September Struggles

The changing on the month to October didn't bring about any change in The Football Analyst's fortunes. Four midweek selections all lost, including Ipswich Town to win at Derby County, a game they led 4-1 at half-time before Derby came back for the draw.

Punters' Friend, Forza Fizzer and Emp all had selections too, but nothing startling, as my Dad likes to say, and no changes in places. Graeme does slip even further adrift at the bottom though, (now -20.44 points) and his current liability to anyone finishing ahead of him at the end of the season is currently £325. Last month, TFA fan Mark commented:

Followed Graeme's soccer bets for a long time and I would take 1.5 on him topping this league at the end of season. Any takers?

If there are any takers, I am happy to act as a go between, but Mark may be having second thoughts about that price by now. The saving grace for Graeme is that no one else is exactly setting the football tipping world alight this season, and Graeme himself had this to say before dropping another 4 points last night:

Based on the games I’ve rated so far this season, Homes are in profit (10%), Draws are losing (-20%) and Aways are losing (-20%). Overall, a loss of 25%+ if backing 1pt on every outcome of every game I’ve rated. Long-term, my data suggests you lose 5% backing each outcome on average although over a few hundred bets, it does vary wildly. Can’t recall too many times in the time I’ve been doing this where I’ve seen a bias towards homes as much as this (seen a few times where there has been a big bias towards Aways or Draws in a sample of a few hundred bets) but it is really skewing my P&L for all my systems. Home value bets had a great month in my rating algorithms (algorithm 3 got 20 from 27 correct on Homes!) but Aways have had their worst ever month. Aways make up 75% of my overall bet volume as it’s always much easier to find better value on Aways in my rating algorithms.

Early days though and things should turn around. Not sure I’d be pricing myself at 1.50 to win the FTL league even if someone else thought I was a value bet then. I’ve surely drifted out to something much bigger! Getting towards my sort of value price now I would suggest. ;)

September's totals were disappointing for the big-hitters in the FTL.

TFA lost 16.44, Premier Betting lost 6.40, Football Elite dropped 3.02 and Skeeve lost 0.98.

Having a good month were the XX Draws Under 2.5 which gained 2.08, Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster up 3.14, the new Cassini Value Selections +3.16 and the XX Draws up 7.58 which was despite losing the first eight bets of the month. Like Danish bacon, draws can be streaky. They are having a decent run right now with 16 winners (+15.58) from the last 39 games, which sounds good, but they are still in the red overall which is a little embarrassing.