One of the primary reasons that the vast majority of traders fail is that they are constantly looking to avoid pain.
But what do I mean by ‘avoiding pain’?
You may remember that I have spoken a lot in my previous articles about cutting losses early and letting winning trades run and this is where the ‘pain’ element comes in.
This is the first of many reports that I will be publishing where I will give you a detailed overview of the selections I have traded.
I won’t have time to do it for all of my selections but will pick the odd one or two each week.
Hopefully, it will give you a better insight into how I trade my selections and help develop your own trading skills.
As you will see, I am by no means perfect. I make mistakes. Sometimes I enter my trades a little too early, exit too late (or in some cases too early) and generally screw up from time to time. I am human after all!
Continue reading “5K Challenge Review – Sarpsborg 1 – 2 Molde (Profit +1.495 pts)”
With the Winter football leagues drawing to a close in May, I thought it would be good to give you the lowdown on what I believe to be some of the best leagues for football trading over the summer months.
During the winter months, I primarily focus on a number of leagues which are the English Premier League, Italian Serie A and the German Bundesliga. Another favourite of mine is the German Bundesliga 2.
The reason for this is that these are the leagues that year after year, consistently produce the most goals per game.
For example, in 2020/21 each of those leagues produced the following goal averages.
Serie A – 3.06 (goals per game)
Bundesliga – 3.03
Bundesliga 2 – 2.89
Premier League – 2.69
France’s Ligue 1 wasn’t too bad in 2020/21 with 2.76 goals per game, however, for me, La Liga with only 2.51 goals per game was definitely one to avoid if looking for a lot of goals.
As I write this, these are the stats for the same leagues for 2021/2022 according to the Footystats website.
Bundesliga – 3.07 (goals per game)
Bundesliga 2 – 2.89
Serie A – 2.85
Premier League – 2.78
Ligue 1 – 2.68
La Liga – 2.53
So pretty consistent, although Serie A is down on last year and has some work to do to hit last year’s 3.06. France and Spain have both been on the low side as was the case last season.
It doesn’t mean that I won’t look at other leagues. It’s just that I can usually find a sufficient number of trades from these leagues without going mad and over-trading.
The low-risk strategies that I use including the 5K Challenge and LTD2 are strategies that look for goals so it’s only logical that if I want goals I should trade the leagues with the best goal averages per game.
Ok, so let’s look at the leagues that can be good to trade during the summer period.
First, we will look at the average number of goals for the last season.
Goals Per Game
Norway Division 1 – 3.19 (goals per game)
Norway Eliteserien – 3.06
Iceland Urvalsdeild – 2.83
USA MLS – 2.78
Sweden Allsvenskan – 2.66
Sweden Superettan – 2.55
As you may know, my 5K Challenge strategy predominantly looks for teams that have had a high combined total of O2.5/BTTS games.
So which are the best summer leagues for these two markets?
Let’s have a look.
Over 2.5 Goals
Norway Division 1 – 60%
Norway Eliteserien – 56%
Iceland Urvalsdeild – 55%
USA MLS – 53%
Sweden Allsvenskan – 50%
Sweden Superettan – 47%
BTTS
Norway Division 1 – 67%
Norway Eliteserien – 60%
USA MLS – 59%
Sweden Superettan – 53%
Sweden Allsvenskan – 50%
Iceland Urvalsdeild – 47%
Source: Footystats.org
So as you can see from the data above for the 2020/2021 season, the two top leagues were in Norway and would be an obvious choice when looking for goals.
Yes, there are a few you may want to check out.
The Finnish Veikkausliiga isn’t too bad with an average of 2.52 goals scored per game in 2021. Over 2.5 goals was 45% with BTTS at 44%.
So a bit lower than the leagues listed further up, but worth a look just the same.
The Chinese Super League is up and coming and where a lot of top professionals head when they are close to hanging up their boots. Not so much because of the quality of the football, but rather the big pay cheques that are on offer.
Anyway, in 2021, the CSL produced 2.54 goals on average, 45% of games having three or more goals and 51% seeing BTTS land.
Then there is the little known, Singapore S League. With a staggering 3.98 goals per game on average in 2021, backing the unders could be a really bad move here!!
Liquidity may be low, so always check that. Also, check that the matches are going in play.
Another you may want to consider is the Irish Premier Division with an average of 2.54 goals per game in 2021. Over 2.5 goals was hit in 47% of matches with BTTS 55%.
We also have the Japanese J League with games being played early in the day. With 2.43 goals per game in 2021, I can’t say I am a massive fan, however, it may be one you wish to check out.
Other than that there are the South American leagues such as those in Brazil and Argentina. Personally, I avoid these as they are not only generally low scoring but also played well past my bedtime.
CONCLUSION
When the winter leagues come to a close, your football trading doesn’t have to end. There are still opportunities to be found in many of these other countries.
The Norwegian leagues are a favourite of mine, especially the Eliteserien.
The Swedish Allsvenskan is another league I will usually trade over the summer months.
Both of these leagues are well established, produce a fair number of goals and have good liquidity on Betfair.
Whichever leagues you decide to trade, I wish you all the best of luck over the summer!
If you want to learn how to make a consistent profit football trading, check out my range of football strategy ebooks.
It’s a well-known fact that around 95% of football traders lose long term.
I’m sure you will agree that this number is extremely high.
But have you ever thought about why this is?
I mean, it can’t be that 95% of traders are incapable of finding winning trades.
I don’t think so. We all have the knowledge and the tools at our disposal to find our fair share of winners.
Continue reading “Why 95% Of Football Traders Lose And How You Can Avoid Joining Them”
Month 4 of my 5K Challenge saw another profit of +7.64 pts or £76.47 to my initial £10 one-point stakes.
As a result of my bank growth, I am now using stakes with a maximum liability of £13, which is 2% of my current bank.
Over the course of month 4 (12th November to 11th December), I traded a total of 41 games with 30 wins and 11 loses (73.17% strike rate).
In total, I staked £324.21 with an average stake of £7.90. This meant that my return or yield on my stakes was 23.58%. Nice!
Continue reading “5k Challenge Results – Month 4 – Profit +7.64 Pts”
In this post, I want to just take a moment to highlight an important aspect to trading football matches, which is how to maximise the value that we are getting.
If you follow me with my 5K Challenge you will know that I usually enter my trades by dripping my stakes after around 10 or 15 minutes.
The timing of my entry and the size stakes I use will very much depend on how the game is progressing and whether goals look likely.
Continue reading “How To Maximise Value When Football Trading”
I’ve now activated my new Telegram channel so that you can be alerted to any 5K Challenge or Lay the Draw selections that I post to the site.
With so many of us now using smartphones, it makes sense to use Telegram.
You can also install the Telegram app to both mobile or desktop platforms.
My channel can be found here https://t.me/myfootytrading
Since September 2018, I have been running a paid lay the draw subscription service.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I will be reverting back to the free service in March 2019.
This will mean a few changes which will be:-
Free tips posted to the website
With the paid subscription service, I was sending out selections each day via email. However, in March I will just be posting these to the website each day as before.
New detailed LTD2 guide to download
Instead of charging a monthly subscription fee, I will be charging a one-off fee of £14.99 for the lay the draw PDF guide. The guide will contain lots of info on how to trade LTD2 and will also show you how to go about selecting your own trades. There will also be examples of trades that I have recently done myself to show you how everything works.
The download fee will also mean you will receive future revisions of the guide free of charge.
No more live Twitter trades
With the paid service I was also doing a certain amount of live Twitter trading. This is also very time consuming and is also difficult to do if I am trading via my mobile phone. Therefore, with the free service, this will no longer be available. It isn’t really necessary anyway as the systems will be easy to follow.
That’s it!
Stay tuned and keep checking the home page in early March for the first tips.
In a recent interview, cult football trading expert ‘Psychoff‘ was quoted as saying something along the lines of:-
“Value can’t be defined. Value is a feeling.”
This statement really resonates with me, as I believe that many traders put too much emphasis on stats and not enough emphasis on our feelings and intuition.
I myself have subscribed to systems in the past where software is used to show ‘value trades’ or ‘value tips’, but what is value and how do you determine if you have it or not?
For me, value is determined by how we perceive the flow of a football match, the likelihood of a goal being scored and the odds on offer at the time. It’s not so much about whether you are laying under 2.5 goals or backing over 3.5 goals, but rather the timing of your entry into the trade.
Continue reading “How Do You Define Value In Football Trading?”
Over the past year or so (yes, that long), I’ve been testing another lay the draw system that you may have previously seen me refer to on the website as ‘LTD3’.
During this time I traded 116 selections and had a win rate of 85.34% (99 wins).
When testing I was trading the selections similar to the LTD2 system in that I would trade out when one team took a two goal lead. However, if the game went beyond 65’, I would let it run and come out when the next goal was scored for a profit or the game ended goalless, which would result in a loss of around 2.5 pts.
