Every once in a while something happens in life that makes the self-loathing nip just that little bit more.

You know, like discovering the girl you used to walk home at the end of the night is now ripping it up as every top director's belle de jour in Hollywood.

Or driving out of the car showroom in a second-hand Volkswagen when you went in for a new BMW. Or feverishly debating whether to repair the tumble dryer or buy a new one. This is middle-class, middle-aged life in glorious technicolour. The closest you've come to that round the world holiday is a bet on a couple of teams from a league you're not particularly au fait with. The extent of your excitement is using the term au fait - even though you're not exactly sure what it means. And so, the weeks grind on; the self-flagellation continues.

Football teams laugh at you (collectively, of course); the one source of comfort becomes a virtual bed of nails that whisper the results of defeats past as they break the skin. The solution is simply to carry on: drink another cup of coffee, write indecipherable columns, keep taking the medicine. Indeed, it has been a time for sucking up medicine. And then, there's the tricky part of getting back on message. Which is where these come in handy . . .

THE SYSTEM

Now, where was I? Ah, yes, we had a system didn't we? But the problem with systems is that when they are broken we need someone to fix them and if we don't have someone to fix them then well, we're buggered. Not that I think the system is broken . . . yet. But there's clearly something amiss when teams in the lower half of League 2 are dishing out skelpings to teams at the top. That said, the solution is to carry on. To drink another cup of coffee etc. We're sticking with the goal supremacy bet not least because it's logical and about the only thing that is logical and we're still in the lower reaches of the leagues in England and Scotland.

I've picked out three teams and four fixtures in which I think both teams will score. The details are for another day. Suffice to say there is a certain amount of mathematical reasoning which has gone into these selections. The goal supremacy argument has been laid out in previous columns (goals for and against in the past six matches) and they favour Exeter City (49.5% chance of winning based on historical trends), Coventry City (56.8%) and Hamilton Academical (41.7%). At prices of 11/10, Evs and Evs respectively they look like good-value bets.

The both-teams-to-score method has similarly been derived from the past six games during which the named teams have either scored in every game or at least five games and/or have conceded in every game or at least five games. For all eight, the negative occurrence of either is just once. See that's the maths.

THE BET

An Exeter, Coventry and Hamilton treble pays 7.4/1 while a both-teams-to-score quad containing Leyton Orient v MK Dons, Shrewsbury Town v Gillingham, Exeter v Hartlepool and Stenhousemuir v Brechin City pays 7.78/1.

SEASON'S TOTAL

Last week's loser left one feeling like a Kamikaze pilot who has just discovered he's wearing a parachute. Like said pilot, the profit continues to drop - £3.40