As the title suggests have Liverpool who are currently sitting at the top of the League and also Tottenham who have made some top quality signing in the transfer window really got a chance at challenging for the title?

Before the season and the transfer window started I probably would have lauged at such a suggestion! I was 100% certain that the league title would go to one of the usual suspects, namely Chelsea, Man Utd or Man City and in line with this thinking I placed a reasonable sized bet on it being Chelsea for the above bunch. The Mourinho factor one of the main reasons for that decision.

Don't get me wrong I'm certainly not saying go and lump your lifesavings on Totteham or Liverpool as I'm still reasonably confident the title will go to one of Chelsea, Manchester City or Manchester United.  There is however an outside chance that one of Tottenham or Liverpool could rattle a few cages and mount a serious title challenge.  Can they stay the distance? Who knows, it's still early days in the season.

Lets have a look at Tottenham, although they have lost ther star player to Real Madrid for a ludicrous £85million I believe
they are now a much stronger balanced team with the players they have brought in. I certainly have a couple in my fantasy football team.  I wish I had put a bet on before the season as the odds have moved in massively since then which suggests even the bookies are thinking the same, but you can still get an attractive 22/1 for the title or 7/2 for finishing top excluding the big 3 teams. I'll be sticking a cheeky £5 on Tottenham to win outright.

So Liverpool next, they have also done some good business in the transfer market and are currently sitting pretty at the top of the league thanks to their very tight defence and the hot form of Daniel Sturridge. Not forgetting that they have the Luis Suarez to come back from suspension having managed to hold onto him in the transfer window.  They have won all 3 games 1-0 this season and if they can keep their defence this tight all season and add the goals of Luis Suarez then they have a real chance. Odds wise they have moved into 12/1 to win and 3/1 to finish top excluding the top 3. Like Tottenham above I'll probably stake another £5 on them to win outright.

Will either of them do it...Probably not but as I don't support a Premier League team it will certainly keep me interested in the Premier League football as the season unfolds.

The most celebrated rivalry of Test cricket between the two biggest cricketing nations is back again. The Ashes 2013 cricket series is scheduled to begin soon and the English fans are hoping to continue the good run against their colonial opponents. To be held in England the historical cricket series has already started witnessing a war of words between the Australians and the Englishmen. With a new coach in the form of Darren Lehman, the Michael Clarke led Australians will surely be looking to regain the Ashes, but however with absence of great stalwarts such as Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey the road looks all the more difficult to tread upon.

Undisputedly one the most popular events in the cricketing calendar, the history of the Ashes traces right back to 1882 where the England team that dominated the face of world crocket was beaten for the first time by an Australian team on English soil. The local media severely criticized the defeat and as one of the publications read it marked the death of cricket in England. English cricket has died at the Oval and the body will be cremated and Ashes be carried to Australia read a famous local new daily. Such was the impact of that defeat that the next year's series was titled as a quest to regain the Ashes.

Ivo Bligh who was then captain of the touring England team to Australia was gifted with a small urn made of terracotta which was said to contain the ashes of a burnt cricket equipment called the 'bail'. Replicas of the urn later went on to become famous in the history of the 'Ashes' even today is part of the memorabilia that is presented to the winning team.
Both teams have dominated the Ashes in their own respective era's and the current holder of the urn is England having won both the series in the year 2009 and 2010/11 hosted respectively in England and Australia. Media reports have already speculated that Alistair Cook, captain of the current England Cricket Team is already eyeing a consecutive third series victory thereby completing a hat- trick of Ashes cricket titles.

Being such a popular sporting event, cricket betting for the Ashes cricket series has always been a hot favorite amongst bookies. Patriotic fans will always bet against the Australians while those looking to make some serious money will play their cards carefully. While England with figures of 7/1 emerges as the clear favorites in most of the betting odds to regain the Ashes, the Australians are being tipped off as having an outside chance.

You can place bets on different options such as who will win the most tosses, the toss score for the series, which will be the highest scoring ground, highest innings or team totals, highest run getter and highest wicket taker and even on when Australia will regain the next Ashes.

Such a wide variety of cricket betting options only ensures that along with enthusiastic cricket fans even the bookies just cannot wait for the Ashes Cricket series 2013 to begin.

And if you want to catch up with all the latest Ashes new then a good place is BBC Cricket or if you have a SkySports subsciption you can catch all the action live ball by ball

When it comes to betting especially on football the normal practice is to bet on the team you support, Now this isn't such a bad thing if you are a supporter of one of the big teams such as Manchester Utd or City, Barcelona, Chelsea or AC Milan etc as the chances are if you bet on them to win each game over the season you would most likely come out in profit overall.

But for those of us who support one of the less glamourous teams taking that approach, even though showing loyalty to our team it would leave a dent in your wallet! Now I'm certainly not going to suggest that you bet on your team to lose or that you shouldn't bet on your team to win, As sometimes the excitement of a big win against one of the big boys is well worth the other losses. But you can certainly bet smarter if you look at the plethora of betting markets available on-line these days and also make use of other resources that may give you the edge in picking a winning bet.

Lets first have a look at some of the alternative betting markets that are available for you to bet, Allowing you to still bet on your teams game but with possibly more chance to come out in profit. Firstly you have the handicap markets which when you are against one of the big guns or an evenly matched team can be useful. This works in two ways the first if you can add a 1 or more goals to your teams goals at the end of the game, For eaxmple Team A (+1 goal) vs Team B, In this instance if the game finished Team A 1-1 Team B and you backed Team A in this market the result would in effect be Team A 2-1 Team B and so you would win the bet. Of course beacuse you are increasing your chance of winning the bookmakers do reduce the odds you will get for this bet.

On the flip side if you think your team are going to absolutely hammer your opponent you can deduct goals from your teams final score and if they still win you will benefit form higher odds increasing your profit but taking a bigger risk at the same time.

Another good option is to use the goals markets which are available in effect is a team neutral bet but you are backing there being a minimum of goals in a game, Obviously hopefully scored by your team! There is an individual market for each amount of goals scored obviously starting at 1 goal and increasing upto 8 or 9. The more you choose the greater the odds and potential a gain but also the risk. A lot of bookmakers allow you to place these bets when the game is in progress (in-play) and so you can place your bet at a point when the odds are more advantageous or with some sites even trade the bet when a goal has happened to take some of the profit.

With all of the above bets you can increase your chances of success by complimenting you knowlegde with some reaserch into teams playing stats. There are plent of resources to do this on-line such as Soccerway.com, Skysports.com or Soccerstats.com. They are well worth a look before placing a bet as what you may well have thought was a good bet might not be backed up by the stats.

Thanks for reading and hopefully you find this very brief look into on-line sports betting useful.