What are the odds Mark Hughes bans Joey Barton from Twitter? Derek McGovern's Bets of the Day

By Derek McGovern in Betting Blog

Published 22:00 11/01/12

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Neil Warnock achieved the impossible at Loftus Road.

He picked up Kieron Dyer, Jay Bothroyd and Danny Gabbidon on free transfers and still managed to get a raw deal.

To be fair to Warnock, who could have imagined Dyer would fall victim to injury?

QPR chairman Tony Fernandes decided to axe Warnock after growing calls from the referees’ union.

Replacement Mark Hughes has already displayed a startling lack of awareness by saying: “If there are weaknesses then we need to address them.”

If ?

The first thing he needs to do is discover Shaun Wright-Phillips’ best position. Right now I’d say it was at another club.

Sparky badly needs an influx of fresh blood. Fortunately this usually happens when you have Joey Barton on the staff.

Hughes wasted no time in handing Fernandes a hit-list of potential targets. It had fewer names on it than Barton’s.

Coral offer 6-1 for Hughes to ban Barton from using Twitter before the end of the season. He is expected to do it by tweeting him.

Barton’s best displays this season have been on cyberspace. At QPR that is just in front of the back four, and also behind it.

Hills offer 11-4 for Hughes to leave Rangers during 2012 and that’s a decent bet.

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BET OF THE DAY

IT technicians who suffer from dyslexia wait ages for a USB, then three come along at once.

Get on Alex Bogomolov at a massive 13-8 to beat Julien Benneteau in the Sydney tennis. Match starts around 10am UK time on Thursday.

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One thing guaranteed the moment those two giant pandas moved to ­Edinburgh Zoo was that the amount of vegetables eaten in Scotland would triple.

Pandas get a great press but I’ve never encountered animals so up themselves.

Then again, if you’re a panda you may as well be up yourself if the only alternative is to be up something that looks ­identical to you. No wonder they’re almost extinct.

The two giant pandas were met by several Scottish dignitaries, including First Minister Alex Salmond, after their long flight from China.

Pilot Bob Gasko said: “They seemed content. We could scratch them on the head and they were quite docile.”

He did not mention how the pandas were. I bring this up because in their New Year special bets, Corals offer 10-1 for Tian Tian and Yuan Guang to mate successfully this year.

Mating successfully is unusual for a panda in captivity, so the 10-1 is about as alluring as a Scot in captivity.

Indeed, I’m told that a giant panda is receptive to mating on only three days a year, three days more than a giant wife.

But tarry a while.

Recently, the giant panda breeding centre in China has seen a dramatic rise in reproduction, although it’s unclear if this is among pandas or employees.

The two pandas, reported in the Mirror this week to be getting frisky, will fit in well in Scotland – two oversized, white-faced creatures with black eyes.

Tian Tian and Yuan Guang, translated as Sweetie and Sunshine, are the first pandas to arrive in the UK in 20 years and the first sunshine to arrive in Scotland in the same time.

At 10-1, that bet could well cop, if only the two pandas copulate.

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Rupert Murdoch has joined Twitter.

The reaction has been muted, although everyone else on it immediately changed their passwords.

The media mogul says he wants to embrace all new technology and hopes to work a fax machine by early next week.

Ladbrokes believe the octogenarian will eventually­ tire of tweeting, probably about the same time he discovers a decent porn site.

They offer 5-6 for Murdoch to hang up his tweeting boots this year, and 3-1 for him to be followed by more than two million.

Murdoch himself doesn’t follow anybody – he has a fleet of private investigators­ to do that for him.

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