Lorient, L'Orient and L. Orient - Vive La Difference

A quieter day than usual with football investments limited to those recommended by Football Elite.

Borussia Moenchengladbach at 2.86 wasn't one of their finest ever picks, going down to a heavy 0-4 defeat at home to Wolfsburg, but in something of a coincidence, their second tip (Bolton Wanderers at 2.08 v Wigan Athletic) won by exactly the same score.

The short-list gave two winners, Mainz at 2.32 and Lorient at 2.08 but the third selection Le Mans at 2.34 did not have a Nice day. The e-mail actually tipped L'Orient, but I finally figured out who was meant, although not before almost staking an enormous sum on L Orient v Walsall. Matt must be a lot older than me. L'Orient was the city's original name in the 1600s, but the football club has never had that name. L Orient, as in Leyton, won 2-0 anyway.

I then spent some time trading the Hull City v Arsenal game for small stakes, and topped up the profits for the day. Arsenal's last few league games look easier than those of Chelsea or Manchester United and at 3.9 look value to me with a view to trading. Interestingly, all three teams still have to visit Blackburn Rovers.

There were a couple of scorelines today that I am reasonably confident the Elo ratings would have missed. Burton Albion 5 Cheltenham 6? Who saw that one coming? Not me - I had it as 4-5... and Gateshead lost 0-8 at Rushden and Diamonds in a low scoring game. That one I had as 7-0.

Finally, for today anyway, here's another quote on value from the world of financial investing that applies to the world of sports:

Like all other variations of value investing, it will almost certainly under-perform for a multi-year period or post significant losses in a given year, meaning that it's not magic in the sense many investors would like it to be. Indeed, Greenblatt's strategy lost a painful 36% in 2008, only beating the market by 1 percentage point. Still, the evidence is strong that even investors who know "what has worked in investing" simply can't or won't stay with simple formulas or will make investing more complicated than it needs to be. This bodes well for those who can stick with a simple value formula over the long haul.

For those that are interested in this stuff, and we all should be, the full article is here.