Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics…

Today we are going to be looking at some of this seasons stats and how they can help us for the rest of the season.

Was it Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain, who coined the phrase. The debate is still going on and about 20 other names have been thrown into the hat. The origin is still unknown but the sentiment is still there. Many a weak arguement can be bolstered by a liberal sprinkling of a few stats. If ever there was a season when you could throw the stats book away, then this is the season. For anyone heavily into stats based betting (and that includes me), this season has been heavy going.

Without a doubt statistics do help in deciphering the vagaries of a football match but if you depend on them totally and they don’t conform, (which they often don’t), then you are in trouble. My stats are based on more than 21,000 matches played in the top 4 English leagues, over the last 10+years and I have a good handle on them but they still come up with an element of surprise. This season has been a bit of a shocker in the Premiership and Championship. Let me give you some facts.

Over the last 10 years, in the top 4 English leagues, the percentages of home wins, draws and away wins have been as follows:-

Home wins    45%

Draws     27%

Away wins    28%

So what has happened this season? Well I can tell you that Leagues 1 and 2 have performed pretty much up to standard, with Homes 45%, Draws 27%, Aways 28%, so far, so good but what about the big boys. Well they are not behaving themselves at all, currently showing:-

Premiership

Home wins      53%

Draws      21%

Away wins      26%

Whilst the Championship shows:-

Home wins      41%

Draws        32%

Away wins      27%

In statistics, when anything moves off the line of standard deviation, it is termed as “noise”. These figures though are not “noise”, they are a sonic boom. They are so far removed from the expected, that it has been well nigh impossible to make money from the top 2 divisions so far this season. The good news is that we are less than half way through the season and so these figures are taken from a relatively small sample (about 400 games). That is a small sample when compared to 21,000 games for the full stats.

Having a closer look at the Premiership we see that Homes are up by 8%, Draws down by 6% and Aways down by 2%. I never back the draw so you would think that with draws being down, that would be a big advantage. However, because the deficit on draws is not split evenly between Homes and Aways (in fact Aways are down as well) the market has become lopsided and the odds on the home teams have become very cramped.

This then makes home sides poor value and definite lay material but they have bucked the trend and just keep on winning. Also, where there is value on the away sides, it hasn’t come to fruition because they have underperformed in the vast majority of cases.

In the Championship the Draws are up 5%, whilst Homes are down 4% and Aways down 1%. This scenario is the worst possible case. Virtually nobody backs the draw and so when there is any percentage increase, the only winner is the bookmaker, which has been the case throughout this season in the Championship.

Only once in the last 10 years and that was in season 2005/06 in League 2, has the draw percentage been as high as it is now in the Championship. It has ruined the backers of both Home and Away wins in this division.

How is this information going to help us for the rest of the season? First of all, when something gets this far out of kilter, forces are at work to bring it back into line. This means the current stats in the Premiership and Championship are unlikely to continue to the end of the season. Therefore you can expect a re-correlation of Home wins in the Premiership and Draws in the Championship between now and May.

So for the rest of this season I would be wary of backing too many home wins in the Premiership but would feel totally justified in backing home and away wins in the Championship, with the obvious caveat, that you should, of course, only bet when you have identified value.

Meanwhile, I have been looking at some other stats that may help us in the coming months. In particular I have been casting my eyes over the Correct Score stats and have come up with a cunning plan. Now some of you out there may well have bought systems/methods/software that deal in this market. It is a market where the books have a massive advantage but I am going to show you a little trick that turns that advantage on its’ head and puts you firmly in the driving seat.

For the top 4 English divisions I have chopped the stats and come up with the 5 most common scorelines for each division. I am going to leave out 0-0, even though it did show up in 2 divisions in the top 5, because we are going to look for games where at least 1 goal will be scored. The top 5 scorelines then are:-

Premiership  -  2-1, 1-0, 1-1, 0-1, 2-0 Accounts for 50.3%

Championship  -  1-1, 1-0, 0-1, 2-0, 2-1 Accounts for 56.1%

League 1  -  2-1, 1-1, 1-0, 2-0, 0-1 Accounts for 56.7%

League 2  -  1-1, 1-0, 2-1, 2-2, 1-2 Accounts for 54.0%

Right, armed with these figures how do we go about tilting the odds in our favour? Well the first thing you will see is that the top 5 scorelines in each division (plus 0-0 stats) account for more than 50%. However, to tip the odds further in our favour we are going to make sure we don’t pick games that end 4-0,  2-4 or some other ridiculous score. Games where one team or the other score 4 goals make up a big percentage of games, 16% in the Premiership and 10% in the other leagues.

So by taking 0-0 and the high scoring games out of the equation, we are left with a much better situation, with the top 5 scores now accounting for:-

Premiership    66.4%

Championship    65.8%

League 1    66.4%

League 2    64.5%

From this point you can take any game and just check out a few facts to see if it is a suitable match. You can get all the information you need from http://www.soccerstats.com. You don’t want a match which is going to end up 0-0, so check out how many times each team has failed to score. On the other hand you don’t want a match that will end up 6-6, so check how many times their games have gone over 2.5 goals.

All this can be done very quickly on the above website, which is a great resource by the way. Once you are happy that a goal will be scored and that there won’t be a goal rush, then you can place your bets. Remember though, you are only backing the 5 top scores for the particular division in which your selected game is being played.

If you had £100 to place on the 5 bets, then your return would be around £180, a profit of £80. Bearing in mind, that from the stats you are going to win 2/3 using this method and you are going to return 80% ROI for your winning bets, over three bets you win two and lose one, you still make 20% ROI which is excellent.

Of course as you become more accomplished at picking the right matches, then your strike rate will go up to 80% and your ROI up to 30%. You do, of course, have to split the £100 stake in the right proportions to the odds you are betting at so that you gain an equal profit no matter which one comes up. I can tell you that the Betting on Soccer Strategy software is absolutely ideal for this.

You can see a review on BOSS here.