Posts Tagged premiership
It’s all kicking off!
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 13th, 2011
Yes the premier league is back. Twenty teams, OK maybe four, well maybe three battle it out for the greatest honour in football…. Who will sack their manager first!
As I have mentioned in previous posts the market tends to inefficient at the start of the season. I looked back over the two months at the start of last season to see what happened last year.
The first thing to note is that the market got the number of goals scored pretty much spot on. On average there were 2.72 goals scored per match over this period, this was against a forecast of 2.72 goals. So little value was created there. Home wins were forecast at 48% and came in at 47%, so not much there after commission (especially 60%). However, the predominant characteristic at the start of last season surround away teams.
Away wins were forecast by the market to arrive 26.6% of the time in the first two months but only occurred 20.7% of the time. Draws were forecast 25.5% of the time but occured a whopping 32.3% of the time. So if you were looking for value last season, that was were to find it. To qualify that and to see if it will repeat this season, you also need to answer the ‘why’ question.
New Videos
Don’t forget to fire up Soccer Mystic (see video) to have a look at matches you are likely to trade. While it can’t be 100% accurate it will give you plenty of ideas on where odds are likely to be and should fire up your imagination for some strategies.
You may not have considered a couple of unique ways in which you can use Bet Angel to trade, analyse or bet on football matches. So watch the following videos to see: -
How to connect multiple markets to one workbook on your spreadsheet
How to connect multiple football matches to one spreadsheet for trading simultaneously
Use the subscribe button on the channel home page to automatically get updated when new videos are uploaded.
Any two from five
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 22nd, 2011
Calculating combinations was the first place I started when I went on this long journey from a very young age. The intention back then was to win the football pools and combinations were an important part of spreading risk around my selections. Today, any two from five teams could be relegated and that means that they are ten different ways for this to happen, see the following ‘any two from five’ list. You would list the teams in ascending order and allocate them a number and voila, you have all the possible combinations.
1 2, 1 3, 1 4, 1 5, 2 3, 2 4, 2 5, 3 4, 3 5, 4 5
OK, what can you do to make some money from it? At 4pm today I will have Bet Angel fired up and I will ‘auto-bind’ the matches using Guardian and the multiple spreadsheet capability. This means I will have a live view of the markets estimate of each result as it happens. Joined up to the combinations I will have an great view on how unfolding results are affecting the relegation markets and any opportunities that occur between markets. It takes a bit of effort to patch them together but it provides great insight. You can also do the same on ‘to qualify’ markets in cup competitions. Give it a try.
Pool lined with gold
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on January 25th, 2011
What a season Blackpool are having and the tactic when the tangerines are playing is really simple. If they are at large odds at home, back them.
This may sound obvious but if you want to understand the full subtly of this tactic then fire up Soccer Mystic point it to any match where a team is large odds at home and look at what happens to the projected odds in the first half.
You wouldn’t have needed to do this much this season to have netted a heathly profit with not a great deal of downside. If it’s 0-0 at half time you can trade out and if you are clever you, have a look at some of the other stats and you can quickly work out how to hedge the position.
I would have backed Blackpool for relegation at many points this season, but each year one of the promoted clubs benefit from the ‘shock of the new’. This year appears to be Blackpool’s turn. Typically this fades in season two in the top flight so it would be surprise to see it happen. As it is, tonight Blackpool have a real chance to destroy Man Utd’s dream of an unbeaten season. Never would have bet on that either!
Arsenal the business
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on December 11th, 2010
If you look at the top of the premiership there is a lot of ‘buying points’ going on. Chelsea and Man City have spent a fortune buying up talent to keep hold of a top four place. Man Utd have also spent a lot, but not as prolifically as the former teams. One likely reason for this is that Man Utd are run as a business, albeit a heavily indebted one. So they can’t afford to run the business in an insolvent manner. Much of this relies on success though, so they HAVE to do well or they will suffer.
Outside of those three we have Arsenal. While they may be seen as underpeformers, realtively speaking they are not. But the thing I like about Arsenal is the way they run their business. This article gives you a peak inside this: -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11403202
Because of this I would tip Arsenal to be there or thereabouts for a few years. You never know when a new Man City or Chelsea could come along, but I feel Arsenal are in the unique position of having a decent vision of how the club should be run off the field and a consistent pattern of performance on the field. You can’t fund immense losses forever, so you feel those clubs burdened with those issues will eventually have to revert to a more sensible model. That should mean they head for lower performance in general.
The finances in football have distorted the landscape significantly, I think this has lead to football losing it’s soul somewhat. I’d be in favour of a more level playing field, but I realise that’s unrealistic now. But sooner or later football will have to pull itself together. In the meantime follow teams at either end other financial scale for season long value opportunties.
Arsenal vs West Ham
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 30th, 2010
Compiled some premier league ratings today but didn’t get time to put them up this morning.
Anyhow, top of expected list of goals was Arsenal vs West Ham at nearly 3.5 goals. Given that this match is now at 0-0 at half time, but there has been plenty of goal mouth action. I think there is a lot of value here in terms of backing an Arsenal win or laying a low goal tally. Counter arguments are that is a local derby and West Ham will have a good incentive to nick a point with a backs to the wall approach, but you feel Arsenal should win this. Even moreso given how the first half has gone.
I’m going to give it a go. I may not get it right this time, but with the same set up in the future I think I will get it more right than wrong.
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.
Two horse race
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 2nd, 2010
So the premiership has narrowed to a two horse race to the line. Chelsea meet Liverpool and Wigan, while Man Utd mean Sunderland and Stoke. On the face of it Chelsea’s 1 point advantage looks tight but when I ran through all the possible combinations and, on average, the one point advantage should be enough to win it. Of course it really hinges on the result at Liverpool, so that really is the championship decider. That match is going to make compelling viewing.
I was thinking of posting up the stats, but its a big spreadsheet with lots of varitions and averaging etc. So I don’t think it’s easy enough to explain. But, there are eighteen paths to follow by the look of it but only four of those can result in Man Utd winning the premiership. For exanple Chelsea not to win on Sunday and Man Utd to win comes in at a 33% chance but for neither to win the next match is only a 4% chance. Basically, whichever way you cut it, Chelsea should do it, on average. You can’t help but thinking though, that at 1.58 to win the championship and with an away trip to Liverpool, it just doesn’t seem value does it?
1.58 says the title is mine Fergie, grazie
Information in a price
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 6th, 2009
I love the way that markets operate. For most of the pre-season I have been following the various fortunes of the high profile premier league clubs. There have been some clear indicators of what is happening and how to discount that into price. Man City buying up everything that Real Madrid can’t, Man U selling off some prize assets, Arsenal doing nothing. All this activity has been slowly reflected into the prices. Have a browse of the premiership winner and relegation markets if you want to see this.
If you read back on my post here, it’s obvious how the transfers would be discounted into the market. Anybody following that would have netted a very low risk profit even before the season started.
The big movers are Man City who have crashed in from 50′s to 15′s and Portsmouth who have lost a lot of players and indicated things are not about to get any better, thier chance of relegation has tripled. Man Utd have drifted given the loss of Ronaldo and the lack of spending. It’s best to close out any trades now and attention can now focus elsewhere, though I am still watching news on Portsmouth like a hawk.
