National League Play-Offs

The Premier League may still be a few games away from completion, but in the National League the play-offs have already begun. Since the expanded six-club format was only introduced in 2017-18, we don't have much data for the Quarter-Final stage, but as I noted on Twitter, for the first time at this stage a Home side wasn't favourite. The match was the North Regional game between Alfreton Town and Kidderminster Harriers where the visitors were 'officially' 1.97 although I was matched at 2.08 on Betfair. 

The safest approach at this stage is historically to lay the Home side, and with five winning results from six, this was again profitable this year:

The Brackley Town lay was looking lost until a 90' + 9' minute equaliser took the game into extra-time, but sometimes these late twists go for you, and sometimes against you. 

All-time, i.e. a whopping sample size of 31 matches, and the futility of backing the Home side at this stage is clear:

It's a similar story at the Semi-Final stage where we have the Home team coming off a bye, but as this post pointed out, this scenario isn't necessarily a good one, and specifically for the National League play-off Sem-Finals I noted here that: 

At 1.4 currently, Notts County (v Boreham Wood), are the shortest priced team ever in a National League play-off game (including the Regional Divisions) with 182 such matches in the books.