Bet Angel - Betfair sports trading and betting blog » Champions league

What’s Messi worth to Barcelona?

Peter Webb — Thu, 02 May 2013 14:28:24 +0000

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

Peter Webb — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:37:44 +0000

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?

Peter Webb — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:00:48 +0000

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

Peter Webb — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 17:41:46 +0000

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

Peter Webb — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:32:19 +0000

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

Peter Webb — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:55:20 +0000

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

Peter Webb — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:08:07 +0000

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

Peter Webb — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 11:42:49 +0000

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?

Peter Webb — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:16:35 +0000

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

Peter Webb — Sun, 20 May 2012 11:24:39 +0000

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 …