Top 5 bets for the weekend's football, racing & rugby

International breaks are all well and good, but weekends without any football, like last weekend, are testing to say the least!

England got the business done on Friday and Monday, and Scotland and Wales are both seeded for the playoffs. Even Northern Ireland put on a show their fans could be proud of, preventing mighty Italy from booking their place in Qatar.

But it’s back to normal, beginning tonight with a tasty starter to get us warmed up, a Championship game between QPR and Luton.

Cameron Norrie plays Novak Djokovic tonight in the ATP Finals, though he’s already out and won’t be taking part in the latter stages on Saturday and Sunday.

The darts and snooker also continue all weekend, with the Grand Slam of Darts at the quarter-final stage tonight, and the Champion of Champions snooker down to the final four.

And even the F1 season is getting a bit interesting, with Lewis Hamilton looking to follow up last week’s win in Brazil with another in Qatar as he looks to cut Max Verstappen’s lead at the top of the championship.

But the best thing about the end of this particular international break being over? There’s not another one for four months!

The Premier League action gets underway with a repeat of last season’s FA Cup final, as leaders Chelsea go to Leicester in the early game on Saturday. Foxes may never quit, but they also don’t defend very well these days either, with only one clean sheet in their past 17 Premier League games. Chelsea are counting down the days until their main two strikers, Romelu Lukaku and Timo Werner, can return from injury. There’s a chance Werner will be back for this game, but Lukaku remains out. Thomas Tuchel’s team were held 1-1 at home by Burnley in the game before the international break, and will hope that was just a blip rather than anything serious.

Jamie Vardy has been boosted to 23/10 to score anytime in this game. The former England man is the second top scorer in the Premier League this season, behind only Mo Salah. He has four career goals against the Blues, and while Chelsea have had the most miserly defence this season, conceding only four goals, they were carved open on a number of occasions in their 1-1 draw with Brentford and looked a shadow of the strong defence on show earlier in the campaign.

On Saturday afternoon three managers will be in charge of their first Premier League matches for their clubs. Steven Gerrard will be at the helm for Aston Villa as they face Brighton having dispensed with the services of Dean Smith after five straight league defeats. Smith was not out of work long, taking over at Norwich, who ironically face a Southampton team that beat Villa last time out and cost him his job. Moneybags Newcastle finally have a new manager, with Eddie Howe in the hotseat and desperate to inspire the Magpies to a first win of the season against Brentford. The former Bournemouth manager has had his new charges in for double training sessions since he took over, but the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and it will be interesting to see if his Newcastle team is tighter at the back while still possessing plenty of attacking threat.

Callum Wilson (Super Mega Minutes 33-39) will be expected to score the goals that save Newcastle from relegation this season. He worked closely with Howe for years at Bournemouth, where the side was built around providing service to the England international. Often it will take time for a new manager to get to know what his players prefer tactically, and what to do to get the most out of them, but the Geordies, scorers of only 12 goals in 11 games this season, will expect immediate returns from the Howe and Wilson reunion.

Saturday evening sees Liverpool trying to bounce back from their first defeat of the season just before the break, when they went down 3-2 at West Ham. Arsenal, who started the season terribly, are unbeaten in 10 games in all competitions, and can actually go above Liverpool with a win at Anfield, though that’s not something they’ve managed to do of late. The Gunners have kept three consecutive clean sheets, though they will not find it easy to extend that record against the Premier League’s top scorers – the Reds have scored 31 goals in their 11 games. Liverpool are unbeaten in nine league games at Anfield, having lost six straight home games before that.

Both teams to score and Liverpool to win has been boosted to 31/20 which looks tempting given the Reds seem to score plenty of goals in every game they play, but have not been that tight at the back. They will have to breach the Arsenal defence at least twice for this bet to land, which given their run of clean sheets will be no mean feat, but the Gunners have had a succession of easier fixtures of late, and haven’t faced a striker as potent as Mo Salah.

Away from football, there’s plenty of racing action all weekend, with Haydock’s Lancashire Chase the highlight of the weekend. Cheltenham Gold Cup runner-up A Plus Tard is the best horse in the race, but has a habit of starting season’s slowly, which is not what you’re looking for in a short priced favourite. Bristol De Mai, likely to go off as second favourite, won’t enjoy the good to soft ground at Haydock, though it’s hard to argue with his record in this race, his win last year making it three victories in the last four years.

Next Destination, at around 8/1, looks an interesting each-way bet, given the doubts over the front two in the market. Paul Nicholls has trained the winner of this race six times before, and he feels Next Destination is ideally made for this race. The 3¼ miles test will require great stamina, something Nicholls says this horse has bundles of, and he’s won on good and soft ground in the past.  

In rugby, England play South Africa for the first time since the Springboks broke their hearts by beating them in the 2019 World Cup final. England were arguably the best side in that competition, but the Boks came up with a brilliant game plan that saw them win pretty easily in Japan, 32-12. Siya Kolisi leads much the same team, fresh from wins over Scotland and Wales, but they’ll be facing a young and fresh England outfit, with 22-year-old Marcus Smith and Freddie Steward, 20, the fly-half and full-back in a team that has beaten Australia and Tonga over the past fortnight.

England 1^st try has been set at 36-39 on the spreads, but the way Eddie Jones has been talking his new, vibrant, exciting team up, he expects them to start quickly and take the game to South Africa. Wins against Tonga and a much weakened Australia team are hard to take much from, but these young England players like Smith and Steward seem to take everything in their stride. A game against a near enough full-strength team of world champions is the ultimate test, but if England are doing to pass it, they will surely have to get over the try line early, rewarding sellers in this market. Of course this could be a false dawn and it could be proven that Jones has dispensed of some of his most experienced stars too early, but it will be a fascinating watch finding out.