3.25pm Haydock Tips & Betting Preview 02/07/2016

Yorkshire trainer Les Eyre may not be a household name but he got a win out of INTENSE STYLE (9/2) last time out at Doncaster and will be hoping to follow up here off three pounds higher. David Allan is back in the saddle which is a positive, and as the gelding pounced fast and late on soft ground that day he may have had a bit more in hand than it looked at the line. It’s hard to begrudge a smaller yard picking up one of the weekend’s big handicaps for a change.

The last handicap of the day and a really tough one for our tipsters to pick our a winner in our betting tips. There’s the usual mixture of in form horses going up in the weights and out of sorts animals slipping downwards at the same speed, all of which must be considered in our race prediction. Three-year-olds get a six pound allowance here and that leads us to the Charlie Hills trained Mustallib who looked pretty decent when winning his maiden first time out at Nottingham and ran well enough for one with so little experience next time when fourth to Zebedaios at Haydock off the same rating of 83. Although some felt he looked a little one paced that day we felt it may have been a bit too much too soon for the son of Iffraaj, and with another run under his belt and a month or so off to freshen up, we can see him running a big race this afternoon and hopefully at an equally big price.

Roger Charlton is a trainer we like a lot, though even his skills are struggling to get another win out of Huntsmans Close – given a slight chance by a two pound drop by the handicapper. Promoted to second at Goodwood after bring carried all over the track by the winner, he was never seriously sighted at Royal Ascot in the Wokingham but that is a cavalry charge and he wasn’t given a tough time once his chance had gone. This does look a little easier on paper at least, and he certainly has enough ability to make them pull out all the stops this afternoon.

Moonraker looks likely to shoulder top weight of nine stone thirteen today for popular trainer and ex footballer Mick Channon, but that will take some doing, whether he has earned his rating or not. Now a four-year-old, the son of Starspangledbanner has been mixing it at a higher level with heavy defeats in Group Two and Listed company but dropped back to this grade last time out he ran a blinder to beaten a neck by Amazour at Newcastle when trying to giver the winner six pounds. That will hopefully have give him a bit of a confidence boost in which case he ought to go well, but he has never even attempted to carry this much weight and the jury is out on whether he can or can’t manage it until after this race.

With David “Dandy” Nichols’ stable firing again for the legendary King of the Sprinters, a big run is still on the cards for Barnet Fair despite his recent form. Now an eight-year-old, he hasn’t won a race since August 2014 off a mark of 90, but rarely gets beaten by that far, and off his lowest mark in over five years (84 today) he may yet sneak in to a place at a massive price. He’s sorely tempting as an each way option at a massive price.