8 meetings today

A busy Friday with 3 meetings in the afternoon and 5 in the evening - two of them in Ireland with huge fields. The vast majority of today´s races are handicaps, usually at a low level, and it looks tricky for punters. The main meetings are at York and Sandown this afternoon, but both of them have much better cards tomorrow. At Sandown, the pedigree of Aegaeus (Ed Dunlop/ Ryan Moore), who runs in the 10 furlongs handicap at 17.20 CET, is of interest as he is by Monsun out of multiple Group One winner Ouija Board. However he seems very difficult to win with, and we would prefer to put our money on Clowance Estate (Roger Charlton/ James Doyle), who won his only start - more than a year ago- in good style, and is quite possibly much better than this grade. The stable is in good form, so the long break is no reason to worry. We also like bottom-weight London Bridge (Jo Hughes/ Martin Lane) in the following race; he showed much improved form to win at Brighton last week and can def y a 6 lbs penalty in this better company.

At York the 1 3/4 miles handicap at 16.05 Looks very open. We like the oldtimers, but 11yoBlue Bajan (David O´Meara/ Danny Tudhope) seemed to have the plot last season and is now coming off a long break; at his best - he was twice runner-up in the Yorkshire Cup over this CD- he would of course be unbeatable, but for now we prefer David Simcock´s two runners, top-weight Montaser (Jamie Spencer) and Martin Chuzzlewit (Martin Harley).
A couple of runners at Musselburgh who look due for a win are Red Baron (Eric Alston/ Neil Farley) over 5 furlongs at 16.25 and Merchant of Dubai (Jim Goldie/ Graham Lee) over 1 3/4 miles at 17.00.