A pleasing end to the weekend's Premier League matches last night, with Manchester City comfortably defeating Liverpool, and replacing them in fourth place in the Elo ratings.
One question for any sensible people out there is what price were Newcastle United at kick-off? I had them at 3.35 on Thursday and didn't notice the price after that except that when Football Elite tipped them, the best price noted on the e-mail was 3.3. According to Smarkets, the price on Newcastle had plummeted to 2.5, which if true, is quite remarkable. The price clearly dropped. Matt's weekend summary e-mail recorded the price at kick-off as 2.75 and expressed some concern that perhaps this was the result of more money backing Football Elite's selections. His other recommended bet, WBA, also dropped from 2.56 on Thursday to 2.2 at kick-off. Something to keep an eye on over the next few weeks.
A final word on the "-2.5 goals away from home debate", and I had a comment that "Results inform statistics; statistics do not inform results" supporting my reasoning that just because it hasn't happened before is no reason why my expectation should be summarily dismissed.
I did also get a very well reasoned, and polite, argument that while agreeing there should be no reason why 2.5 goals should be an invalid prediction, went on to say...
I have a number of different ratings systems for the PL and have never had a "top to bottom" difference of anywhere in the region of 3 goals. Off the top of my head, something like 2.25 goals is around the maximum I can recall at any moment in time. I suspect Blackpool are likely to get close to surpassing that number at some stage this year but, for now, they haven't.Incidentally, someone took a £14k loss on this game after laying "no corners" at 1000. An excellent value lay, given that the true price is somewhere in the region of 26,781-1 give or take a few, but I doubt that the layer feels too good about that right now.
The spreads and Asian markets for this match I think had Chelsea as around 1.75 goal favourites which can be used as a good guide to the "correct" number.
If your ratings made them 2.5 goal favourites then I would respectfully suggest you need to check your system for possible errors. To be 0.75 goals out compared to what can be considered a pretty efficient market should raise a red flag. It's a huge difference and, again with respect, the market makers and market movers are likely more accurate than a more casual bettor. It may be worth checking the spread firm's supremacy markets to get a good idea of how supremacies tie into prices etc.
The League Cup starts for some of the bigger boys today, and while I shall adjust the ratings after these matches, the weighting will be much reduced. It seems that it's not just the really big clubs who don't make much effort in this competition these days, and to transfer too many points on a result that clubs don't care about isn't going to achieve anything positive.
There is one game that matters tonight though, Sampdoria v Werder Bremen. Last week, Werder Bremen had a 3-0 lead going in to the 90th minute of the first leg, but gave up a late goal to make the game tonight a lot more interesting. The ratings have Sampdoria as a 0.5 goal favourite and they are 2.19, but having traded as low as 1.05, Werder Bremen to qualify at 1.29 looks like a value lay. Sampdoria were unbeaten at home in Serie A last season, and failed to score only twice, while Werder Bremen conceded four first half goals on Saturday in a disappointing, and hardly morale boosting, loss at Hoffenheim.
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It was a sustained market plunge, as was the move on West Brom.
Props to Football Elite for getting on the right side at very good prices but price moves of such magnitude aren't due to a tipping service flagging them up. It's simply a case of the big syndicates latching on to prices which are way out and hammering the price down - competing with each other all the while as they try to get their fill.
According to my numbers, the prices for both the Newcastle and West Brom matches at kick-off were what they should have been. The opening shows were way out.
What was witnessed in the case of these two games was a near perfect example of how an efficient football betting market works.
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