Posts Tagged aston villa
Will Bent leave it late again?
Gerard Houllier will be praying that capturing Darren Bent will help Aston Villa turn a corner on what has been an incredibly disappointing season to date.
Bent left Wearside with an impressive scoring record after bagging 32 league goals in his 58 appearances – which is why Steve Bruce was so upset to see his main striker depart. Even though many football fans will recall Bent’s time at White Hart Lane as a failure, he still managed to score 25 goals in 70 matches across all competitions. Harry Redknapp once remarked he missed chance so easy that his missus could have tucked it away.
Before transferring to Spurs, Bent was part of the Charlton side that punched above their weight in the Premier League under Alan Curbishley. During his time with the Addicks he scored 31 times in 68 league games.
Manchester City are this weekend’s opponent, who have once again been busy in the January transfer window. Roberto Mancini was able to acquire the services of Wolfsburg’s Edin Dzeko. The Bosnian impressed on his home debut with an assist against Wolves and it’ll be a good battle between the two high-profile signings.
The movement of the over / under goals markets will therefore be fascinating – at time of writing it’s evens for over 2.5 goals on Betfair – and it might be worth initially laying off before backing a little later in the match. Interestingly, Bent scored a 90th minute winner when Sunderland met Man City at the Stadium of Light in August. Bent has made a habit of scoring late goals this campaign, with three of his eight league strikes arriving in the final minute. He has also scored on debut for two of his four clubs. Traders might do well to consider laying the draw if it remains close late on or even backing Villa as the game approaches the final whistle.
The ball went that way
Lessons from Liverpool
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on December 7th, 2010
Tonight we are in the final group stages of the champions league. These matches can throw up some odd results as some have strong incentives to win and others much less so.
Last night the market was pretty stable in the Liverpool vs Aston Villa match. Then the teamsheet came out and there was no Gerrard or Torres on it! You can see the effect this had on the price. It is always worth remembering that while football matches are generally very stable before the off, there are times when that is definately not the case. At least we can often get an understanding of why.
In the end the market got this wrong and Liverpool were comfortable winners. In hindsight some good value was created by this move.
First trade of the premiership season
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 10th, 2010
It’s not often that the first decent trade of the season occurs before the season has started, but have a look at the odds on the Aston Villa’s first match of the season against West Ham.
With a lack of funds available for transfers it was quite likely O’Neill may get upset, though I am not sure many anticipated his departure. If you read the August edition of Gambling magazine you will see I hinted at clubs where this could happen. To quote from the article “Several teams like Aston Villa, Bolton, Fulham and Sunderland face high
wage bills in terms of their overall level of indebtedness and that could put pressure on these teams.”
The effect of the depature on the team is obviously going to be negative and the market is in the process of discounting that now into the price. It’s probably gone far enough now.
Classic set up
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on March 7th, 2010
A wonderful set up occurred in the FA Cup clash between Reading and Aston Villa this afternoon. Against the odds, Reading took a 2-0 lead againsts premiership outfit Villa. The teams went off for half time in distinctly different moods. A break in play is the perfect opportunity for teams to turn things around and that Villa did. Rejuvenated from their half time talk it wasn’t look before Villa were suddenly 3-2 in the lead. You could have backed them in the teens only to green up at 1.29 after a few minutes. Doesn’t happen that often, usually it’s just a case of looking for the one goal, but three in ten minutes left any half time Villa backers with a stunning 10 fold return on their stake.
The interest in this set up was multiple. Non favourite leading, half time break, incentive to score, plenty of time left. Normally you are only looking for a goal, but now and again things just work much better than expected!
Over / Under 10.5 goals
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 21st, 2010
You don’t see that market very often, but you did last night. What a remarkable match, Aston Villa 6 Blackburn 4! At 0-2 down Villa were matched in volume at 10′s, this match was a trading bonanza! The market was just slightly out on this one forecasting just 2.60 goals. Excluding specifics of the match itself, I can only find three 6-4′s in my recent detailed database of 10,189 matches. So its around at least a 3400-1 shot. Great entertainment anyhow. I think Milner should go to South Africa for the world cup next year. Every tournament needs some energetic new blood that the other countries won’t know much about, I think Milner fits the bill.
I had several emails of some spectacular totals from this match, much better than my efforts, I hope you did well also.
