What are the odds Mancini gets his imaginary red card out AGAIN this weekend? Derek McGovern's Bets of the Day

By Derek McGovern in Betting Blog

Published 22:00 17/01/12

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It's hard to understand why Roberto Mancini cops so much flak for his ­touchline antics.

Critics are furious because he waved an imaginary red card at the ref at Wigan on Monday night – but if it was ­imaginary, how do they know it was red?

What’s wrong with it anyway? I regularly wave an imaginary red card at the TV – even when it’s off.

I find Mancini’s ­imaginary card no more annoying than Fergie’s imaginary gum, Arsene Wenger’s imaginary blindness, and my imaginary ­girlfriend.

It’s okay, is it, for managers to shout at the ref, to swear at the ref, and to check an imaginary watch at the ref but not to wave an ­imaginary card at the ref?

Who made those rules up?

Fergie, I imagine.

Mancini is paying the price for being good-looking with luxuriant hair – justifiably in my book.

Wayne Rooney jumped two-footed into the debate by asking on Twitter whether ‘Manchini’ was trying to get an ­opponent sent off.

That’s just typical Rooney, clean forgetting that in Italian a ‘c’ is pronounced ‘ch’ when followed by an ‘i’.

Bobby Manc has made Manchester Chity one of the powerhouses of Europe and you could imagine him staying there even if the money dries up and they start slipping.

It’s not like an Italian to desert a sinking ship.

The Chity chief is just 7-4 with Ladbrokes to gesture for a red card against Spurs on Sunday – a bet that is sure to attract imaginary punters.

Bet365 offer a more realistic 3-1 – or maybe I just imagined it.

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Steven Spielberg has backed an internet campaign to award Oscars to animals.

The campaign already has ­thousands of followers, most of them sheep.

It follows the performance in Oscar-nominated film The Artist of Uggie the dog.

The little Jack Russell steals every scene he is in, but brings them straight back again.

Hollywood heavyweights like ­Spielberg reckon animals like Uggie, Lassie and Stoke City deserve their time in the spotlight.

The last dog to win an Oscar was Kathy Bates in Misery and that’s bang out of order. Julia Roberts should have won it that year for Pretty Woman.

If Spielberg is successful in getting Hollywood to ­introduce Oscars for animals, he will then call for similar honours for extra-­terrestrials.

Hills make a dog the 2-1 favourite to be the first animal to win an Oscar of any kind with a monkey at 4-1 and a horse at 5-1.

I’ve had a monkey on a unicorn at 13-2.

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It's easy to blame the banks for the making the country broke but it’s not strictly fair.

It’s the bankers who are to blame.

Between them they’ve bankrupted the country to such a degree we can’t even afford to give the richest woman in Britain a £60million yacht for her anniversary.

Things have got so bad I recently witnessed a masked man holding a bank cashier up with a gun. He said: ‘I don’t want any money. I just want you to start lending to people’.

Ladbrokes are betting on which of the major banking groups will award the single highest bonus this year.

Barclays are 1-10 favourites – and that looks a banker to me.

It’s evens for any CEO of the four major High Street banks to forfeit his bonus.

That’s about as likely as seeing the Queen in a canoe.

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BET OF THE DAY

When I was a kid, all I knew was rejection.

My yo-yo, it never came back.

Get on Michael Llodra at 10-11 to beat Alex Bogomolov in the Aussie Open.

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