Football Betting – Your 6 Point Checklist
We all have a fair idea how to bet on football don’t we? Ask any of your mates ahead of the weekend and we’ll all have our own fancies. This article is designed to serve as a very quick reminder about some of the key things you should be considering. Forget any of these and it can have an impact on your betting success.
It won’t ensure a bet wins of course, but it will maximise the chance of you picking a selection that turns out to be “value”. I’ll also share some of my favourite resources for doing this quickly and efficiently.
1. Overall Team Quality
You should always start with your under-lying team quality. There are loads of ways to do this, which may involve keeping ratings, looking at League Tables, seeing how teams performed in the previous season or perhaps looking at Elo Ratings (we’ll explain in a moment!)
Ratings – usually only the most serious punters will maintain their own ratings. There are loads of ways to do this – and for reasons of brevity, we won’t explore these in more detail today.
League Tables – widely available these days for every league in the world. The most important notes of caution I’d sound here are that League Tables lie. A lot. The best team will usually finish at or near the top after a full season, but football is a game won or lost by such tight margins, early season tables definitely tell porkies. I prefer to look at goal difference rather than points in the most part, and also try to assess shot data to establish just how “fair” a table might be.
www.soccerbase.com
www.soccerway.com
Recent History – recent seasons give a larger data set in most case, helping to smooth out the impact of variance you might see in a league table of say, 10 games per team. Of course, beware of sides in transition.
Elo Ratings - when dealing with teams who might be harder to assess, Elo Ratings are really useful. I dip into this more frequently for things like Internationals and European Qualifiers where establishing the relative strengths of different divisions can add another element of difficulty.
www.clubelo.com
www.eloratings.net
2. Team News
It sounds obvious, but so many people ignore this crucial element. How much should the market react when a key player is out? It certainly moves when Messi or Ronaldo are confirmed as absent, but in lower divisions, you’re much more likely to find it slow to factor in. We recently opposed Ayr United when we discovered Lawrence Shankland would be missing for a couple of matches. He was scoring close to 60% of their season goals, yet the market hardly moved with his confirmed absence. They went three games without scoring a goal!
Injuries – I tend to use https://injuriesandsuspensions.com/ for a quick scan through all the divisions ahead of a weekend. I’m looking at the matches on my shortlist, but also any which stand out which might be worth a second look.
Transfers – Keep a good eye through January on this. If you’re League Two side has had their 25-goal marksman prised away, it has to affect the prices. Bear in mind players may also be rested while transfers are negotiated.
Suspensions – I tend to keep a note of all the red cards awarded after each day’s action. This are highly visible on www.xscores.com which makes it a quick process.
3. Motivation
Always factor in how the manager will approach a game. Remember Sam Allardyce being criticised for discarding the Capital One Cup against Wigan in order to prioritise playing at QPR the following week? The outcome was home humiliation to Wigan but three valuable points at Loftus Road!
I try to track managers team changes for competitions such as the Checkatrade Trophy. For this I always focus on Managers rather than Teams. Talking about Allardyce, it matters not where he is working – his approaches will remain consistent regardless of the kit his players are wearing.
4. Recent Form
In Non-League this can be much more important than the longer term records. Players come and go quickly, and squad sizes are small. While a Premier League team can cope with four or five players out, it’s not uncommon to hear stories from non-league of the manager taking his place on the bench as a registered or for the goalkeeping coach to be lining up between the sitcks. Twitter is an excellent source here of course, but pay attention to recent form – its quick and vital.
5. League Trends
Knowing your league trends is important and it’s worth keeping fresh and comparing different leagues for a number of things. Did you know Spain and Portugal have significantly more Red and Yellow cards? Did you know that the first six months of VAR in Serie A saw the number of penalties go through the ceiling? What about that there are significantly more home-wins in the MLS due to the nature of the travelling commitments and teams preparations for these?
We’ll publish a report on this shortly in fact to save you the hassle!
6. Your Price
Finally wherever possible, I would urge you to price up how you see a game going BEFORE looking at the odds. If you sit down to look at the weekend football and already know who you are going to be backing, you are just doing it all wrong. Every considered bet is a factor of all of the above coming together to form a probability. If the bookies price is too long, you take the bet. If its not, you walk away or look at the other team. It’s as simple as that.
Good luck with your betting, we’ll publish some further resources over the coming days to help you find the best sites to aid you along the way.