Boxing Day Draw Drought

There were just five draws in the top four English divisions on Boxing Day, with none in the Premier League or League One. From 46 matches, that was a strike rate of less than 11%, and not surprisingly the draw specialists in the FTL struggled. XX Draws had just the one selection from the EPL (Crystal Palace v Southampton) so the damage was limited, although there were more serious repercussions for Neil Warnock.

Draw Picks also had the Palace match as their sole draw selection, while Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster started the weekend with seven losing selections. Bounty Boy Graeme's TFA Draws found one draw from eleven selections, and Gecko had eight draw selections included with other bets, and found two draw winners for the best strike rate for draws of the day.

A far cry from Serie A this season, where blindly backing the draw in every match would have resulted in a profit of almost 40 points (39.94 to be precise) from 160 matches, and 39.99 over the last 80 games (at Pinnacle Sports prices). At 37.5%, Home wins this season are at their lowest levels in the Big Five leagues since at least 2004, and with the Home to Away goal ratio at just 1.2 - the 10-year Serie A average is 1.37 - it's not surprising that Draw and Away win percentages are at highs, with the latter continuing the increase in Away wins seen over the past five seasons.

Most of the FTL leaders were enjoying their holidays, so no big changes at the top. I'll update the FTL table after tomorrow's and Monday's matches, partly because there are plenty of matches tomorrow and Monday, and there are no prices available yet for a couple of games in Belgium and Scotland.

With the end of December already here, I should probably give the latest state of play as the weekend winds down. As of right now, the leaders for the December prize are: