Countdown to the big kick off starts here

With less than 7 days to the opening round of English League football matches its time to focus on the opening fixtures to see if any matches are statistically a good thing to bet on.

For me, preseason friendlies don't offer much in the way of form, as managers swap players around, use different systems and generally use the games to increase the fitness of the staff. Therefore there is no real form to go on for the first couple of weeks of the season so instead I look to the previous performance of teams and gauge whether a certain pattern will continue.

In the English Championship we have Reading, the losing finalists in the play offs. Reading start off against Millwall at home and will be looking for a fast start to the season following their loss to Swansea at Wembley. The 2 sides have played 5 times at Reading in recent history with Reading winning every time. In the reverse fixture Reading have only lost once, so from 10 games 1 defeat for Reading.

Last season Reading were surprisingly turned over by Scunthorpe at home on the opening day, whereas Millwall got a flyer with a 0-3 win at Bristol City.

Looking at other losing play off finalists we see the following

Year	Home Team	Away Team	Score
2010	Cardiff	Sheffield United(PL)	1-1
2009	Middlesborough	Sheffield United(PL)	0-0
2008	Blackpool	Bristol City(PL)	0-1
2007	Burnley	WBA(PL)	2-1
2006	Leeds(PL)	Norwich	2-1
2005	Watford	Preston(PL)	1-2
2004	Leicester	West Ham United(PL)	0-0
2003	Sheffield United (PL)	Gillingham	0-0
2002	Norwich City (PL)	Grimsby	0-0

The table shows us that only West Brom have lost on the opening day after losing the play off final in the championship. This is a reasonable form guide and suggests that these sides are able to keep the core of the team together from that defeat. We see a lot of draws in this sequence however given Readings fine form against Millwall and no worrying sequence for losing play off finalists I will be including Reading in my list for next Saturday.

Hunting that special value bet - off topic

This morning I was watching the prices for the England Vs India Cricket match starting at Trent Bridge. To my amazement just after the toss I saw that they were offering at 500/1 on the draw! I have already checked the weather forecast and the draw is an unlikely result however this bet was too good to miss! So I have placed 2 bets for £2 at 500/1 on the draw!

This was available on Bluesq - within a couple of minutes the price had changed to 15/8 and then 2/1!

here is a image of my bet

Selections
Selection 1 Draw @ 500/1 To Win - Not Settled
Market Match Winner
Event England v India
2nd Test - England v India
11:00 29/07/2011
Bet Type Single
Unit Stake £2.00
Number of Units x1
Stake £2.00
Time and Date Placed 10:36 29/07/2011

Update: Bluesq have now cancelled my bet! Apparently this is considered to be a "palpable" error in price and the bet will not stand. I have asked some more questions around this out of interest and havent got very far, so I will be emailing them for more information.

I will keep you posted.......

The New Domestic English Football Season 2011/2012 Has Arrived

It seems a long time since the FA Cup final back in May, and even longer was the fateful day Arsenal turned up at Wembley to collect their Carling Cup only to be turned over by Birmingham City, this seemed to be the trigger for the end of the Arsenal fight on all fronts. That game was played in front of 88,851 screaming fans and countless TV viewers and radio listeners. The date was the 27 February 2011 and unbeknown to all that result was going to have an effect on the 2011-2012 Carling Cup competition.

A number of years ago the authorities brought in a rule in England stating that any side qualifying for European competition would get a bye to the third round of the Carling Cup. This was to save a game for those tired footballers that had to fly around Europe in Business Class (stay focused Martin don't get side tracked). As Birmingham won the Cup they get a bye to the third round of the competition, and because they were relegated it means that there is now an odd number of sides in the first round of the cup! This is an interesting scenario as it hasnt come up before in this competition - we had a similar issue when Man United decided to play in the Club World Championship rather than fulfill their domestic obligations and play in the FA Cup.

The solution to this problem was that the 2 lowest ranked sides would have a play off to see who will go into the first round of the Carling Cup proper. The 2 lowest ranked sides from last season playing in this seasons competition are Crawley Town and AFC Wimbledon, the 2 sides promoted from the Conference. It seems a shame that one of these 2 will miss out on playing a more lucrative first round tie however it seems the logical solution.

So tonight, 29 July 2011 the Carling Cup begins when Crawley Town entertain AFC Wimbledon. The winners will go on to play away at Crystal Palace. This seems rather interesting as Wimbledon used to be tenants at the home of Crystal Palace before they upset many people and decamped to Milton Keynes. Are the footballing gods looking down on us and telling us that Wimbledon will get their day at Selhurst Park or will the match go the way of big money spenders Crawley?

Last season these sides both won the home fixtures against each other, so i believe this game will be closer than the bookies seem to want to make out.
Crawley are available at 8/11 , its 5/2 the draw and Wimbledon a huge 10/3.

If nothing else this game may give a us a view to how the teams have got on in the summer recruiting players and how well they will gel in the early weeks of the season.

So here we go! the domestic football season gets underway tonight, probably for the first time its before the Charity Shield (or community shield) that is the season curtain raiser. For me, I may watch the game and look at some in play markets.

To see my bet status click here

Final Season Long Selections

I have now posted my selections for the coming season. The theory behind my selections are documented through the blog, however if you would like clarification on any of the selections let me know.

All of my prices come from Bluesq and Bet365. If you would like to set up an account and get some free bets for the season
click Here for Bluesq
click Here for Bet365

To see my selections click here

Different Betting Options For 2011-2012

Today I have decided to look at a "special" bet being offered by Bet365, this is off the back of our regular contributor tyates86 who provided us with the "bet without Man U and Chelsea"! Here the suggested bet is Man City at 5/4 which does look incredible value.

So what else could we look at to find some value?

We have the "who will score the most goals" market - this is offered by Bet365 click on the link to create an account.

Looking at the previous seasons I'm simply looking at which team scores the most goals, since 2001/02 (with the exception of 2001/02) the teams finishing first or second have always been the highest goals scorers. In 2001/02 the highest scorers were Man U who finished 3rd, albeit only 3 points behind second.

Since then Man U have finished up as top scorers on 4 occasions, Chelsea once (the season the won the league and scored 103 goals - the highest number of goals). So maybe rather than betting on a team to win the league you should consider backing that team to score the most goals as there is a link! Also if your team finished second they could still be leading scorers!

The prices available for the top scorers are

Man City 4/1
Liverpool 13/2
Man U 7/1
Chelsea 9/1
Arsenal 10/1

As you see these prices are much better than betting to win the league! Indeed I find these odds somewhat surprising when you look at the betting for the leading goalscorer. Man U have 2 of the top 3 favorites and Chelsea have the other, these 2 are still the favorites for the league also. So Man U and Chelsea in this market look like fantastic value!

Opening Day fixtures in English League 2

Having identified a possible strategy for the opening day of the football season I have looked at the relegated sides from League 1 last season and assessed their previous form against the teams they are playing on the opening day. To see my comments on how relegated teams get on click here

First up are Swindon who will play Crewe. These sides have met 3 times in the past 10 years, in 2009, 2007 and 2002. Interestingly enough in 2009 and 2007 we saw draws and in 2002 we saw an away win for Crewe.

Of course the teams have changes completely since that time however we do see the draw trend that I am after.

Shrewsbury have not played Plymouth in the time frame I am looking at so I cannot find a pattern for these teams. The same can be said for Wimbledon and Bristol Rovers.

However the final game involving a relegated team is Dagenham and Redbridge. Dagenham will play away at Macclesfield. These sides have met 3 times in recent history and as with Swindon and Crewe we see 2 draws and 1 away win.

Given the number of draws seen involving relegated teams and given the recent history of these sides I am slowly becoming convinced that a Yankees involving these 4 games all drawing could be the way to go.

The start of life in English League 2

When teams get relegated to the 4th tier of English football they find themselves one step away from the dreaded Conference League! The Conference League is "dreaded" because it is now overflowing with professional League teams all intent on getting out of it and back into League 2. So when a team is relegated from League 1 into League 2 I would have thought every effort would be made to get off to a fast start to retain the League status of the club. Teams playing in League 1 the previous season should in theory be stronger than many of the League 2 conterparts however the results of the opening fixtures do nothing to support this theory!

Looking at the past 7 seasons we see that the win % of teams relegated the previous season is not very good! Indeed taking the opening 2 fixtures for all of the teams relegated we see that in 27 of the fixtures we saw a draw. I find this an incredible stat as we saw 14 wins and 15 loses. So almost 50% of the opening 2 games played by relegated teams in League 2 end in a draw!

If we look at the opening day fixtures alone we see 53% of the games ended in a draw - this represents 15 games, we saw 8 wins and 5 loses inthe same selection of games.

In the 2007/08 season all 4 teams drew on the opening day. Since then we have seen a minimum of 2 games drawn on opening day with 3 games being drawn last season. Please note that some of the relegated teams played each other which slightly skews the stats.

Looking at the fixtures for the relegated teams.
Wimbledon V Bristol Rovers
Swindon V Crewe
Shrewsbury V Plymouth
Macclesfield V Dagenham & Redbridge

Its not out of the question that these 4 games could end in draws. I am tempted to do some research on these games to look for other factors and then possibly place some combination bets on draws occuring here in the attempt to pick up some early winnings at the start of the new football season.

I would need 2 results to come in to cover my bet and 3 or more would give me a healthy profit on the opening day.

I will post my research on these 4 specific games once I have completed it!