My wisdom can prove more profitable than Harry's

ALTHOUGH you wouldn't think so based on the reactions in the English press, there haven't been many big surprises in the European Under-21 Championship so far.

Thiago and Isco have been brilliant, Russia have proved that having players sent off tends to be a disadvantage and England that they can't keep the ball at any level.

My favourite comments on England's failure came from Harry Redknapp, who said: "In international football you cannot just hit and hope as you give the ball away. It's about possession, retaining the ball, controlling the game."

Well thanks Harry, if only we'd thought of this earlier. I think there's a bloke who has been living under a rock on Bodmin Moor for the past decade who didn't know that England's problem was ball retention, so in the event that he takes over from Stuart Pearce, he'll now know exactly what to fix and we'll win everything.

Anyway, the most valuable thing I've learned is that there have been lots of late goals.

What can this possibly mean? Do late goals occur more often at youth level than at senior level? With nothing better to do with my time, I decided to find out.

In the 12 group-stage matches, 11 goals have been scored in the 80th minute or later.

That's the most dramatic way to present my treasured stat, but probably more useful is that 31 per cent of the 35 goals scored have been in the 80th minute or later.

Is that unusual? Fairly, I suppose, but the key question is whether it's part of a wider trend of late goals at this level.

The answer to that question is that I'm not yet quite bored enough to answer it, but there's still time this summer.

A far easier, albeit potentially far more costly, way to edge closer to the truth is to have a couple of bets on the second half being the highest-scoring in Saturday's U21 semi-finals, which pit Spain against Norway and Italy against Holland.

Spain in particular seem to function in a similar way to their senior team, wearing down the opposition with possession before striking in the latter stages once they're exhausted.

I'm hoping to do the same to bookmakers, who are probably knackered or on holiday after a long season, by hitting them with my carefully planned, watertight scheme just when they've got their feet up.

There's nothing like a poorly thought out system to brighten up your week.