Over the hills and far away

Nothing much on with the current weather but seem to have found a bit of value further afield:

1.5pts Arizona (v Green Bay) @evns with Boylesports: You probably will struggle to get more than 20c down on line with this 'bookie' so unless you are within walking distance of a shop the 2.04 on Betfair is probably a better option. Green Bay have been backed all week and have gotten way too short. They are considered the 'form' team here and also people seem to be over-reacting to their win over the Cardinals reserve team last weekend. Worth bearing in mind that if you ignore that game which was irrelevant to the Cardinals but crucial to the Packers GB have won 4 times away from home this season:
21-14 @ Chicago (7-9)
34-12 @ Detroit (2-14)
31-3 @ Cleveland (5-11)
36-17 @ St.Louis (1-15)

None of whom have winning records and with the exception of Chicago are 3 of the worst 5 teams in the league. They also managed to get turned over on their travels by Tampa Bay the 3rd worst team in the league. Nobody likes travelling to the Packers especially once the snow sets in which is always a help in their push for the playoffs but this is a different ballgame in the desert against a completely different side from last week. I expect the Cardinals to take advantage of the extra weeks rest and come out on top here.

Thankfully for soccer the African Cup of Nations has avoided the big freeze and if it can avoid any more gun attacks we might get to see some entertaining football on show for the next couple of weeks.

2pts Cameroon to win @11/2 (Stan James): Now I'm not a huge believer in the FIFA world rankings - any system that can have Ireland actually move down the rankings in a period where their only games were a draw with Italy the current WC holders and a 1-0 home defeat and a 1-0 away win against France the losing finalist at the last WC has to be suspect. However as a starting point the fact the Cameroon (11) are ranked higher than Ivory Coast (16) is worth noting given that both sides should suffer/benefit from the same regional differences that tend to explain some of the distortion in the rankings system. What is perhaps more telling is the fact that since Le Guen took charge of this team in July they have moved from 29th - 11th in the rankings. From a bad start in their campaign to qualify for the WC they qualified easily and although their squad does not have the star quality of the Cote d'Ivoire there are enough big name players there to do the job. I just think there is too big a difference between the prices for the 2 sides and believe this could be where Le Guen ressurrects his managerial career by showing the guile and experience to win this. Another interesting thing that might be worth looking at in the weeks ahead is the difference in price between the 2 teams for the WC currently 28's and 110's. Given that Cameroon have arguably the easier task of beating Denmark to get out of their group compared with Portugal for the IC if you could persuade a bookie to give you a match bet you could be in gravy.