Football Punter has gotten over his nightmare at backing both West Brom and Middlesbrough yesterday and has been hot on the trail of the best odds for outright winners of this season’s UEFA Cup after having had time to digest the first round draw as covered live for the British clubs by State of the Game.

Football Punter runs his eye over the available odds from VC Bet and looks for any opportunites for fans of the British clubs to make a few quid off their side in Europe this season.

Spurs may be joint favourites with Sevilla on their European return but what about Newcastle United, West Ham United, Blackburn Rovers, Rangers and Hearts, not forgetting European stalwarts such Ajax, Feyenoord, Celta Vigo and Bayer Leverkusen?

Football Punter has all of the details on UEFA Cup 2006/2007 outright betting.

New signups with VC Bet get a free ?20 bet so click on the link or the banner below and get signed up.

We’ll be covering the draw as it happens for the UEFA Cup first round as British clubs Tottenham Hotpsur, Newcastle United, West Ham United, Blackburn Rovers, Derry City Hearts and Rangers wait to see who they’ll face.

The first-round matches are played over two legs on 14th and 28th September.

A total of 40 teams will then advance to the group stages, where pools of five teams vie to reach the knockout stages.

The winner, runner-up and third-placed team from each group advance to the last 32 where they are joined by eight clubs knocked out of the Champions League.

The competition will culminate in the final at Hampden Park on the 16th May.

UEFA Cup First round 2006/2007 Draw:

Levadia Tallinn v NEWCASTLE
Molde FK v RANGERS
DERRY CITY v Paris St Germain
Sparta Prague v HEARTS
FC Salzburg v BLACKBURN
WEST HAM v Palermo
Slavia Prague v TOTTENHAM

Monaco hosts today’s UEFA Cup First Round draw as 80 teams prepare themselves for their ticket to a European adventure. While the glitz and glamour of yesterday’s Champion’s League draw mightn’t be quite as evident, the UEFA Cup still holds some of it’s old glory and there is a strong selection of Europe’s big footballing names, both seeded and unseeded, with which to make for an interesting tournament this season.

These 80 sides will play each other home and away before the winners progress to the group stages where eight groups of five teams will play each other once.

For today’s draw the sides have been split into seeded and unseeded groups and then further divided into eight pools of ten teams, five seeded, five unseeded from which the draws will be made. Seeded teams can only play unseeded teams from within their own group or pool. Confused yet? Have a look down the following tables to see which of the British clubs involved (Newcastle United, Rangers, West Ham United, Tottenham Hotspur, Hearts, Blackburn Rovers and Derry City) have the toughest possible draw.

We’ll be covering the draw live here at State of the Game from 1200 BST.
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Just when Hearts fans think things can’t take any more unexpected twists and turns, former Hungary coach and Germany legend Lothar Matthaus once again throws his hat into the ring for a chance to coach the Edinburgh club under the most trigger happy club owner in European football, Vladimir Romanov.

Matthaus has been overlooked twice for the Hearts job this season, firstly with George Burley’s appointment and then that of Graham Rix but with Matthaus now a free agent after being sacked from the Hungary national coach’s job and a short spell as coach of Brazilian side Atletico Paranaense, he would represent a low cost option with no need for compensation.

Matthaus’ agent John Inglis has been touting his client as being the experienced stager that Hearts need and says that Matthaus would be delighted to speak to Romanov to discuss the position.

Whether Matthaus could resurrect his sinking reputation as a coach capable of working at the top level is another matter, whether he could last six months in a job that has seen three previous incumbents in ten months is the biggest question of all.

All change at Hearts for the third time this season with Graham Rix joining his predecessor George Burley on the former Hearts managers’ list despite the Edinburgh club sitting sandwiched between the Old Firm in second place in the SPL.

Even though club owner Vladimir Romanov appointed Rix only four months ago to replace Burley who had led the club to the top of the SPL in his brief tenure, there has been little surprise amongst Hearts fans and players alike at the latest development.

The overwhelming feeling one gets about Hearts these days is that whatever Mr. Romanov wants to do is fine with everyone else because he continues to put his money where his mouth is and fuels the club with cash to keep everyone happy, everyone bar himself by the sounds of it though.

The players won’t bite the hand that feeds them even though Romanov is highly critical of the way they’ve been playing recently and the fans won’t speak out against the destabilising effect the constant coaching changes are having on the club as a whole because they’ve been blinded by Eastern European money, much like their Southern neighbours Chelsea.

With Jim Duffy also being relieved of his post as director of football after only a month, the Heart of Midlothian story looks to outsiders like a football fairytale gone wrong with an increasingly megolomaniac owner willing to treat one of Scotland’s oldest and most respected clubs as if it was a Sunday League outfit.

Money doesn’t buy you respect but at Hearts it seems to buy you the right to do whatever you like as long you continue to dig deep into your pockets. I wonder how long the bookies give the new interim head coach Valdas Ivanauskas?