Festive fancies for St Stephen's Day

A day on from being underwhelmed by Christmas crackers, and gags contained within more disposable than the tawdry party hats, it's your Christmas tracker you need to focus on.

"Bah humbug", you might say - and it wouldn't be Christmas without a little humbug - but the racing calendar over the festive period is loaded with seasonal gluttonous excess.

On St Stephen's Day alone, in Ireland and Britain, there are no less than 11 meetings and 77 races for your perusal.

That magnitude makes "perusal" the operative word in terms of form study. We've a handful of races over the coming days where the complexion of the fields can be reasonably guesstimated in advance, but they're the exceptions to the rule.

That's where the trackers, offered on various platforms, come into their own. Committing horses to a physical notebook or relying solely on memory may be things of the past, but alerts on those runners that have taken your eye last season or in the early part of this one make a sprawling task more manageable.

1.05 Aintree - Potters Charm - LAY

Potters Charm is the clear favourite for the Grade One William Hill Formby Novices' Hurdle, but there are a number of reasons for suspecting he's one to oppose on Merseyside, not least recency bias.

Potters Charm, who is unbeaten in four starts under Rules, has won his last two starts at Cheltenham.

His latest victory at Britain's premier National Hunt track came in a decent time, but nothing better than that, and that race fell apart to a degree.

Favourite Valgrand overraced at stages in that contest and has subsequently been well beaten.

While Potters Charm has won a bumper over the minimum trip, his wins over hurdles have come over intermediate distances. That bumper win came on heavy ground