Standard Coventry-Draw Tip Is Passed Between Five Sites, Each More Certain, Priced Throughout At 6/4

A betting tip on Tottenham Hotspur's Monday Night Football fixture with Coventry was published on Monday morning and had, by the time the kettle clicked off, been carried by five further websites, none of which added anything to it.

The original, in The Standard, suggested that with Spurs bottom of the Premier League and winless at home, a Coventry-Draw double chance at 6/4 looked "worth taking on the hosts in some way". It is a careful sentence. It contains the word some.

The second site dropped the caution and reported a lean against Tottenham. The third upgraded the lean to a strong case. The fourth called it the smart money, without identifying the money, the person who owns it, or why it is smart.

It's gone from a tip to a banker in the time it took me to find the butter.

The fifth site described the double chance as "as close to a certainty as the market allows". The Herald checked the price at that point. It was 6/4, as it had been at the first site, and as it was at the kitchen table, where it was read aloud for a sixth time.

The remaining content of all six pieces was identical: Coventry have won their last two, Dejan Kulusevski is back in the squad, Rodrigo Bentancur is suspended, and Spurs are 8/15. No site offered a seventh fact, though two offered a second headline.

The Tottenham man at the table was last seen asking whether anyone had actually read the original, and being told that nobody had, but that it felt right.