I Wouldn’t Bet On It 8 – Ouch!

Last week we studied the form and decided that the odds were generous on a West Ham victory against Watford. So we lumped on. As a lifelong fan I should perhaps have known better. With 35 minutes of the game over we looked on course to at least double our stake of 24 points and be showing a healthy profit. If you had looked on the betting exchanges at around 3.35pm you could have virtually named your odds on a Watford victory and there would have been plenty of opportunity to get in excess of 100-1 in-play.

But as we all know it didn’t happen so we lost 24 points, which became 25 when our accumulator failed miserably with just two correct predictions. So our balance now stands at 75.4 points.

Today I’m going to try a different type of football bet. There are so many bets that you can place on football matches these days, and you can have fun trying out some other variations. One that can keep you interested for much of a game is betting on there being at least x number of goals in the game. For the purposes of this week’s betting I’ve had a look at the odds of there being at least 3 goals in the game in each of the Premier League games this weekend.

If you had to guess which of our four main leagues has provided the most games percentage-wise where three or more goals have been scored which one would you go for? The Premier League is at the top – there have been three or more goals in the game in 21 of this season’s 40 games, putting it ahead of the other leagues (the Championship has had the least).

	1	Odds
Chelsea v Liverpool	29	4/6
Hull v Arsenal	22	8/11
Leicester v Burnley	19	4/5
Man C v Bournemouth	23	1/2	*
WBA v WHU	19	5/4	*
Everton v Middlesbrough	17	Evens
Watford v Man U	25	5/6	*
Palace v Stoke	19	6/5
Southampton v Swansea	19	Evens
Spurs v Sunderland	17	4/6

1- total goals scored in the 8 games involving these clubs (4 each) this season

Odds – Paddy Power odds quoted for over 2.5 goals in the game (i.e. 3 or more)

The table above shows you can get even money or better on four of the ten games. Not surprisingly the bookmaker has done its homework and those four games are generally the ones where the teams have scored the least goals. The exception is the Tottenham game where I guess they are expecting more goals than has been scored so far by Spurs in particular.

The game that really took my eye was the one involving our trip to West Brom, which gives the most generous odds, meaning this is the game expected to produce the least goals. This is not surprising in that West Brom (managed by Pulis) have scored the least goals in the Premier League this season with 2 and have only conceded 3, meaning their four games have only had five goals scored in total. On the other hand there have been 14 goals in our games, although we have only scored five of them.

If you study the West Brom recent games, say the last ten of last season and the first four of this, then there have been three goals or more in just 3 of their 14 games! Conversely if you look at the equivalent for West Ham then there have been 3 or more goals in 13 of our last 14 games (the only exception being the home game v Bournemouth this season). If you look at West Brom v West Ham head to head in the twenty-first century, then 9 of the 18 league games played have had three or more goals in them.

It’s very easy to see why this game has been picked out as the one with the least chance of producing at least three goals, but there are factors (mainly West Ham ones) which indicate that this may be a good bet.

I am therefore staking 16 points on our game at West Brom to produce three or more goals (36). In addition I will stake four points on an accumulator for the games at West Brom, Watford, and Manchester City to each have three or more goals at accumulated odds of 6.19/1 (25.7).

The figures in brackets are the potential winnings. Our total stake is 20 points reducing our balance to 55.4. If the three selected games can each produce three or more goals then we would collect 61.7 points from our single bet plus the accumulator.

What are the chances?