I’ve recently been thumbing my way through a brilliant book called ‘Why England Lose & Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained’, which has inspired me to think differently about my betting on the beautiful game.
Now you would think a book entitled ‘Why England Lose’ might just contains 2 words… “Emile and Heskey”… but actually it tackles many of our (often wholly baseless) theories on football. Most England fans for example think that we underperform on the national stage, but as the book explains…as a nation we actually if anything do better than the stats say we should!
Beyond just England though, the book reveals some great stats for betting, such as the fact that home advantage globally is worth a head-start of roughly 2/3rds a goal per game. It’s not going to be bed time reading for the likes of Robbie Savage, but it is a great read if you like to think beyond footballing clichés.
Thankfully though you don’t need a master’s degree in Economics like Arsene Wenger to make use of stats in football (or even know how to sign a half-decent goalkeeper). Here are some ready to use resources and tips on how to apply them to your betting.
The Fink Tank Ratings
The Fink Tank ratings provided by the boffins at Dectech, bring together a number of factors to assess the percentage probability of a particular team winning, drawing or losing. We’ve been keeping track of the performance of these ratings here: https://smartbettingclub.com/blog/category/fink-tank/
Our test is simple, if the predicted chance of success is better than that implied by the bookies, you take the bet. So far the approach is working very well with a return of 31.55 points for the season with an ROI (Profit on Turnover) of 13%.
Kick off Percentage Stats
I was also put onto another great resource to help you with this in the form of http://www.kickoff.co.uk/, which lists the percentage chances in each Premier League game using easy on the eye pie charts.
They’ve also got a neat little tool which converts the percentage predictions into odds for you and vice versa. For example a 10%chance equates to 9/1 and this can be really useful for working out your bets.
Soccer Stats Website
There are many different stats websites out there but one my favourites is at http://www.soccerstats.com, which lists plenty of useful and easy to read information on all the top football leagues.
You can get all the current and historical seasonal performance for each team, including stats on under/over goals, clean sheets, scoring times and much more besides.
So…are you a Statto, Team Reader, or a bit of both?
Putting it simply, there are perhaps three main ways to make money making your own football bets:
- Pure stats – Using numbers, algorithms and nothing else.
- Team knowledge – Gut feel, team news, team formations, team play etc.
- Combining stats with team knowledge – Use a bit of both.
My own football bets in the English Premier League for example use a bit of both, combining my reading of team’s psychology with stats to generate my bets. I also find it extremely useful to read books like Why England Lose to give me more factual information, rather than be impacted by short-term bias we often see in mainstream media.
On the other hand, if you are like my colleague Dan and have no interest in the game itself (I have seen him play football and it reminds me of Ron Atkinson’s quote about Carlton Palmer – he can trap it further than he can kick it!), then focusing on the numbers can be a useful approach.
Using a pattern called the home underdogs, in conjunction with the Fink Tank ratings, Dan has been using a mix of Asian Handicap strategies to cover the draw where appropriate as a way to improve on straight home or away betting.
For example, last week the Fink Tank ratings and the home underdog pattern had West Brom as a value pick against Arsenal. Rather than risk it all on the unlikely home win, he went for a West Brom/ Draw double chance with odds of 2.15. This meant that a profit was made even if the game ended in a draw. It’s early days with this testing, but it looks like the approach has potential.
Stats – Putting it all together.
Whatever way you look at it, there are many ways to use (or not use) football stats. It all depends which angle you wish to take and we have plenty more help and resources for you to use for your own football betting as a member of the Smart Betting Club such as…
- Our Offshore & Asian Bookmaker Guide – get the best odds by betting away from the UK high street
- Asian Handicap & Cover Draw Betting in Football – Learn about how to use the popular Asian Handicap style of betting
- Ante-post Football Betting Guide – How to make money betting in the ante-post markets
- The Best Football Stats & Prediction Sites – Lists all the top commercial and free betting stats resources you need to know about.
Even Better Still – Let A Tipster Do The Work For You!
It’s worth mentioning as well that if all the talk about generating your own bets leaves you cold, we also have a whole host of recommended football tipsters that we monitor at the Smart Betting Club.
Between the top 7 tipsters this season they have made over 186 pts profit and you can track my latest blog post on this from a few weeks back here
Get access to all the details on who these top 7 tipsters are, plus a whole host more football betting wise by joining us at the Smart Betting Club today.