Haydock - Saturday - Betfair Stayers Handicap Chase

[The Brigadier]

The 48 hour declarations for this race will be out tomorrow morning but  I think there's a bit of value which should be snapped up now. Heading the weights and currently the ante-post favourite is Cloudy Glen who was so impressive winning the Southern National last Sunday at Fontwell but I am led to believe he's unlikely to take up this engagement coming so soon. Pobbles Bay and Midnight Tune are two dyed in the wool stayers who must have chances but its towards the bottom of the weights that I'm looking with Nigel Hawke's ALMINAR will relish conditions and has had a nice run at Cheltenham 4 weeks ago when 3rd to Bermeo who has franked the form by going on to finish runner up at the Paddy Power meeting 3 weeks later. Devon trainer Hawke had a winner at Uttoxeter last weekend and his Nikap ran 2nd this afternoon at Warwick so we have no issues with trainer form. The capable David Noonan comes in for the ride and he's worth backing now before the final field is known tomorrow.

1 point e/w @ 16/1 unibet

 

 

[MCLARKE]

I'll use the same logic that arrived at the 20/1 winner last week although I do accept the strongly worded criticism in some quarters that using 7 races in the sample data is too limited.

By far the strongest trend is that 23 horses have carried more than 11st 7lbs, 6 have won. Of the 40 that didn't, only 1 won. This reduces the field to 3,MIDNIGHT TUNE, PREFECT CANDIDATE and BALLYDINE.

Unfortunately the next strongest trend eliminate all 3 of these horses, there have been 27 runners aged 9 or more and only 1 has won.

There have been 18 horses that haven't run for over 100 days and 3 of these have won. This leaves MIDNIGHT TUNE as a tentative selection. Only WH have prices on odds-checker at the moment, it is 6/1. Might be worth betting each way with 4 places available although it does seem to win or pull up. Might be best to wait for the other bookies to put their prices up.