L1 & L2 Predictions > Mar 21st - 26th

[StevieDay1983]

[StevieDay1983]

The international break might be coming up this fortnight but that won't stop the League 1 and League 2 action from being played. Here are the odds and ratings for those matches. Hit us with your predictions down below! 

[waynecoyne]

Wednesday will probably be missing byers and gregory james and windass picked up knocks on friday.

Byers and Windass have been important players recently and James is accomplished.

I fancy Barnsley to break our 23 game unbeaten run. I have backed them at 9/5 and fancy 2-0 at 14/1

 

[harry_rag]

4 hours ago, waynecoyne said:

I fancy Barnsley to break our 23 game unbeaten run. I have backed them at 9/5 and fancy 2-0 at 14/1

Another in the Barnsley camp @MCLARKE!

Had a look at this game in terms of how long it took each team to score their last 25 goals and who has been scoring them and it supports the notion of Windass being a big loss if unable to play (he's scored 9 of Wednesday's last 25 goals and they apparently lacked much threat when he went off in the last game).

Barnsley scored 25 goals in their last 11 games whereas it took Wednesday 14 games. Both reasonably respectable numbers and I'm not saying it's metric of huge value but it chimes with the suggestion that the hosts are in decent form at the moment.

The market has Cole and Norwood as Barnsley's most likely scorers and both have reasonable figures for the season but have each only scored 3 of those last 25 goals meaning they don't make huge appeal at the prices on offer. Phillips with 4 of those goals looks more interesting at 6/1 with Hills (13/2 with SPIN). He's scored a goal in 8 out of 22 starts this season and 4 out of 9 at home. He scored in 7 out of 29 starts for Morecambe last season.

Phillips to score at 6/1 with Hills and to score 2 or more at 80/1 with Lads

Whilst he's yet to score a brace that's perhaps surprising for a player with as reasonable a strike rate as his. Worth a quid at the price. From a spread perspective his goal minutes look a reasonable buy at 6 with SX (as high as 10 elsewhere).

[Labrador]

59 minutes ago, harry_rag said:

...........................................

Phillips to score at 6/1 with Hills and to score 2 or more at 80/1 with Lads

Whilst he's yet to score a brace that's perhaps surprising for a player with as reasonable a strike rate as his. Worth a quid at the price. From a spread perspective his goal minutes look a reasonable buy at 6 with SX (as high as 10 elsewhere).

13/2 to score for anyone ? with Sporting Index account. Seems to get subbed off after 70 mins or so in recent games. Good luck.

[MCLARKE]

2 hours ago, harry_rag said:

Another in the Barnsley camp @MCLARKE!

Wednesday unbeaten in 23, Barnsley in 11, suggests a draw might be the result.

I have a £20 free bet on a 0-0 draw with Mobile Wins. Not sure if you've used them but they have an excellent start up offer of a free £30 bet when you bet £10. Plus each Monday they have an offer of bet £50 and get a free £20 bet.

[four-leaf]

27 minutes ago, MCLARKE said:

Wednesday unbeaten in 23, Barnsley in 11, suggests a draw might be the result.

I have a £20 free bet on a 0-0 draw with Mobile Wins. Not sure if you've used them but they have an excellent start up offer of a free £30 bet when you bet £10. Plus each Monday they have an offer of bet £50 and get a free £20 bet.

Just because two teams are unbeaten in a long run doesn't most likely mean it's gonna be a draw.. I'm for the hosts.

[harry_rag]

3 hours ago, harry_rag said:

The market has Cole and Norwood as Barnsley's most likely scorers and both have reasonable figures for the season but have each only scored 3 of those last 25 goals meaning they don't make huge appeal at the prices on offer.

[MCLARKE]

54 minutes ago, four-leaf said:

Just because two teams are unbeaten in a long run doesn't most likely mean it's gonna be a draw.. I'm for the hosts.

It seems logical but then again I'm no expert

Do you have any stats to prove / disprove it ?

[harry_rag]

28 minutes ago, MCLARKE said:

It seems logical but then again I'm no expert

Do you have any stats to prove / disprove it ?

I don’t think either of you are wrong in what you say and neither of you have said anything that can really be proved or refuted by stats! It might be a draw but won’t “most likely” be one. Even in a game where both teams are judged to have an equal chance of winning the draw will be the least likely result unless the game has an unusually low goals expectation.

I think on this occasion the opening prices slightly flattered the visitors especially given the team news. Siding with home team in some way seemed the best option. The RP tip of draw no bet at evens was probably a good example of getting something that was more likely than not at evens or better.

[harry_rag]

NOW the draw is the most likely result! 

[MCLARKE]

24 minutes ago, harry_rag said:

NOW the draw is the most likely result! 

Bugger !

Only watched the second half but Wednesday looked the better team but didn't take their chances. With Barry Bannan in the side I'm confident they'll get automatic promotion.

[MCLARKE]

34 minutes ago, harry_rag said:

I think on this occasion the opening prices slightly flattered the visitors especially given the team news. Siding with home team in some way seemed the best option.

Indeed, the odds were very close, 13/8 Wednesday and 7/4 Barnsley. You could well be right, picking the home team may be the best option, Barnsley to win the match and first half and total goals over 5 would have paid just under 60/1

[MCLARKE]

39 minutes ago, harry_rag said:

I don’t think either of you are wrong in what you say and neither of you have said anything that can really be proved or refuted by stats! It might be a draw but won’t “most likely” be one. Even in a game where both teams are judged to have an equal chance of winning the draw will be the least likely result unless the game has an unusually low goals expectation.

I feel myself being drawn into the murky world of football betting !

I will have to dust down my footy stats and see what they say for the results when both teams are on a winning run.

 

[harry_rag]

14 minutes ago, MCLARKE said:

I feel myself being drawn into the murky world of football betting !

I will have to dust down my footy stats and see what they say for the results when both teams are on a winning run.

 

I’d be fairly certain that more often than not one team’s run will be coming to an end! Whether the draw is more likely than in an average game I don’t know. I suspect it won’t be frequent enough to beat the odds. Obviously it depends on how you’re going to define a winning run and what sort of sample you can find. Kevin Pullein has probably written an article on the subject at some point.

[MCLARKE]

1 hour ago, harry_rag said:

I’d be fairly certain that more often than not one team’s run will be coming to an end! Whether the draw is more likely than in an average game I don’t know. I suspect it won’t be frequent enough to beat the odds. Obviously it depends on how you’re going to define a winning run and what sort of sample you can find. Kevin Pullein has probably written an article on the subject at some point.

Yep, I'm pretty sure that the ground I am looking at has been well trodden but it's piqued my interest so I'll spend a bit of time on it before returning to the safer haven of horse racing

[waynecoyne]

A little footnote to backing barnsley

I did it with bet365 who pay out if a team takes a 2 goal lead but they don't settle for about 15 mins and quote lower cash outs up to settlement.

So if you have an account with bet365 and they are offering early payout it is well worth considering even if you can get better odds elsewhere.

Had they not paid out early there would have been a rollercoaster of emotions with wednesday pulling back to 2-2 before conceding 2 in the last 10 minutes.

[harry_rag]

1 hour ago, waynecoyne said:

I did it with bet365 who pay out if a team takes a 2 goal lead

Only if your name's not on their naughty list unfortunately! 

It's a decent offer right enough, I know a few other firms do it but only in a dedicated market at slightly reduced odds, I'd be interested in the maths in terms of how much of a worse price it's worth taking to get the extra protection it offers. Obviously most teams who go 2 up will go on to win. 

There's also the option to lay the team at short odds when they go 2 goals up.

[waynecoyne]

56 minutes ago, harry_rag said:

Only if your name's not on their naughty list unfortunately! 

It's a decent offer right enough, I know a few other firms do it but only in a dedicated market at slightly reduced odds, I'd be interested in the maths in terms of how much of a worse price it's worth taking to get the extra protection it offers. Obviously most teams who go 2 up will go on to win. 

There's also the option to lay the team at short odds when they go 2 goals up.

i think when i put it on they were best price at 9/5. They don't offer lower odds for the early payout.

What i meant was if they are 7/4 and others 2/1 i would rather take 7/4 with the early payout.

Ironically it drifted out to 2/1 (i was expecting barnsley to shorten when the teams were announced).

As for being on the naughty list i must put enough mug bets on not to be on that.

[MCLARKE]

4 hours ago, waynecoyne said:

What i meant was if they are 7/4 and others 2/1 i would rather take 7/4 with the early payout.

I suppose it depends on how often the 2 goal offer would turn a losing bet into a winning bet. By my maths in this instance you would need this to happen once every 11 matches, not sure that it happens this regularly.

[harry_rag]

1 hour ago, MCLARKE said:

I suppose it depends on how often the 2 goal offer would turn a losing bet into a winning bet. By my maths in this instance you would need this to happen once every 11 matches, not sure that it happens this regularly.

By my maths you’d need it to happen around 3 or 4 times in every 100 games you bet on, I worked through a couple of examples where you’d be making a small profit at the 2/1 and need 4 extra wins at the 7/4 to be better off (3 fell just short). The difference between the implied odds of the 2 prices is 3.03%.

My gut feel was that dropping from 2/1 to 7/4 was pushing it in terms of being worthwhile, if you’d said 19/10 I’d have probably agreed. Just had a quick look at tomorrow’s England game where Sky Bet go 15/8 for Italy to win but 7/4 if you want the 2-up protection, just 1.58% difference. So I’d have said that 2/1 to 7/4 is a bit too big a drop and it’s worth seeing if a bookie who “charges” for the protection might offer you a better option than 365 who give it for free.

[MCLARKE]

On 3/21/2023 at 10:33 PM, harry_rag said:

I’d be fairly certain that more often than not one team’s run will be coming to an end! Whether the draw is more likely than in an average game I don’t know.

I've done some very basic research based on the 380 matches in the 2018/19 premier league (this must have been the last time I looked at football)

Average draw % 18.7%

Draw % when both teams either won or drew last time 16.8%

Very basic but doesn't support my theory

The highest draw % is 30.3% where the home team lost last time and the away team drew. Only 33 matches in the sample though so probably need more data before any conclusion can be drawn

Since it's coming to the end of the season I might put this on hold and investigate a few ideas before the start of the next season

[harry_rag]

8 hours ago, MCLARKE said:

Average draw % 18.7%

Gut reaction is that’s unusually low and it will be higher in most seasons, probably over 20%.

8 hours ago, MCLARKE said:

The highest draw % is 30.3% where the home team lost last time and the away team drew. Only 33 matches in the sample though so probably need more data before any conclusion can be drawn

With respect I think you won’t find anything of any predictive value based on what happened in each team’s last game, I’d go as far as to say it would be of no relevance whatsoever. A team that has won its last 6 games is more likely not to win the next one than to win it and the same is true in terms of a team on a 6 game losing streak going on to lose the next one. That would probably surprise most casual punters who would no doubt be inclined to back the run to continue but it’s still of limited use in betting on that specific game. If Man City are chasing a 7th straight win at home to Palace then they will be long odds on regardless whereas if they are away to a close rival they will often be odds against.

In football single seasons are of limited value as the numbers can fluctuate wildly. If you found a stat over 10 seasons and it held up in all or most of the individual seasons then maybe it’s of some relevance, otherwise I’d just regard it as an interesting blip.

[MCLARKE]

6 hours ago, harry_rag said:

With respect I think you won’t find anything of any predictive value based on what happened in each team’s last game, I’d go as far as to say it would be of no relevance whatsoever.

You are probably right, it was just easier to calculate based on the last match. It was enough to put me off my initial assumption about the likelihood of draws. I suppose I've scratched the itch. I'll return to horse racing and just bet on football where there is a decent offer.

I suspect any forecasting models I develop will have already been developed by other football bettors. I'll have a bash before the new season starts, I think I did make a profit last time backing outsiders in the premier league where 1 bookie was offering higher odds than the average but the bets were few and far between.