Andy Holding & Tom Love's Horse Racing & Football Double

CRAMBO (best price 10-3) was value for a good deal more than the winning margin suggested on his debut over today’s C&D two months ago and safe in the knowledge that he will be perfectly at home under today’s conditions (likely to be pretty testing come the last race on the card), Fergal O’Brien’s gelding can provide his handler with yet another winner in this sphere.

In-keeping with how a lot of horses from the yard are ridden in these kind of events, the son of Saddler Maker was held up right out the back at the Cambridgeshire track, but it didn’t make any difference to the end result as he came sweeping through from well off the pace in the closing stages to score going away. Time-wise, his performance was pretty good on the clock – particularly the backend sectionals – and with his experience of today’s track likely to count for plenty, the promising five-year-old is worth another roll of the dice.

Watford have had a mixed start to life under Roy Hodgson since he took over from Claudio Ranieri. Fans have been far from enthused with his style of play but he has picked up four points from his last three games as head honcho. 

Hodgson has always been a manager who focuses chiefly on strong and rigid defensive structure before all else and it’s been slightly surprising that he’s managed to get a pretty poor quality back four to be much more sturdy and difficult to break down. 

Arsenal have been ticking along nicely under Mikel Arteta and harbour strong hopes of a return to the Champions League. The Gunners have a couple of games in hand on rivals too and Arteta has negotiated games against the lesser lights with relative ease. 

Arsenal are clearly gaining respect from the market recently as well, in the past couple of years they may have been a shade of odds on for a game like this but they’re been chalked up at closer to 1/2 these days.

There’s a nice balance between attack and defence now in their ranks but I’m still wary that Arteta likes to be a bit more risk-averse than the likes of Jurgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola, and with good reason.

Watford will look to stifle Arsenal in the same way they did to Manchester United last week and under the experienced Hodgson you’d have to fancy their chances of making it a tough game for their visitors.

Under 2.5 goals was a regular play when Hodgson was at Crystal Palace and another low scoring encounter could be on the cards again here.