Tag: soccer
Betfair football trading – Profiting from knockout stages
Knockout Stages of Champions League
February brings the knockout stages of the European Champions League. The group stages tend to eliminate weaker teams from the tournament. The remaining, generally higher quality teams, know they are a few matches away from a shot at the glory of the champions league title. It’s all or nothing from here!
Fewer matches occur at this stage and the liquidity in the markets is focused on the remaining markets. So overall matched betting totals on …
Trading the FA Cup
It’s the FA Cup third round this weekend and marks just over halfway point in the season.
Has the FA Cup lost it’s ‘magic’?
If you are talking about a smaller club meeting up with a goliath, then perhaps not. But it may be that the smaller club faces a diminished version of said goliath. As they say, Money talks and it doesn’t say much in the FA Cup, apart for smaller teams.
Win a game in the second round …
Unbelievable Jeff – Trading comebacks in football
I think it’s safe to say we all had fun watching some of the opening premier league fixtures last weekend.
While it would be nice to think the whole season will be packed full of action of this kind, with remarkable comebacks and sterling fightbacks, it’s unlikely.
Trading opportunities
Obviously, a notable match was the champions, Chelsea, losing at home to Burnley who struggled to muster any decent away form last year. I and a number of people picked up …
How to win the Premier League
As the new season is upon us all football fans up and down the country will no doubt have fresh hopes about what the season will bring. Transfers have been done and hopes raised. But what is it that makes a team successful? What is the most defining characteristic?
The defining characteristic
As is well known, a lot of club revenue gets spent on wages to attract top players. This is in the hope that buying talent buys performances. Quite …
Are Arsenal getting better or worse?
Arsenal to finish fourth and win the FA Cup? Maybe not this year then, so it’s Wenger out?
Financial fair play?
I look at many different aspects of football aside from the general market pricing. Being able to read a financial report, a club’s financials can be quite useful for predicting long-term performance. Clubs that carry a lot of debt expense will see their ability to finance the purchase of new players squeezed. Clubs that are flush with finance can …
Tennis vs Football
Some of the overriding factors in trading are opportunity, position placement and money management. Get any of these out of kilter and your trading strategy goes up in smoke.
Let’s look at Tennis and Football to understand what I mean.
Skill differences are slight across a lot of sport, but have you noticed how there can be some wildly uncompetitive matches in Tennis but in Football the opponents always seem to have a chance?
Football
Football is a game dominated …
Interesting statistics for the FA Cup Fi-nil
So the FA Cup final is upon us and, rather predictably, the final has delivered us two premiership teams. But what will the match deliver? Is that going to be as predictable as well?
While today’s match may throw off differing characteristics based on what I saw of Palace last weekend, I’ve delved back over a number of years to see if I can unlock some prevailing trends.
History has shown us, the FA Cup is no particular respecter of …
Last match could be the most interesting
If you keep your eyes open, opportunities can occur from the strangest of circumstances.
On Sunday May 15th, 2016 we faced an interesting final day in the English Premiership season. The title and relegation battles had already been settled. But there was still the qualification for European competition to decide.
Qualification
Most of the focus was on Man City, Man Utd, West Ham, Southampton and Liverpool. Some could qualify for Champions league football, some for Europa league football.
You also …
Will Leicester really stuff the bookies?
Lot’s of PR, sorry, I mean talk, from the bookies recently about how much they will pay out if Leicester win the title. But is that a reality?
My worst bet ever!
Here is a confession – I will lose money if, when, Leicester win the title. But I have to say it will be one of the most enjoyable losses of my career! Why, because it’s great to see a competitive season in the premiership. As a supporter of …
Option to profit
Been nosing at the Derby vs. Man Utd FA Cup this evening with interest.
Man United are about evens for the match and playing away. This struck a chord with me.
First off, everybody knows how bad Man Utd have been recently. Their last 11 home games at half time have been 0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0,0-1,0-0,0-0,0-0,0-0. OK they are away and at a team a division lower, but confidence is obviously fragile. If Derby want to make things difficult, especially tactically, they can.…
Can Leicester qualify for the champions league?
Did you know, Leicester have been here before? Read on….
Analytics
The thing I love about the modern football analytics movement is there are increasing amounts of, free, data out there that will help you make good, sensible, rational decisions. Far more than I could have ever imagined.
It’s a long way from when I wrote to a magazine in the 80’s about in-play football and the editors response was that he couldn’t see how it would interest anybody.
Quite …
Are you getting a duff price?
Had an interesting conversation with somebody recently about how they can’t use the exchange any longer because the prices on the sports book were much better.
Here is why he realised he had made a mistake: –
Industry pricing for football
The first thing to note is that industry prices on football are much tighter than they used to be. I’ll have to dig out some very old prices to see what they were in the distant past, but typically …
Incentive to score and how it benefits your trading
That one word is how I would describe the next two evenings worth champions league matches.
Some teams will have a big incentive to score, others to not lose and others no incentive to do anything at all. If a team needs a goal, as the clock ticks to the end of the match all hell could be let loose as they chase it. It’s my favourite stage of a any competition!
Difficult and easy
This often makes it difficult …
Finding value in Football matches
Yesterday I posted the following:-
There were a number of reasons I said I was looking for some upsets, far too complex for one blog post. But one of the things was confidence. Not confidence in my ability, that’s not a problem :), but more confidence within the teams playing each other. It looked fairly ripe for an upset or two. Therefore I was looking to lay (and / or trade) with that in mind. I was opposing the …
Saturday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments. Football form labs is on offer at the moment, big savings available during August.
Editorial notes: –
A couple of interesting bits this week, the match preview of Spurs vs Liverpool (I do wonder whether we will see the new manager effect come to the fore here) and some interesting analysis …
Spreadsheets alone can’t win games
When John Henry took over Liverpool football club I was intrigued to see how things would pan out.
I had known for a number of years that Liverpool had net underspent in comparison to their peer group in the Premier league. This meant that they were likely to start slipping down the league as their competitors had much more fire-power when it came to the transfer market. I often detail this knowledge at the start of each season and you …
Saturday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments. Football form labs is on offer at the moment, big savings available during August.
Arsenal v Newcastle, Sat 12:45
Newcastle picked up a point at Old Trafford last weekend but while they had a chance to win the match late on they conceded several great chances and against an Arsenal team that …
Football is getting more boring
I’ve been doing a lot of work on football markets recently. Once the evening horse racing is out of the way, I’ll start turning my attention to football properly. At the moment I am dabbling and revisiting old material and updating new stuff for the season ahead. I’ll miss the odd opportunity, but I always feel the need to improve on prior years.
I was browsing goal data today and thought I’d have a look at how goals have changed …
Sunday Soccer Stats
These stats are brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments. Football form labs is on offer at the moment, big savings available during August.
Man City v Chelsea, Sun 16:00
Man City have been made favourites for the title after their comfy win in the opening round while Chelsea could only pick up a point at home. While City looked impressive against …
Knee jerk reaction to new football season
Not a trick question, but how many games are there in the season?
Well there are 38 in the premier league and 46 in the other three tiers. So if you win the first match of the season what impact would that have on your chances? Not much you would think. Three points divided by 38 isn’t exactly a large number, but last weekend we saw quite a large reaction to some mundane first day results.
Chelsea’s difficulty in breaking …
Saturday Soccer Stats
Saturday Soccer stats is back and more will follow this season as we have been busy at work during the off season. Ratings will follow later. We are just slightly behind where we need to be at the moment on some new stuff. But it’s probably not a problem as you are no doubt getting drowned in other stuff today! We have done some excellent work in the off season. Tomorrow on the blog, something really interesting for you; today, …
How to win the league
As the new season is upon us all football fans up and down the country will no doubt have fresh hopes about what the season will bring. Transfers have been done and hopes raised. But what is it that makes a team successful? What is the most defining characteristic?
The defining characteristic
As is well known, a lot of club revenue gets spent on wages to attract top players. This is in the hope that buying talent buys performances. Quite …
Charity shield
This write up is brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments.
The Ashes may be in full swing but the Premier League season is just around the corner and Sunday’s traditional curtain raiser sees Chelsea and Arsenal give a preview of what to expect in the coming months.
It’s been almost four years since the Gunners last took down Chelsea but with …
The rise of football analytics
Back in the late eigthies and early nineties when I was trying to win the football pools, nobody really understood what was going through my head.
Not interested
I remember writing to a football magazine and explaining to them how I carefully mapped out what happens during a match. I carefully laid out an extensive document talking about how the time of the goal influences the outcome of a match and how a red card can significantly alter that match …
Early season expectations
A interesting write up brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments.
[Peter – I’ve also looked into the start of the season for opportunities to lay or back teams with difficult or easy starts. Bournemouth and Norwich have a fair start but descend into some really tough fixtures as the season warms up. You can use this information and the sort of …
Champions league final
Another excellent write up brought to your by our friends over at Football Form Labs. Check out their site and the powerful software that sits behind these comments.
Saturday evening in Berlin will see what is undoubtedly the showpiece event of this year’s football calendar as Barcelona and Juventus clash having disposed of Bayern Munich and Real Madrid between them in Europe and dominated their respective domestic leagues. Indeed, the aforementioned …
Saturday Soccer Stats
With three games remaining this is the definition of a ‘six-pointer’ as a win for either side could well prove the death blow to the other’s hopes of survival, and if Burnley lose they will definitely be down this weekend.
Hull were outplayed by Arsenal on Monday but they had won back-to-back matches prior to that and their recent home form is quite good. They’ve won three of their last six at the KC …
Saturday Soccer Stats
Spurs salvaged a draw at Southampton last weekend to maintain their sixth position in the standings and they remain hopeful of finishing fifth after Liverpool’s midweek loss at Hull. Man City, meanwhile, are back up to second following their rather lucky win over Aston Villa. Of course Villa are in good form and did recently end Spurs’ 10 match unbeaten streak at home.
Spurs started the season poorly at White Hart Lane, losing …
Permutations at the ready
Bournemouth are at home to Bolton this evening, a win will see them get promoted. Well I say that, but a win would put them three points ahead of rivals with a vastly superior goal difference. As good as a promoted.
There are a number of permutations available for the adventurous this evening. Bournemouth are 1.30’s for the match and 1.10ish for promotion. Backing them for the match but going against promotion could prove useful. Of course they could draw …
Saturday Soccer Stats
With six games remaining Barcelona have the advantage in the title race against Real Madrid. But it’s only a slender lead and while Espanyol have tended to be woeful at this time of year in recent seasons – in their final eight games since 2009/10 their record is W7-D11-L24 with a greater than 50% loss if you’d backed them in all those matches – you can guarantee they’ll be motivated for this clash.
Unfortunately …
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