Posts Tagged europa league
Throwing it all away
Posted by Peter Webb in Football / Soccer on December 15th, 2011
You have to feel sorry for Fulham. All they needed to do was match the result of Wisla Krakow, preferably win, to qualify. In the end it was the very last touch of the match that sent them out.
Two key mistakes cost them the match. The First OB goal was scored from a free kick and the taker of the kick very cleverly moved the ball an extra foot or two to the right of the wall. The Fulham team missed this and the player was able to curl the ball around the wall and beyond the reach of Fulham’s inexperienced goalkeeper. Very clever play by OB.
The next was definitely a mistake by Fulham. Instead of closing out the match in the dying moments they were still trying to score. More experienced professionals would have just run the clock down. OB got possession from a failed attempt on goal, broke up the pitch, sent in a good cross and with the last touch of the match, the ball was headed in the back of the net and Fulham were out of Europe. That worked out really well for me but I was furious at Fulham for such sloppy play. I can only imagine how the Fulham fans felt.
If anything last night was a good example of why you should always green up if you are given the chance! I’m looking forward to this evenings matches!
Europa success for Liverpool?
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on March 10th, 2011
I must admit to being sceptical when ‘King Kenny’ was appointed as Liverpool manager. I felt that after many years out it would be difficult to adjust to the modern game. However, Dalgleish has had a mercurial affect on Liverpool’s confidence and at the top level of a sport that is critical. People perform with similar skill at the highest levels and confidence is a BIG factor.
Last Sunday’s defeat of Man Utd will have given them a real boost and that doesn’t seem to be priced into this evenings match against Braga or the overall winner of the Europe league. I feel Liverpool are back in that state of mind where you can’t write them off, or discount anything. It Kuyt a new rush type character? On flip side I don’t know Braga well enough to give you confidence that I can balance out Liverpool’s new found optimism against Braga’s metrics. It’s also important to note that it looks like Gerrard is out this evening.
I’ll watch the match though to have another look if Liverpool are really contenders for the trophy. The match is priced for a 1-1 draw with a slight advantage to Liverpool.
This evenings European football
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 15th, 2011
The two key champions league matches don’t look exciting prospects from my viewpoint. Two home wins on the card and two away teams that will be trying to avoid defeat. The first leg in these cases don’t throw up many clear opportunities usually. It’s the second leg that is often more interesting given what happens in the first.
The match that has caught my eye today is the Aris vs Man City match. Man City are quite short but should win away from home and their pedigree is unproven as yet. That’s the one that looks most interesting at first glance.
Busy, busy, busy..
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 19th, 2010
With the end of the turf evening racing you would think things would have quietened up a bit. But no, first the US Open Tennis and then this week loads and loads of football. I’m expecting this month to be a little quieter than late, but I did surprise myself last week with my second biggest one day total of the year.
Both the Champions league and Europa league are quite nice markets to get involved in. Plenty of different types of matches, goals and loads of matches in quick succession. In the case of the Europa league, the matches are generally split into two evening sessions. That gives you plenty of matches to play in and if the first batch don’t work out too well, another will be along in a minute.
I’m using this busy period to run a number of tests and sample strategies. The thing you notice is how quickly things even out when there are so many matches, so now is a good time to be active. You can employ a number of different strategies on different markets at the same time and where one will fail, another will make up the difference. Its a good ground for experimentation.
If you are active across many markets at once, then it’s worth you checking out how to use Guardian, our multi market feature. This contains specific tools for football markets, here are a couple of videos demonstrating its use: -
Trading multiple markets at the same time – Part one and Part two
Europa league final
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 12th, 2010
Who would put it past Fulham to end the season in glory tonight? Shakhtar Donetsk, Juventus and Hamburg have all been beaten by Fulham en route to the final, with just Atletico Madrid now standing in their way.
The match itself is priced for a low scoring affair with a slight edge to Athletico. The market is pricing in a paltry 2.40 goals, which means the draw should be a likely result for 90mins. I predict if you played this match 100 times the average time of the first goal would be around 34 minutes. There is around an 8% chance of a goal between 0-10 minutes.
We found a total of 134 matches on our database which had very similar characteristics to this match. Over these matches an average of 2.33 goals where scored with a 0.50 advantage to the shorter priced team (Ahletico in this case). 45% ended as home wins, 22% away wins and 32% draws. 61% of the time these matches produced under 2.50 goals, pricing the unders market around 1.64.
Trading the draw and scenarios based on a lack of goals / early goals seems a sensible option tonight.
The battle for fourth place
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 6th, 2010
While most eyes were firmly focused on Man City vs Spurs last night, a remarkable battle was taking place 200 miles further north for the same place in the Scottish Premiership. Unlike the English battle, which ensured ‘arry team has broken into the previously exclusive top four, the battle in Scotland was for Europa cup place and infinity more exciting and in fact totally remarkable.
UK users can watch the highlights here: -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_prem/8658858.stm
The match ended 6-6 and that included a saved penalty! The last goal in the match was worthy of squaring such an amazing game. As soon as the result flashed in I was scrambling through my data to find out if there had ever been a 6-6 draw in the top divisions before. When I was young I was lucky enough to watch a 5-5 draw but 6-6 seemed a virtually impossible result. Just seeing twelve goals in a match was remote according to the stats. If you are optimistic then it would be around a 1 in 20,000 chance, but on average it would take nearly 70,000 matches before you would see 12 in one match, the chance of 6-6 would be even remoter.
My correct score spreadsheet didn’t show a single one so I had to dig around to find another. From what I can find , there have been two previous 6-6 draws. Leicester and Arsenal drew 6-6 in April 1930 in the top division, and Charlton drew 6-6 with Middlesbrough in October 1960 in the second division. Charlton had three other matches that season with six or more goals. So unless somebody can inform me otherwise in the many tens of thousands of intervening matches there have been no 6-6 draws. The mean return time appears to be 30-50 years for the entirety of top flight football.
I feel sorry for the Motherwell fans who left at 6-2 down, they just missed a piece of football history.
Well done Fulham
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 29th, 2010
Dead and buried a few seasons ago and now in the Europa league final, an excellent campaign and a deserved final place. They really turned over the odds consistantly and provided a lot of entertainment and profit along the way. Well done!
Europa League
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on March 18th, 2010
More fun planned this evening with an infinite range of permutations available on each match. But the two English matches do look the most interesting.
Fulham are 3-1 down, but a home goal would create a massive difference to that score line and you get the feeling anything is possible with Fulham. I wouldn’t bet against Fulham pulling it off this evening. The match is priced for 2.6 goals with a slight advantage to the home team. I think that’s too low given the scenarios available.
A team I would be tempted to bet against is Liverpool. OK they thumped Portsmouth the other day, but their confidence is fragile and I don’t know many teams that wouldn’t fancy having a go at them at the moment. A slip up in defence tonight could shred their nerves to the limit or an edgy start and the crowd will get no doubt pass their feelings to the players. Defeat for Benitez could spell the beginning of the end. Liverpool are at quite a short price to defeat Lille and are priced for 2.8 goals with a 1.50 goal advantage. While they should win, I am sure Lille will look to catch them on the break and change the entire complexion of the tie. I don’t think it will take much to do that so I’ll be looking for an upset.
If you are new to football trading, try trading before off. This will give you some risk free cash to splurge in play!
Europa league matches
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on February 27th, 2010
Had some fun last Thursday messing around on the Europa league matches. I like the Europa league as they break down the matches into two blocks. One going off at 18:00 UK time and the remainder at 20:05. This gives you two cracks at the whip at trading them. This week was also the second leg of a knockout competition, which I prefer. I also tried an experimental strategy to small stakes on Thursday and that is what this post is about.
Basically I was trying a variation on the strategy I detailed here. Football is one of few sports available where you have multiple ways to hedge risk. All football markets are very tightly integrated and that allows you to offset risk across a variety of markets if you wish. This shifts your focus, less to managing downside and more to looking for upside opportunities. Even if you place positions at random, as long as you think about your hedged bet it’s difficult to lose substantially. Use Soccer Mystic to work out your counter positions in secondary markets.
Because football matches all go off at the same time you can use the guardian tool on Bet Angel to skip between markets in a flash. It also allows you to place orders quickly with automated trading functions which are managed in the background as you skip around the different markets. This allows you to easily trade many markets at once without fear of losing control of things.
For my experiment I used £10 stakes with a maximum risk of £30. I took positions before the off and hedged positions when a goal was scored or at half time. It was a fairly painless strategy but yielded some useful information and a profit to! It’s always useful to play around with these types of hedging strategy, even if you don’t make much you learn a lot and the commission generated across multiple markets is a useful way to offset the premium charge.
