I’m Dreaming of a _ _ _ Fab Football System

Well aren’t we all and if that big fat bloke in a red suit brings one for me next month, then I will be made up. However, you don’t have to wait that long because starting today I am going to be bringing you lots of goodies in time for the festive season.

Before we start though, I just want to let you know what will be happening over the next weeks and months. First off, I will be posting blogs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Monday and Friday  -  news, reviews, systems, methods

Wednesday  -  the art of making a living from football betting

Please do get involved with the blogs and football forum. Leave me a comment on the blog or a question in the forum.

Right then here we go:-

Overs and Unders

Facts

1. The average match goals scored in the top 4 English Leagues over the last 10 years is 2.56
2. Bettors prefer to play in the Over 2.5 market rather than the Under 2.5
3. Over the last 10 years the Premiership and League 1 are the highest scoring Divisions
4. Bookmakers over estimate the number of goals scored
5. This means over 2.5 goals is odds-on most of the time (I will explain why in a later tutorial)
6. The majority of goals are scored in the second half of matches
7. This season the Premiership is producing just over 3 goals per game
8. This season 60% of Premiership games have gone over 2.5 goals

You can find up to date Over/Under stats at http://www.soccerstats.com

So how do we play this market?

Possible Strategies

Make sure you check latest stats before making a bet

1. The value bet in general is going for under 2.5 goals
2. If you play the Unders don’t use the Premiership or League 1, make sure your odds are evens or bigger
3. For over 2.5 use League 1 or Premiership at odds of evens or better
4. For in-play markets (Premiership) lay over 2.5, then back it at half-time if 1 goal has been scored
5. German and Dutch Leagues are best for over 2.5 goals
6. French and Italian Leagues are best for under 2.5 goals

Personally, I only play this market in-play in the Premiership and only on the overs. If I have found a solid bet from the stats, I will wait until half-time. If only one goal has been scored, then the odds on Over 2.5 should have gone better than evens and that is when I would play in the market. This is not a trade out position for me, whereby there is only 20 minutes left and it is still 1-0, let’s get out with a small loss. I will stand the bet, I know that more goals are scored in the second half and if I have got better than evens, then over a stretch of time that is a value bet, which is the key every time.

We will be looking at how to determine if a game will go over or under in a later tutorial.

Next Goal

This is obviously for in-play games. If a match has started and after 20 minutes a goal is scored, it doesn’t matter who has scored, could be the home team or away team, who do you think will score the next goal? If there is another goal will it be the same team who score and make it 2-0 or will it be the other team that score and make it 1-1. Who will score?

The stats say that it will be the other team that score to make it 1-1 and so this is information we can use. Why is it that the other team has scored? Possibly because:-

1. The first team have got the lead and take their attacking foot off the pedal
2. Perhaps they stop doing their jobs properly
3. The team behind know they have to put in more effort
4. They are behind and so attack more

Who knows but it happens so often, the team in the lead surrender ground and possession. The stats say that this happens to all types of teams, good ones, bad ones and moderate ones. The stats also say that the team behind score the next goal 6% more often than the team in front. This then gives us an in-built edge that we should use.

So if you do use the in-play markets and you find one team a goal in front you can play on the next goal. What I would suggest is that you make sure the team behind is better than evens, 2.2 would be nice and you back them to score next. You would in fact get fantastic odds if the team you are backing was the underdog before start of play.

This can be taken a step further on the in-play markets. If one side goes 1-0 up, the odds on the other side winning will increase dramatically, depending on when the goal is scored. Bearing in mind that the team behind is likely to score next, if there is a goal, the option would be to back the team behind to win the game at massively increased odds with the expectation they will equalise, then lay them at drastically reduced odds when they equalise.

This worked perfectly on Saturdat night, Bilbao v Barcelona. Early in the second half Barcelona took the lead and within minutes Bilbao had moved out to 50 on Betfair. The opportunity was there to back Bilbao for £20 at 50 and sit back awaiting the equaliser, which came just 5 minutes later. The odds on Bilbao dropped to 8 putting you in a strong trading position, lay Bilbao for £125 at 8. This meant that you would green up for an across the board profit of £100 no matter what happened. £100 for 5 minutes work, that is not bad going.

Of course I would not ask anyone to bet on this if the first goal is scored in the last 15 minutes of a game, having said that it is amazing the number of last minute goals we get these days.

There are ways we can quantify who will score next and we will explore these in a later tutorial.

So there you have a couple of simple strategies to use on the Over/Under and Next Goal markets. Before you make any bets though you must have done your due diligence checks, never bet on the spur of the moment or when you are on”tilt”. We will be coming onto this on Wednesday, when we start our guide to becoming an investor rather than a gambler.