’ll need to do by putting in a decent stint against Hull. Everyone else (bar the suspended Fletcher) will be desperate to show they should be in Fergie’s team against Barcelona. So they’ll hardly be taking it easy.
What if they know they won’t be playing in the UCL final? Well you can’t have it both ways. Either the team won’t care about this game because they’ve got one eye on the Barça game or they’ve no chance of playing – in which case they’ve got plenty to play for on Sunday: a place in Fergie’s plans for next season or, if their future lies elsewhere, a shop-window performance for the benefit of others. To a professional footballer, there’s no such thing as a game where they’ve no interest.

Put it this way: if this game took place in the middle of the season, with the teams in the same places, would United be odds against? No. They’d be 1/3 or shorter; un-backable, in fact. And you wouldn’t blame the bookies for protecting themselves.

However, the bookies think that we’re going to think that Hull can somehow do something they haven’t done for half a season and raise their game – against the League Champions, no less. Which brings us to probably the strongest argument for backing Man U:

Hull City are rubbish. Especially at home where, even when they were flying high in the table, they managed to ship five goals against Wigan.

Yes, the likes of Craig Fagan and Andy Dawson might run about a bit more because of the severity of the situation. But being in their position won’t help them any more than it helped Sunderland on Monday night, or Middlesbrough against Aston Villa (a team with ‘nothing to play for’) and Newcastle at home to Fulham on Saturday.

It’s a foolish idea. Let’s ignore the hype and sentiment, follow the facts, and win some money.

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