The media have very much hyped up the importance of Arsenal winning some form of trophy and tomorrow’s match against Ipswich brings with it the chance of Arsenal getting one step closer to its first piece of silverware this season. So it seems even more appropriate to make the stakes a little higher. This week I’m going to join CORAL who are a very reliable "High Street" bookmaker and cover a huge range of markets at good value odds. They are also offering New Users a £20 free bet if you join here now, deposit £10, then come back.

So as mentioned once you have £10 in Coral also place the remaining £90 of your bankroll into your Betfair account. At Coral once logged in you want to view the odds as "Decimal" if they are not already you can change this using the option in the very bottom left of the screen. Now you can select "Football" and "English" and "Carling Cup" then Arsenal are 1.1 to beat Ipswich so click the 1.1 and a new bet slip appears in the top right, place £10 on it and submit the bet (make very sure it is accepted) At this stage your balance will now jump to £20 which is a free bet Coral have given you. NOTE- this should go through fine but as I joined today I was only granted a £10 free bet but after calling them this was soon changed to£20. (Ed’s note – I am doing this myself and indeed you have to call them. Number is 0800 440011. They will ask for your username. Tell them you have signed up and are due another £10 to be added to your bet for your 10 for 20 bonus. They reckon it takes about 10 minutes to update) After this you’ll see next to the match odds for Arsenal v Ipswich is a box with 110 on it which is all other markets, click this to get the list which includes correct scores, there you can see 3-0 is 7, tick this and on the new betslip place £20 on it.

So if we were just a normal punter, purely Coral would produce the following results:
-Its an Arsenal win 3-0 +£121 (We win £120 on the correct score free bet as the free bet £20 stake is deducted and £1 on arsenal win)
-Arsenal Win by any other scoreline +£1 (Lost our free bet but won the bet on Arsenal to win)
- Draw or Ipswich win -£10 (Lost initial £10 and the free bet)

Clearly 3-0 is a cracking result for us but you never know which Arsenal team will turn up so there is several outcomes where we lose £10- this is where Betfair comes in to eliminate that risk.

For information on joining Betfair see here.

At Betfair from the Menu on the left select "football" then "English" then keep going to the Arsenal v Ipswich match and chose "match odds" making sure you are viewing the full market. (Click to view back & lay) You can see that next to Arsenal are blue "Back" options and also a pink "lay" button. You want to lay Arsenal for £10 backers’ stake at odds of 1.14. This means you have £1.40 liability if Arsenal win but if they don’t you get +£10 (So that’s the Draw or Ipswich)

Now select the correct score market and you can see the pink button on 3-0 at 8, tick it and lay (backers stake) £12, this will have £84.00 liability, submit this bet (make very sure it is accepted).

Now, by laying the outcome, you have Net results across all bets of:

*Arsenal win 3-0.
Match odds bet: -40p (+£11 at Coral, -£11.40 at Betfair)
Correct score bet: +£36.00 (+£120 at Coral, -£84 at Betfair)
Overall profit: +£35.60

*Arsenal win by any other score line.
Match odds bet: -40p (+£11 at Coral, -£11.40 at Betfair)
Correct score bet: +£12 (Lose £20 FREE bet at coral, win £12 lay at Betfair)
Overall profit: +£11.60

*If it’s a draw or Ipswich win.
Match Odds bet: 0 (10 lost at Coral, 10 won at Betfair)
Correct score bet: +12 (Lose £20 FREE bet at coral, win £12 lay at Betfair)
Overall Profit: +£12

Remember this is purely on the 90 minutes so if the gunners are winning 1-0 come 90 minutes and go on to win 3-0 by the end of extra time we would just win the bet of +£11.60.

To summarise no matter what we will have a bankroll of £111+ going into next week, and an 11% return on your money is more than you get in the bank all year. If it is 3-0 though that is +£35.60 and we have a bankroll of £135.60 going into next week.

So there you have it, a profit no matter the outcome. Even if our dreams of a trophy are crumbled by the tractor boys we have a small amount of winnings for consolidation. Remember though that odds do change so just vary the stake accordingly and make sure you’re betting on the correct markets. Come back next week to see the next bet and strategy we will use to extract value from it.