From The Trading Desk: Early payouts galore at home and abroad

bet365's Steve Freeth takes a look back at a pulsating weekend of football across the continent.

Premier League nears its conclusion

Saturday’s Premier League was terrific with 1/5 Manchester City and 1/2 Brentford scoring just one goal between them against sides that are already preparing for the Championship, and we saw more of the same on Sunday with 2/5 Nottingham Forest failing to beat Leicester in a coupon where BTTS landed in just three games.

Those dropped points mean that Forest are now out to 9/2 for the Top 5 with Aston Villa producing a massive result at Bournemouth, with the Lions shortening from 10/3 into 5/4 and Newcastle sitting in in third after a crucial win over Chelsea.

We paid out on 5/4 Liverpool after 21 minutes as part of our 2 Goals Ahead Early Payout Offer before Mikel Merino ensured that Arsenal left with a point.

Europa League finalists Manchester United and Tottenham were both beaten at home and well done if you fancied 66/1 Everton to be the highest scoring team over the weekend with the Toffees scoring three goals at Fulham.

El Clasico thriller

As expected, El Clasico dominated the European coupon as we paid out on Barcelona and Real Madrid before half-time.

Thank goodness it ended 4-3 and not 4-4 with us having to pay on all three outcomes. All the usual suspects either scoring or assisting made it a miserable seven goal thriller for us with 708 pre-game wagers on Kylian Mbappe notching a hat-trick.

Punters held the upper hand in Europe with a number of winning favourites put together in accumulators on Saturday - 4/5 Atletico Madrid smashed Real Sociedad and 1/3 Mallorca also overcame Real Valladolid in La Liga.

Kane's crowning moment

As a football fan it was great to see Harry Kane finally lift a trophy as 1/8 Bayern Munich confirmed the Bundesliga title with a 2-0 success and both 2/5 PSG and 4/9 Marseille won on the road in Ligue 1.

As well as 5/6 Barcelona on Sunday, we had 5/4 Leganes and 21/20 Athletic Bilbao obliging in La Liga and 31/20 Borussia Dortmund ruining Xabi Alonso’s home farewell as Bayer Leverkusen were thumped 4-2 in the Bundesliga.

We did get some help in Serie A with 1/4 Napoli dropping vital points at home to Genoa and already relegated Monza winning at 8/13 Udinese, but overall we came out second best in Europe this weekend.