"The Bhoys are back!" as they say in High School Musical 3.  Punters Corner, the Celtic fans betting advisory blog that’s almost as ill informed as a Scottish football journalist!

Just as last season, we’ll start the year with £100 in our Paddy Power account and then see how things go from there.  We’ll make our season predictions and weekly suggestions and see if we can exceed last seasons finishing budget of £218.26, stick your money on, get your free bet and see if you can do better.

So 2010/2011 will start on Saturday morning.  Let’s look at all the odds, stats and predictions…but before we do that, who did we go with last term?

2009/2010 Predictions

EPL                             –          Chelsea

Championship             –          Newcastle (with Forrest E/W!)

1^ST Division                 –          we lost out on Leeds

2^nd Division                 –          Notts County

SPL                             -           ????

1^st Div                                     –          Inverness Caley

2010/2011 Predictions

Paddy Power has bets galore for the opening weekend of the Scotland and Englands big league kick off.  For the SPL season kick off Paddy Power has all the outright betting as well as a head-to-head between Celtic and Rangers over a number of markets.  In England there is betting on which team will score the fastest goal of the weekend, which nationality will score the first goal of the season and how many goals the new look teams serve up for us on their return from their summer holidays.

For the EPL curtain-raiser between Spurs and Man City Paddy Power bet whether the first game of the season proves to be a decider in the race for a top four spot. - as well as who will finish highest this season and if Nigel De Jong will be punished for any kung-fu style kick on the opposition.

The bookie is also betting on Peter Crouch’s scoring form with betting on whether the tall striker scores more often at home or when he is playing away...

The Liverpool v Arsenal match see’s odds of a repeat of the famous 4-4 scoreline and whether Steven Gerrard is right that Joe Cole really is better than Lionel Messi.

Also of interest to us there is also a market on Craig Bellamy’s club on September 1^st

Craig Bellamy’s Club on Sept 1^st

7/4        Spurs

4/1        Man City

4/1        Fulham

9/2        Celtic

10/1      Sunderland

10/1      Cardiff

14/1      Aston Villa

SPL

                                  Winner             w/o Old firm                 Relegation

Celtic                                4/6                      -                                   1000/1

Rangers                           6/5                      -                                   1000/1

Dundee Utd                   50/1                  13/8                              60/1

Hibernian                      80/1                  11/4                              70/1

Hearts                            80/1                     7/2                                25/1

Motherwell                     200/1                13/2                              18/1

Aberdeen                       200/1                10/1                              14/1

St Johnstone                 500/1                20/1                              9/1

Kilmarnock                    500/1                33/1                              10/3

Hamilton                        500/1                33/1                              5/1

St Mirren                         500/1                50/1                              12/5

Inverness CT                500/1                66/1                              7/2

SPL Top Scorer

4/1        Hooper

9/2        Miller

5/1        Stokes

6/1        Rasmussen

9/1        Samaras

10/1      Fortune

14/1      Murphy

14/1      Lafferty

14/1      Velicka

16/1      Riordan

20/1      Kyle

e/w 1/4 places 1, 2, 3

(We don’t have Bellamy odds yet!)

Most SPL Goals

First To Be Defeated In The SPL

Most Trophies Season 2010-2011

Most SPL Clean Cheets

Least SPL Defeats

Most SPL Old Firm Wins

Most SPL Red Cards

So just to clarify, we’re favourites for everything except red cards – yep the bookies know best (except the clean sheets bit!)

EPL Bets

Top 4 (Any order)

7/2        Chelsea – Man Utd – Arsenal – Man City

9/1        Chelsea – Man Utd – Man City - Spurs

9/1        Chelsea – Man Utd – Man City - Liverpool

10/1      Chelsea – Man Utd – Arsenal - Liverpool

11/1      Chelsea – Man Utd – Arsenal - Spurs

25/1      Chelsea – Man Utd – Spurs - Liverpool

But enough of these far off distant bets when we will all be older and wiser(?).  In this modern fast moving world of t’internet and 24 hour media, people are only interested in the here and now.  So what are the odds for this weekend?

SPL

Scottish Div One

PREMIER LEAGUE

PREDICTIONS

We visit Inverness first up, and hopefully we’ll perform better there than in past seasons.  Not that I hold a grudge, but ever since the whole supercaleygoballistic.. nonsense I’ve wanted to give them a good doin’.  Up there however we’ve only ever scored more than 2 goals on one occasion and that was 6 years ago!  Come on Celtic, we want 4!

So let’s hope we can do better than a 118% return on our investment this season, so that podcast no.150 at Bombay Blues can be a grand affair with Paddy Power paying.