Serie A Draw

For the second consecutive review, we lose a couple of matches due to the absence of any Pinnacle Closing Odds, which may seem strange for a top league, but is explained by Liam Brady's quote:

"When a draw suits both teams in Italy, the game will end in a draw. It's all to do with the mentality of the Italian people. They see nothing wrong in such an arrangement."

So we have just 2,278 matches in our six year sample and, no big surprise here, not a good idea to blindly back the Draw: 

Once again, ignoring matches where the Draw has a 'true' probability of 0.2 or less, saves you a lot of points, in this case 78.7 points. Ignore matches where the Home or Away team is odds on and save yourself 77.37 and 34.73 points respectively.

Backing the Draw in 'close' matches up to the 25% difference are profitable with an ROI of 2.56%. If you back the Draw only when it is greater than an implied .33 probability, the ROI is over 3%. 

As with the Bundesliga, one team has dominated Serie A for the past six seasons, with Juventus winning the title every year, with Napoli and AS Roma taking 2nd and 3rd places in all but two seasons. Lazio grabbed 3rd in 2015 and AC Milan in 2013. 

As with ignoring Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga, so ignoring Juventus in Serie A helps, saving 92.61 points. Exclude AS Roma and Napoli and the loss is reduced even more. 

Italy has rather a lot of top level 'derbies'. Probably the best known derby is the Derby della Madonnina where backing the Draw is +7.99 from the twelve games since 2012-13.  

The dozen Derby d'Italia matches show a profit of 2.5 points, while the Derby della Mole shows a loss of 7.29 points. As I said earlier, ignore Juventus.  

The Derby della Lanterna is also a loser, down 2.34 points from 12 matches. while the the Derby della Capitale is up 1.42 points from 12.

With the return to Serie A next season of Parma, after three successive promotions - a first in Italian football - the Derby dell'Emilia will be back, a derby that shows an ROI of 80.75%, but sadly from just 4 matches!

The Derby del Sole is -8.08 points (I did say to ignore these two teams), while the Derby dell'Appennino is -6.6 points from 10 matches. 

Up 6.6 points from 8 matches is the Derby delle Due Sicilie while the Derby delle Isole is also up, by 0.85 points from 6 matches. The Derby di Sicilia was only played in one season, but was profitable +1.16 points. 

I think that's enough on derbies.

Next up: League One