Tag: soccer
The champions league gulf
Just had a good look at this evenings matches you can’t help but wonder if UEFA’s coefficient is a bit cocked up. Either than or whether there really is such a massive gulf between the top teams in Europe and everybody else. I suggest the outcomes are driven by commercial incentives in reality.
Barcelona are an amazing 1.05 to beat Plzen this evening. We have Chelsea t 1.12, AC Milan 1.27 and Porto 1.30.
Several uncompetitive prices were offered out …
Manchester 0 Europe 4
Should be an interesting evening of action tonight. Man City should beat Villareal and Man Utd should beat Otgoeoifosadufnoid or whatever they are called. Both teams have no wins so far in this stage of the campaign. Some of the ‘feature’ matches are quite uncompetitive which is disappointing but there is still a lot to play for in individual ties. Some teams will fancy a potential giant killing.
I won’t be trading this evening as I will out watching some …
Mission impossible
Scotland travel to Spain this evening in an attempt to pull off the biggest shock in Euro qualification history with a win in the world champions back yard. Before we completely dismiss their chances, lets look at the some stats.
The market is pricing in a dominant Spanish performance with Spain coming out winners by at least two goals on average. In the past there have been some big wins in matches like this, but also a few shocks. Overall …
Internationals
I had my own international experiance last night when I met up with Howard Hamilton from Soccermetrics. A dedicated group of stats experts huddled in a pub in Fulham to discuss all things football related. Could have done with a quieter pub!
With so many international matches going off at once, or at best close to each other, you may consider using a generic strategy that you can automate. All this can be done in practice mode as well, …
188ft headed goal
One of the things I like about football is it’s randomness. There are predictable elements to it, but goals occur over a wide average and are difficult to pinpoint precisly. This makes it good for certain types of strategies. If you want an example of the unpredictability of goals here is a classic: –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15145980
McClaren resigns
Further to my blog post on Saturday, Steve McClaren resigned from his post this evening: –
https://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15145175.stm
You know what to look for!
The new manager effect
Early this week I was listening to the interview with Nottingham Forest manager Steve McClaren after watching his team get thumped 5-1. It was a depressing experience. Forest started the season at a good price for promotion but have since looked like a team trying to avoid relegation. McClaren seemed clueless to give a clear example of how he will turn their fortunes around. Should Forest sack him?
Another area of research I have done in the past is based …
Champions league
How pleasurable that we pretty much nailed the matches last night. 23 goals forecast and 23 scored. We also had the “right sort of slope” to the forecast with, generally, the higher scoring matches at the top of the curve and lower scoring ones to the right. It was a night set of results and some great matches last night.
This evening looks similar in terms of the goal tally and here are the rankings from most to least goals: …
Champions league
Tonight’s matches should generate on average around 23 goals. I’d rank most to least: –
Real Madrid vs Ajax
Man Utd vs FC Basel
B Munich vs Man City
Lyon vs Dinamo Zagreb
Otelul Galati vs Benfica
Napoli vs Villarreal
Trabzonspor vs Lille
CSKA Moscow vs Inter
I much prefer the knockout stage of the competition or the latter stages of the group stages when incentive to score is highest.
Stat of the evening for you. There is around an …
Cheaters never prosper
I saw this post on another blog recently and it shows up how statistics can actually reveal very little at all. This is obviously unintended in this case, but is a trap a lot of people fall into very often. Especially when gambling / trading.
https://www.soccerbythenumbers.com/2011/09/cheaters-never-prosper-connection.html
I first looked into the relationship with fouls and goals some time ago and the link is the attacking strength of one team over the defence of another. If your defence is under pressure …
Red vs. Blue
I recently watched an episode of Horizon on BBC iPlayer. These documentaries are right up my street and I love exploring some of the more esoteric views of things. This particular episode was all about colour and how the brain interprets colour. It was really fascinating as it highlighted that a lot of the colour you see is “interpreted” by the brain and not actually “real”.
One element of this was looking at the effect of red and blue and …
Europa league ratings
Don’t forget to use Soccer Mystic to have a good look at each match yourself!
In hindsight I’ve been too optimistic this week in the champions league. What I have learnt so far is that some teams have not settled into European competition yet and others have been a bit cautious; this is surprising in the group stages. Biggest surprise was to see Inter lose last night!
I like the Europa league as you get two bites at the cherry …
Champions league ratings
Nice result on the Barcelona match last night! Our top four goal ranks produced three over 2.5 goal matches and the bottom four three under 2.5 goal matches. I would have estimated four matches would be likely to reach >2.5 but there were only three. I would lean on the side of lots more goals than normal this evening and therefore overs are in-play and unders at risk this evening.
Because this evening’s matches should produce more goals I would …
Champions league ratings
An interesting bunch of matches tonight and I reckon they will throw up, on average, around 21/22 goals as a group. Don’t forget to fire up Soccer Mystic for a good look at these matches.
I’d rank most to least goals as: –
Barcelona vs. AC Milan
Porto vs. Shakhtar
Genk vs. Valencia
Chelsea vs. Leverkusen
Dortmund vs. Arsenal
Plzen vs. BATE Borisov
APOEL vs. Zenit St Petersburg
Olympiakos vs. Marseille
I’m intrigued by the Barcelona and Dortmund match. Are …
Who scores first in a football match?
When trading football, whatever strategy you use, it tends to gravitate to the key question, who scores first? (You could add when to that as well!)
I first asked this question in the early 80’s and worked out how to calculte this and most likely time for a goal. I recently revisited some old material and transplated it to today’s markets so see if much had changed. Not a great deal has changed to be honest and the stats are …
Fooled by randomness
Acknowledging the angle offered by Nicolas Taleb, where he uses this phrase to write an entire book based on the fact the odd things happen more than they academically should, I would like to point out the same can happen in a football match.
Often I see people claiming to have found some new system for trading football. You know the sort, hold a chicken in your hand, put your head out the window and place a back bet …
Back the draw
I’m going to put up some information on Saturday’s about football / soccer. Some of it may seem contradictory for some of you and some logical, but it’s all based on years worth of research and application in the market.
For starters: –
If you backed the draw, pretty much at random, last weekend; you would have have netted a cool profit. I know, because I did exactly that and suffered a 60% thumping as a result! I was doing …
EBore & the sack race
The York EBOR moved this year to a Saturday and as a consequence it killed it from a trading perspective. Chester races were only five minutes in front of York and Chester did it’s best to ruin York all day saving the best for the feature race by going off only 38 seconds before the big race at York. Racing UK got in about five seconds of coverage and most of that was covered with a graphic of the odds. …
Hitting the panic button
The football season is only a few matches old and yet some fans are hitting the panic button already. Hot favourites for the championship Leicester City have already lost two games at home. Not the form of a championship winning team! Teams at the top of the table rarely lose home games, let alone two in a row. Could Sven be on his way out again?
I recently did some work on managerial changes and their impact on teams. On …
That thin line…
Early season football is the most interesting time of the year for me.
Some teams play well but lose, some play poorly but win and in the early season that gives a lift or shock to the team. Teams can easily build or lose momentum early in the season so its key to see how things are playing out. Short term momentum is critical and can lead to early season over performance but to keep it going over the whole …
The apprentice
I saw this article in last weekend’s financial times about Ryan Clarke and thought it was a really nice piece. Outside of the elite clubs it was a really nice story of somebody who has worked hard to get through the system from the bottom up. It gives you a good perspective of the difference between the elite clubs how football used to be. Worth a read…
It’s all kicking off!
Yes the premier league is back. Twenty teams, OK maybe four, well maybe three battle it out for the greatest honour in football…. Who will sack their manager first!
As I have mentioned in previous posts the market tends to inefficient at the start of the season. I looked back over the two months at the start of last season to see what happened last year.
The first thing to note is that the market got the number of goals …
Pity City
That was an intruiguing and exciting start to the the elite football season. This charity shiled final highlights where a lot of people go wrong in trading football matches. At half time a 2-0 lead flattered city according to the stats and Man Utd were still in it. Add in their propensity to score late goals and a back on Man United or the draw screamed value.
Unfortunatley I was not in a position to trade on Sunday, but got …
City or United?
Tricky, neutral ground, key players out, non-descript match, revenge for an FA Cup exit. Many factors in play.
I did a cut of data this morning against similar looking matches. I say similar because I analyse matches on a much deeper level than just look at odds and other top line levels or form. I open up the match and examine what the market is discounting on a number of levels and then recompile it. The neutral aspect of this …
Kick off
The English football season kicked off in earnest last night with Blackpool nudging a 1-0 win against Hull. Today league football gets underway properly and the hopes and aspirations of many will re-ignite across the nation. How appropriate that the financial markets are crashing under the weight of false hopes and huge amounts of debt just as the football season starts up! If you are looking for excess then there is plenty to find on and off the football field, …
Betfair sponsor Tuerkiyemspor
If your reaction was “Who?”, you are not alone in thinking that. Visit this link for an interesting angle on why: –
Football is back (almost)
Scottish league football restarts today and it’s a useful reminder that at the start of season it’s easier to find value than at any other time of the year, bar the relegation dogfight perhaps.
It’s often difficult to see how transfers and all the other summer shenanigans will play out, but that can show itself in some of the earlier matches. Keep an eye open at the start of the season for a few fast starters. Any one of the …
£174m
The Deloitte football report is out and makes continued interesting reading. The current austerity in the western world doesn’t seem to have affected football. Their finances are as bad as ever but the players get paid more in a week than a group of the fans could reasonably expected to earn in a year. The clamour for ‘talent’ continues unabated.
There are some very interesting bits in the report. Manchester United spent 46% of its revenue on pay, but rivals …
A bit of a messicre!
Fairly early on last night, apart form the opening exchanges, you could see this match wasn’t going Man Utd’s way last night. The stats said it all. Possession was heavily skewed to Barca and by the end of the match Barca had 13 shots on target to Man Utd’s 1! Over 2.5 goals looked almost certain by half time, as did the Barca win. Barcelona really cemented their status as best club in Europe last night and probably the world.…
Champions League
Everybody else will be posting about it so I thought I would add my two penneth worth.
An intriguing clash, for once I think I will watch this than trade it.
A neutral venue but Man Utd will practically be at home, so you would have to favour Barca but discount some of the neutrality. I think this is the weakest Man Utd team for a while. Other teams really should have put in a stronger challenge for the premier …
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