BILLY BUNTER

Weblog: The football punter

I'm hoping Ibracadabra leaves his magic at home

WE do love to mock the overrated, don’t we?

I know Chelsea fans are struggling to see the joke but Fernando Torres has been a source of constant amusement to fans the length and breadth of the land ever since he left Liverpool.

We loved to watch him score playing for Spain; now we love to see him miss playing for Chelsea. We’re cruel us football fans.

And tonight’s Champions League action introduces us to a player firmly in the Torres mould – the legend that isn’t Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Ibracadabra he’s known as, probably by fawning fans who reckon he’s magic though it’s actually because he manages to make himself disappear come big matches. Or I think it is.

The only problem is that there are so many ordinary sides in Serie A that Milan’s flat-track bully continues to look the biz and continues to score goals.

Against good defences and when the stakes are massive, Bigfoot tends to go walkabout and rarely anywhere near the opposition net.

The problem tonight is that the stakes might be massive but Arsenal’s defence is full of exactly the type of player who the big lump just loves to knock about.

So you can be sure that punters will be piling into him to open the scoring at short odds.

Well I won’t, because Robin van Persie’s the man to show those misguided Italians what a proper striker’s all about. It’s the cloggie, not the clodhopper, who’s going to bulge the net first at 13-2.

As for the other game, no amount of snoods, mittens and tights are going to keep the Benfica sun worshippers warm in St Petersburg where Zenit are ice-cold certs.