Get set for imperious Jade
Laila did us a favour last week providing our followers with a decent return at 7-1 for topping the leaderboard, and 5-6 to score higher than 31.5pts.
Only a dozen contestants are now left standing in Strictly and there look to be a fair amount of dead couples’ walking, merely waiting for the executioner’s sword to fall. At this stage we are struggling to see beyond three main contenders – Ali Bastian, Ricky Whittle and Phil Tufnell. That may sound a brave call, and the way in which certain dances land on critical weeks gives hope to the likes of Laila Rouass, Zoe Lucker and Jade Johnson, but factoring in dance ability and popularity, Ali, RickyW and the Cat have the most solid credentials as we see it.
This week the couples are dancing either a Viennese Waltz or a jive. On the highest scorer market, we’re not sure the VW will be RickyW’s forte and we see no value in his price of 4-5. From a value perspective, Ali at 11-4, performing a jive, and Jade at 25s, performing the VW, are the two to focus on, and the more we look at it, the more we think Jade’s price is outstanding value.
It requires a certain tall elegance to be performed gracefully and Jade could just be perfect for this one in partnership with Ian. The jive is a tougher dance to score highly in, but Ali has the tools to execute something special.
Laila is doing a jive with Anton, and as we know Anton struggles big time with fast Latin numbers. Going by their appearance on It Takes Two on Thursday night, their jive could be a dance disaster and as such we cannot resist the 20s quoted on Laila propping up the leaderboard with William Hill.
Unless our eyes were deceiving us, Calzaghe looked much improved in training performing the jive, and the cover bet on this market should be Jo Wood at 13-8 as it looked like she was ill at ease dancing the VW in her training footage.
Rob Furber