I’m always researching how to make more money from my Betfair football trading and constantly thinking about the many aspects of pre-game analysis which may help develop a more robust and profitable football trading system.
I recently acquired a new book from our tax-dodging friends at Amazon titled “Data-Driven Football Predictions“, “Constructing The Perfect Over 2.5 Goals Betting Strategy For The English Premier League” – by Martin Chamberlain.
Although I will most likely do a full review of the book shortly, I wanted to mention the main crux of the system in this post which is the head to head or H2H stats and trends of the previous meetings between two teams.
On Sunday, I identified five games from the system and produced 4 out of 5 winners which in turn produced a whopping 23 goals!
The games were:-
Bologna v Sassuolo (3-4) – I tipped this one.
Strasbourg v Lyon (2-3)
St Etienne v Nice (1-3)
Udinese v Parma (3-2)
Athletico Bilbao v Levante (2-0)
The last match was almost a winner with two goals. I could have traded out for a small loss late on, however, I let this one run in the end.
Another important thing about these selections was that the prices on Betfair at kick-off were fairly generous. Any punter worth their salt will tell you that getting value (or what we deem to be value) is essential to making a long-term profit from any form of betting.
Although I didn’t post most of these selections to the site, I wanted to touch on this as some data experts who specialise in football betting often claim that historical stats (H2H) are one of the most important specifics to base your selections on.
I must admit, in the past, I haven’t paid too much attention to the H2H stats, although some games such as the Merseyside Derby this weekend, had been pretty poor in recent years.
I think the previous three off the top of my head had been 0-0. That was definitely a match to avoid for me based on those previous meetings despite Everton’s current excellent form and Liverpool’s slip up against Villa.
This weekend was an exception though, with Everton and Liverpool ending 2-2 at Goodison.
If the head to head stats do continue to produce a consistent number of goals, I may have found a key ingredient to successfully trading the over 2.5 goals market.
I will continue to test this theory with my selections with small stakes and see if over the next weeks and months I can refine the selection criteria to produce favourable results.
I will continue to update you on my findings via the site as usual.
FYI, If you want to compare two teams and their head to head stats, you can use the following site which has an excellent free tool.
https://www.soccerbase.com/teams/head_to_head.sd
What’s your view on H2H stats?
Do you think head to head stats and trends help to determine the potential outcome of a future game and if so, why would that be?
Maybe some managers and players played in the previous games and want to make amends? Or maybe it is the general strategy, set up and style of play between the two that helps facilitate an open game?
It can be hard to fathom out, but it definitely appears that certain games frequently produce lots of goals.
Let me know what you think by commenting below or by emailing me directly at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you.
Other things in the pipeline
I have a number of things I am working on including a number of essential guides to football trading which will be available in the coming weeks.
These will include a guide to the over 2.5 goals market and also a comprehensive E-Book on ‘How to make consistent profits from the over 1.5, over 2.5 and BTS markets’.
The first month in my 5K Challenge produced a 7.63 points profit which was excellent. Sadly, month 2 wasn’t so great as I ran into far too many losers.
I will publish a fresh post on my results shortly for month two, but looks like it will be a loss of around 6 points.
I am still up though and showing a small amount of green.
Hopefully, these possible changes to my selection criteria for my over 1.5, over 2.5 and BTS trades will help improve strike rate and profitability in the coming weeks, although I need to do plenty of testing and analysis first.
One thing is for sure. I’m really happy that the winter leagues have resumed again even if it is without spectators. So nice to trade these games instead of the Chinese, Japanese and other leagues which for me aren’t so good.
The English Premier League has been on fire in terms of goals with 65% of games having over 2.5 goals with an average of 3.72 goals per game!
There have also been zero 0-0 games. Long may that continue! Awesome for those who look for goals.
Let’s hope our wonderful leaders can pull their collective finger out and get some spectators back into the stadiums as it must be horrible for sportsmen and women to perform in front empty stadiums. They are performers after all, and performers need an audience!
I still fail to see why they can’t have a small percentage of socially distance supports at matches. I see other countries are doing it, so why not here in the UK?
Stay well and keep greening up!
Oh btw, looking at the recent stats for tonight’s game between West Brom and Burnley, it looks like it could be a bit of a damp squib. However, their past seven match-ups have gone over 2.5 goals! The overs price is currently a nice juicy 2.14 on Betfair Exchange.
I wonder….could the H2H stats override the current poor performances of both sides? NOPE! Ended 0-0.