Finally it’s here.  The long awaited new season of the Premier League kicks off with Arsenal v West Brom at 12.45pm on Saturday 16 August.

I must have been feeling aggressive when I wrote in my Premier League preview I would stake a maximum 20% of the betting fund on each bet this season.  Whilst it does give the largest return historically i’m just not willing to live with the wild returns that a losing run of bets would create.  So i’ve had what I hope is a moment of clarity and am setting the stake at a maximum 10%.  As for the largest bet thrown up by the model, i’m looking for an upset with Middlesbrough at home beating Spurs.

I made an error last week on the stake sizes for the Championship bets.  I had decided on 5% maximum stakes but for some reason completely forgot to check the stake size.  I used 10% instead of 5% which whilst not such an issue in itself unfortunately magnified the losses in what was a losing weekend.

Last weeks bets on the Championship lost over 7% of the Championship and Trading Funds.  It’s never as much fun losing as winning but I take comfort from 50% winning match bets against a historic figure of around 48%.  The loss on one bet was equal to roughly the whole loss for the weekend - backing Barnsley away to QPR, a longshot bet which didn’t come off.  The result of 2-1 to QPR showed it was no walkover at least.

This weekend will be low risk for the Championship bets as the largest exposure is just 1.6% on Sheff Wed overturning Wolves at Molineux.