All of my posts so far have been about betting on live football, so I thought I'd write something about my attempts to win on non-live matches. The weekend in Spanish football was dominated by El Gran Clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid on Saturday night, but I had my eye on one of the less glamorous fixtures, involving two clubs between which one can draw a lot of parallels.
Almeria and Racing Santander both had excellent seasons last year, exceeding expectations by finishing 8th and 6th respectively. It was always unlikely to last for this season though as they each lost their talented young coaches - Unai Emery went to Valencia and Marcelino went to Zaragoza. They both replaced them with managers who'd won promotion to La Liga the previous season, with Gonzalo Arconada going from Numancia to Almeria and Juan Muniz, pictured above, leaving Malaga for Racing.
Each side lost an important player in the summer, with Melo leaving Almeria for Fiorentina and Aldo Duscher, the breaker of Beckham's metatarsal before the 2002 World Cup, going to Seville from Racing. The two teams had similar starts to this season, although there were signs that it was starting to go wrong for Almeria, after successive defeats to Osasuna, La Coruna and Numancia.
Racing's away record isn't fantastic but they're capable of the odd good result, such as the 4-2 win at Valencia recently. The most significant team news was that Almeria's new South American defender Pellerano would miss the game. From this evidence, I would think it'd be fair to say that Almeria are a worse team than Racing at the moment.
When you take home advantage into account, that meant that the supremacy quote of 0.3-0.5 looked too high to me, so my non-live bet this week was a SELL OF ALMERIA SUPREMACY AT 0.3.
There's not much need for a 'During the Match' section here, because there was no opportunity to trade in and out or watch the game. Suffice to say that the game finished 1-1, ending Almeria's losing run and providing us with a small winner.
AR
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