Place £20 or more on either the 2009/10 Premier League outright winner or Premier League winner without the ‘Big Four’ and you’ll get a free £5 bet on the season’s top goalscorer.

Hills often have these BOGOF offers nowadays but this is a real one to tempt ante-post punters looking for something to keep them interested all season.

Last season you’ll remember we tipped Man City to win the title without the Big Four – BEFORE the huge injection of cash that came with their takeover. The odds are a bit shorter on them this season!

Chelsea look a good bet at 2/1 to topple Man United, who have struggled in the transfer market and lost a half-decent winger in Cristiano Ronaldo. Where Man City good provide decent value is in their strikers, of whom Robinho looks a good bet at 20/1 to win the Golden Boot.

He’s got plenty of competition at Eastlands, but also plenty of talent and if he can stay interested through the winter he’s sure to be in Mark Hughes’s plans. And with the service available he’ll score goals.

So if you were to put £20 on Chelsea and they win the league it’d return you £60 (including your stake), while your free fiver on Robinho would net £100 (you wouldn’t get your stake back). Worth a punt, surely!

New customers to William Hill will also qualify for the offer of winning up to £100 in free bets. Read more.

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.

Selection

• 5 points Man U (7/5, Victor Chandler) to beat Hull City

United must win to pretty much kill off Liverpool’s title challenge – and will want to do so before tough Champions League and Premier League games against Arsenal and a local derby against Manchester City.

They’ve been inconsistent recently but don’t let that fool you. A substandard group of kids drew with Everton’s first team in the FA Cup, but normal service was resumed in midweek against Portsmouth.

It’ll carry on today, and halves looks a big price. The best odds around can be got at Blue Square, who are also offering a £25 free bet for new customers.

The best that can be said for Spurs is that they have an outside chance of a UEFA Cup spot – which would be a decent return on their pretty poor season. They probably won’t get it; certainly not at the home of the Premier League champions, so the free betting tip for today has to be to lump on Man U.

Selection

• 20 points Manchester United (1/2, Blue Square) to beat Tottenham Hotspur

The Reds look massive odds at 5/6 to beat the Gunners – but I can’t see any other result for this one.

Betting on a team to lose rather than backing one to win is rarely good betting practice, but I have to make an exception in this case. Arsenal just don’t look good enough to win at Liverpool on current form.

Defeat on an energy-sapping pitch to Chelsea followed a tough run of fixtures that would have stretched their squad to the brink – if they had a big squad to stretch.

As it is, they’re likely to rest either players or minds ahead of a tough series of games against Manchester United – with particular focus being saved for their Champions League semi-final.

With fourth place in the Premier League virtually assured – and being the best they can hope for – expenditure of effort for a meaningless cause is the last thing they’re likely to want.

Liverpool, however, are a different kettle of fish. Champions League defeat meant they only have the League to play for – and simply must beat Arsenal if they are to keep up the pressure on the faltering Man U.

Home advantage means they won’t be able to rest until the match is won – which it could comfortably be well before the 90 minutes are up.

The Reds could batter the Gunners at Anfield – and it’s also tempting to look at Sporting Index’s Liverpool supremacy market, which sets its spread at 0.7-0.9 to Liverpool.

At under one goal it must be a buy, but the margins aren’t for the faint-hearted, which prompts us to look at the fixed-odds markets elsewhere.

Blue Square are offering the 5/6 and I can only see that shortening as we approach the game. It should be snapped up now by anyone who wants to bet on Liverpool.

Selection

• Liverpool (5/6, ) to beat Arsenal