X Factor's Ben Will Trade Lower Tonight (With A Little Help From His Friends)

It has been a tough couple of weeks for former-favourite Ben Mills.

Since touching evens during the aftermath of his rendition of Rod Stewart's Maggie May, not only has Ben had to endure singing ABBA but has been outshone for two straight weeks running by top-class performances from Leona Lewis. Ben's implied probablity of winning the show has plumetted from 50% to just 25% at time of writing.

Is that for Ben price (4) correct? We think it is not.

Leona is way ahead in most opinion polls (including our own) and is of course the worthy favourite. We expect her price to continue to contract for the time being and think that she will be well received this evening singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water".

However we consider tonight's show to be a very good opportunity for Ben to get "back in the game" and regain some of his former fans and popularity.

As with Rod Stewart, Ben's husky voice has been often compared to Joe Cocker's and so tonight, Sharon and Simon have chosen to "break out the big guns" to boost Ben with Joe Cocker's most famous/popular song - his wonderful cover version of The Beatles' "With A Little Help From My Friends".

Joe Cocker's arrangement of the song also heavily features backing singers - and so we expect an impressive and entertaining rendition which will have praise heaped on it by the judges, despite concerns about Ben's "Laryngitis" - which specialbets.com understands is not the viral/bacterial sort - just more of a sore throat.

To get an idea of what the producers can draw from - here's Joe singing his version live*. *inless he's fallen back to his old ways we don't expect Ben to be high on the show tonight as Joe apparently is;

How low can Ben trade tonight? Leona and Eton Road's performances will of course have some impact. Eton Road might actually be a back here for the brave but given their lack of singing talent, the popular falsetto register Scissor Sisters track they've chosen could be a poisoned chalice - potential car-crash TV - too risky for us.

Leona could well be very very impressive, but we don't see that as a huge risk to Ben - as that is the consensus opinion.

We think that Ben will at least spend some time at 3.5 levels tonight and if really impressive, trade as low as 3s. We'll be polling the public furiously for their reactions to tonight's pivotal show and will be back later on...

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