The festive football calendar is a tough slog for British teams with the packed fixture list offering a season within a season. It can make or break a campaign for the best and worst teams in the league.
This period can also bring a bumper crop of betting profits for those in the know. Indeed, many pro punters can make their season’s profits during this busy period as the result of some closely guarded insider knowledge.
To help unearth the secrets of the festive season, football expert and SBC contributor Greg Gordon has been picking the brains of the football analysts from Form Lab Black to reveal some of the best festive betting trends.
Profit From Festive Betting Strategies.
It took some arm twisting though, with the analytical boffins believing the information was too good to reveal. Thankfully it is the time of year for sharing gifts, so Greg has managed to persuade Form Lab to share their five key festive betting strategies, all of which are included in the December edition of Smart Betting Club.
Today I want to share with you one such strategy in brief, which we will be applying this festive period.
Watch For Home Teams In League 2
Our stats research revealed that in general the percentage of Home wins is pretty standard during the festive period in England and Scotland.
However in League Two there are more Home Wins in the festive period than generally occur – A trend seen in over a decade of results.
But why is this? Could this just be a crazy anomaly or is there logic into why this is such a stand-out stat for League 2 backers?
Greg certainly thinks there is a good reason for using it to inform our bets as the composition of League Two does allow us to hazard a few educated guesses such as…
1) Weakened Travellers. In League Two it is safe to say that any home advantage there is becomes magnified at this time of year with the quantity of games coupled with the hectic nature of the festive season. The poorer teams travelling longer distances will especially suffer. With lots of games to play in a short space of time, a long journey up a snowbound M6 is the last thing a smaller team want to experience.
2) Bigger Home Crowds. In the festive period the fixture compilers traditionally look to schedule money-spinning games, local derbies and ties that keep fan’s travelling down to a minimum. This leads to bigger than average crowds and a uniquely festive atmosphere. This all provides a sense of expectation that is transmitted from the terraces that is absent say in November or the dark days of January. Motivated, well organised teams and players probably do especially well in the festive season as a result.
Plus when you factor in the fact that League 2 is biased towards those teams with higher budgets and deeper squads (as can be noticed from a quick glance as to who is at the top), by narrowing our focus to the top six at home, this strategy performs even better.
All of which combined makes sense to us and so we will be looking to apply this following trend during the festive period:
Look to back top six home sides in League Two when they face bottom half sides – especially where the visitors are long distance travellers (100 miles+) or notably under-strength.
From the fixture list that has thrown up a number of examples to focus on such as:
- Shrewsbury to beat Macclesfield on the 17th December
- Burton to beat Hereford on the 2nd January
Although before we bet on each of them, we do recommend you check out the team news, the logic behind it all is sound and even if at a short price, they make great selections for accumulators!
Just One of Many Festive Strategies To Apply
If you enjoyed the above League 2 betting strategy, then you will definitely enjoy our festive betting report from Greg Gordon, which explores that and four other profitable angles for you to bet on. Our shortlist of 57 qualifying bets spans the full spectrum of prices – from banker homes to big priced outsiders -to get stuck right into along with your turkey and trimmings.
We have explained them all in full and also highlighted the likely bets that you will want to take in order to profit from them – all of which will be available in our forthcoming December Smart Betting Club magazine.
Other strategies included discuss:
- The Premier League fixtures to bet on high goals.
- The SPL away games to bet on.
- The games featuring relegation candidates where you should expect high goals
- The mid-table games where you can also expect high goals
Get all this and more in our next Smart Betting Club magazine, which is expected to be released early next week.
