Category: Champions league
What’s Messi worth to Barcelona?
I recently asked a similar question of Gareth Bale and last night made me feel a move for Mr Bale is almost certain this summer when Spurs fail to qualify for the champions league.
But back to last night.
I must admit I was anticipating that Barcelona would ‘go for it’ from the off in an attempt to get an early goal and put pressure on Bayern early on, but it never came. Bad tactics, poor motivation? It seemed something …
My favourite football trading set up
We had a couple of wonderful matches in the champions league last night, I am hoping for some more tonight.
If you want to qualify the comments on this post, simply browse the football related posts I’ve made over the years on here and you will see why last night was a really nice set up for a possible bumper result.
Both matches last night were good trading fodder as they had a really strong incentive to score in both …
Real problems for Man Utd?
My favourite champions league memory comes from a Man Utd vs Juventus match back in 1999, before the dawn of betting exchanges.
A friend phoned me and told me he had a spare ticket for the match and “Did I want to go?”. I immediately dropped everything and headed up to Manchester. I needed a hotel, so picked a reasonable one on a late booking and headed straight there. Remarkably I’d managed to pick the hotel where the Juventus were …
A look under Betfair’s football markets
As you may know I’m bit of a stats man, but it’s a useful discipline. Monitoring your own activity can give you a useful insight into the markets and your activity on them. I spend at least a couple of hours a day either analysing what I did yesterday, or some aspect of the market or a strategy.
The champions league matches give me a chance really get under the skin of the market. This is because the liquidity is higher than …
Champions league knock out stages
We are at the stage of the champions league that I enjoy the most. There is nothing like ‘incentive to score’ to throw up some nice trading opportunities. Hopefully we will get a few over the next couple of weeks.
With the away goal rule you have one team desperate not to concede and another desperate to score and according to my stats this throws up the largest amount of variability on football matches. Basically any cup competition is more …
Trading the last set of group matches
A couple of nice reminders in the last two days on curious scenarios that can occur in the dead rubber matches.
First we had Arsenal last night. Already through to the next stage of the champions league and not much to play for in the last match. As consequence people started discounting the fact that Arsenal would not win and it pulled in the price of Olympiakos quite dramatically before the off. When the team news came out and the …
Champions league
An interesting set up for tonights Champions league.
The market thinks there will be around three goals a game on average this evening and total of 21. I’m not so sure?
An average of three goals is often forecast when there is a clear winner, but that really doesn’ t look the case tonight. The least competitive matches are Spartak Moscow vs Barcelona, FC Nordsj vs Shakhtar and Benfica vs Celtic. But of course, as Celtic have proven, that odds doesn’t …
By the skin of their teeth
Last night I forecasted around 24 goals and we ended up with 22. I should have used a decimal place as my spreadsheet actually said 23.5, but forecasting half a goal often doesn’t make sense to some readers! Tonight I am aiming for 22.75 and we have a generally more competitive set up for the matches tonight. Dortmund caught my eye on the last round and I’ll be looking closely at their match with Real Madrid this evening. I’m not convinced …
A evening that’s overs before its started?
Not quite as uncompetitive as the recent International football but still some, theoretically, one sided matches this evening.
I’ve just ploughed through my spreadsheets and they seem to be forecasting around 24 goals this evening. On eight matches that averages out to just under three a game, hence the headline. Most goals are expected in the Barcelona, no surprise there, and least in the BATE v Valencia match, but most are towards the higher end of the scale. Curiously this …
Di Matteo probably shouldn’t get the job
Congratulations to Chelsea on a remarkable champions league campaign. The campaign showed up the wonderful variability that is a football. Di Matteo and Chelsea must be on top of the world this morning, but if Chelsea are to build on this they need to start thinking about a new path for the future.
I see the win last night as the culmination of a very long campaign for Chelsea, but increased competition in the premiership means it’s time to build …
Champions league final
Is Chelsea’s name written on the cup?
Before we start, don’t forget to have a play with Soccer Mystic the unique profiling tool contained within Bet Angel.
It never pays to be emotional about anything that you are trying to make money on, and you could be excused for looking for a fairy tale tonight. But the reality is that Chelsea have a tough ask this evening. On the flip side, as we have seen recently, anything can happen …
Gary Neville’s orgasm
There you go, I told you the draw was value!
In case you’re not sure what the title is all about listen in here: -
But seriously I think Gary Neville can be forgiven for making hilarious noises, as I was too! There were many points in the match last night where it was very easy to shout at the television for one reason or another. I had several complaints from the household about the noise I was making, especially …
Barcelona vs Chelsea – The stats
OK, Barca are 1.28 to beat Chelsea. Barca are 1.49 to qualify.
Here is something for you to experiment with. Try looking at related markets using Bet Angel and linking it to a spreadsheet. By doing this you can easily set up a spreadsheet to work out all the derivatives this evening. For example, Chelsea would qualify it was 0-0 or say certain combinations of the correct score market came in, say they scored an away goal. Add up all …
Champions league quarter finals
Looking forward to tonights match between Chelsea and Benfica. It has a nice feel to it. I had a good result on the Barca match last night, so hoping for a good evening.
Benfica must score to have any hope of going through, Chelsea are much improved since the sacking of AVB and the players must be feeling the pull of a final; but they still lack some consistency.
Comments on the forum made me look again at this match. Basically …
Trading football at random
If you trade something at random you will break even less commission? Is this statement true or false? If a football team is priced at 2.00 it has a 50% chance of winning a match, therefore you can’t exceed that, can you?
One curious thing you find if you start dabbling around at random in the markets, is the fact there are many situations in many markets when it’s possible to make money even if you don’t do anything clever. …
Which match?
I’m looking at three different matches this evening.
First you have Barcelona vs Leverkusen, Barca 1.17 to win and 3-1 up from the away leg, a formality. But there is little incentive for Barcelona to go for and nothing for Leverkusen to lose so an interesting set up. Barca should win easily, but the lack of incentive gives an opportunity for a slip up.
Spurs vs Stevenage is a different kettle of fish (love that phrase). Spurs have a great …
Tonights football opportunties
I like the look of the champions league tonight, but I can’t trade it as I’ll be out watching the football instead. I’ve been doing a lot more of that this year and really enjoyed it. What’s life if you can’t enjoy the fruits of your labour?
The Arsenal vs AC Milan really catches my eye because both teams have little to lose. Arsenal wont gain any credibility by defending and will have to have a go. With Van …
Champions league is back
Yippee! Tonight we have the first leg of the knockout phase of the champions league. I am positively moist with excitement! What a horrible clash though, with valentines day! I fear that valentines day will win tonight but the football will win tomorrow.
I’ve been doing a lot of work on pre-off activity on the football recently, I thought I would take a fresh look at things. It’s surprisingly how you uncover new things when you return with fresh eyes. There have …
No champions league fireworks
Not sure if it’s just me, but I’ve found the group stages of the CL this year a little dull. After my racing hiatus I sat down yesterday evening to see some exciting matches, but not a great deal of opportunity. I guessed Man Utd would be keen to win against Napoli, but didn’t bank on such a quick equaliser! I sense the last few matches in the group stages should ignite some fireworks given the way results have panned …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Champions league qualifiers
An intruiging bunch of matches this evening. Several are priced for a great deal of uncertainty and that can create some good opportunities. I reckon we should be in for another 13/14 goals in the matches this evening. The matches are much more complex this evening, so after my tip last night, I’ll duck a tip this evening!
Arsenal can win in Udinese but it’s not going to be straight forward. I’ll be monitoring the first half and making a …
Champions league qualifiers
I reckon there will be around 14/15 goals this evening. The least number of goals this evening is likely to be in the match between APOEL & Wisla Krakow.…
May the 4th be with you
Hmm, not sure Ferguson is making the right decision to rest players ahead of tonight’s Champions league semi final. OK a two goal lead should be plenty but a goal for Schalke could really put the cat amongst the pigeons. I guess he will bench key players and bring them on if it merits it?
I had a quick look on the DB and hunted for Man Utd matches at home priced between 1.50-1.60. It threw up five recent matches. …
Forgone conclusion?
You can’t help but think, like the rest of the community, that the two champions league semi finals are forgone conclusions. I looked at the weekend markets and curiously all teams lost, so no clues in there. But it was possible to start opposing Man Utd after it dawned to me that they may have half an eye on the semi final.
The market is discounting a win by one goal for Barcelona tonight but much depends on whether Real …
Farcelona
That was the word on the street after the sending off last night. It seems a common trait to dislike success, but you can’t escape the fact that Barcelona have proved on many occasions that they are by far the best team in the tournament and did so again last night. It’s just such a shame they have often degraded their performances with gamesmanship.
It’s also a shame that the first leg was a duplicate of the other semi final, …
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