New Year, New Beginnings…

Happy New Year to all the readers out there. Here’s hoping for another profitable year. With plenty of football action to look forward to, could this finally be the year in which England bring back that damn World Cup, it is long overdue!

The New Year is generally a time for reflection on the first half of the season and re-assessment of any betting strategies that may need tweaking. Football clubs also do their re-assessing at this time of the year.

The transfer window is open and teams will look to strengthen, if finances allow. For clubs in the lower reaches, the recent postponements are causing havoc, as revenue has stalled and repurcussions could follow further down the line, with points deductions as they go into administration.

As a way of looking back, let me just remind you of the Homes, Draws and Aways, win percentages of the top 4 English Leagues over the last 10 seasons.

Homes 45%,   Draws 27%,   Aways 28%

If we now have a look at how each of the top 4 divisions are doing so far this season, we may get an idea of how things might progress for the rest of the season.

Premiership    H 51%,  D 24%,  A 25%

Championship   H 41%,  D 32%,  A  27%

League 1    H 47%,  D 27%,  A 26%

League 2   H 43%,  D 27%,  A 30%

Over the short term statistics can be pulled out of kilter but over the longer term they are generally brought back into line with the norm. Bearing this in mind, you will see from the above stats that Leagues 1 and 2 have performed pretty much in line with what has happened over the last 10 years. In fact if you added the results from Leagues 1 and 2 together, they would exactly reflect the past 10 years. Even so, you will see that the Homes and Aways in both these divisions are slightly out of line.

The Homes in League 1 show 47% (2% above the norm), whilst the Aways show 26% (2% below the norm). So looking for a general trend in League 1 for the rest of the season, you could reasonably expect home wins to be slightly down and away wins to be slightly up, on the first half of the season.

In League 2, it is the exact opposite. Homes are at 43% (2% below the norm), whilst Aways are 30% (2% above the norm). So you would expect the outlook for League 2 to be, home wins increasing and away wins decreasing. These are things to take into account when framing your bets in Leagues 1 and 2 for the remainder of the season.

The Premiership and Championship however, have not performed anywhere near the norm. In the Premeirship the home wins are a full 6 percentage points above the norm but interestingly during the last month, they have actually reduced because at one stage they were 9% up.

I think we can expect the Premiership home wins to continue to fall, possibly up to another 4% by the end of the season, so you will have to factor this into your calculations for betting purposes. Both the draws and aways are 3% down on the norm in the Premiership. Whilst the draws have been increasing of late, the aways have been very stubborn and have in fact decreased in the last month.

I tend to think that both the draws and aways will increase by 2% each, between now and the end of the Premiership season.

The main problem in the Championship is the disparity between home wins and draws. Home wins are 4% down, while draws are 5% up. For the last month and a half there has been little movement in these and they are both proving very stubborn. Draws are the most problematic result to forecast and by their very nature are inconsistent and difficult to predict.

Only once in the last 10 years have draws been at this level and that was in League 2 in the 2005-06 season and co-incidentally in that season the home wins were 5% down, very similar to the Championship now. In March and April we tend to see more goals scored and thus, less draws as teams grapple with promotion and relegation issues. I am hoping this helps resolve the discrepancies in the Championship but in the short term there has to be a re-alignment in the stats and so over the next couple of months I fully expect draws to decrease and home wins to increase in the Championship.