The sports spread betting blog

Aberdeen v Rangers, Scottish Premier League - 24/1/09

I watched Rangers a lot last season during their obdurate UEFA Cup run, but haven't seen a great deal of them this season. One thing I have been aware of, though, is Kris Boyd's scoring exploits. He was marginalised a bit last season despite having a good goals-to-minutes ratio when he did play, although in fairness to Rangers they did have a very good season without him playing a big part.

This year, however, he's established himself in the team and has scored 20 goals in 19 starts. He's the form player in Scottish football at the moment, so I had my eye on backing him in some way for this match, and the bet that stood out was his buy price of 16 on the first goalscorer 0-100 market.

Buying at 16 is like backing him at slightly longer than 5/1 to score first, and given the enormous proportion of Rangers' goals he's scored this season, I thought that was a good bet, so BOUGHT KRIS BOYD FIRST GOALSCORER AT 16.

I was looking forward to watching the game on Saturday morning and cheering on the bet, so imagine my horror when I saw he wasn't starting the match (well, perhaps the word 'horror' is a bit over-the-top, but it was a bad moment). Walter Smith had decided to name Kenny Miller as a lone striker.

This was a decision that was not only infuriating but also very confusing. Kris Boyd for some reason has a reputation of being a striker who's a good goalscorer but doesn't contribute much to the rest of the match. Presumably it was on this basis that Smith went with just Miller up front as opposed to just Boyd, or Miller and Boyd together.

I haven't seen much evidence that this theory is true though - Boyd's hold-up play's not bad, Miller makes some good runs but he's a very limited player and certainly doesn't score many goals. I remember getting with Rangers against Kaunas earlier this season and writing about it on this blog, Miller was up front on his own that day and Rangers were horrendously limited going forward, no matter how much more Miller supposedly contributes to the team's all round play compared to Boyd.

Walter Smith is a coach with decades of experience at the top level, so one must assume that he knows more about what's the best team and system to line up with for a given match than I do, but his decision to leave Boyd out against Aberdeen looked entirely bad to me. The fact that he didn't start the match meant that my bet, that I'd thought was pretty promising, was void. Quite annoying.

DURING THE MATCH

Sure enough, Rangers looked completely toothless up front in the first half, with Miller working hard but not looking like scoring at all, while the league top scorer sat on the bench. Rangers had given a start to young forward John Fleck, who'd been playing on the left recently. He was getting forward well in this game but was firmly on the wing, and not as likely to score as a proper striker would be.

His squad number was 53, and it was presumably because of this that one firm went as high as 20-22 on Rangers team shirts at half time, given the dull nature of the game. I thought that the high-numbered youngster would likely be taken off at some stage in the second half, and would be unlikely to score before that.

The only real goal threat for the rest of the game was number 9 Boyd who was on the bench, so I decided to SELL RANGERS TEAM SHIRT NUMBERS AT 20 at half time.

Rangers gradually started to exert more pressure in the second half. Boyd came on in the 63rd minute and they did immediately look more threatening, although I guess some of that could just have been in my mind.

Boyd got on the end of a couple of crosses but didn't score, 53 Fleck was taken off with a quarter of an hour left, and the game finished 0-0. Frustrating that Boyd didn't start, but then we had the best case winner on Rangers shirts, so I couldn't complain really, although I still think Walter Smith is a fool.

AR

Andy Murray vs Marcel Granollers, Australian Open second round - 22/1/09

Andy Murray entered the Australian Open vying for favouritism with Roger Federer in a move which surprised many, but not those of us who have been tracking the progress of the fiery young Scot since last year’s Wimbledon.

Then, a heavy defeat to Rafael Nadal in the quarter-finals seemed to have vindicated all the nay-sayers who doubted whether Murray had the raw talent to ever win a Grand Slam. Since last summer, however, Murray’s form has been outstanding, with an appearance in the US Open final and a string of successive victories against his main rivals Nadal, Federer and Novak Djokovic.

Over this period, Murray has clearly riled a few feathers in the men’s dressing room, with first Federer and then Djokovic publicly questioning what right a player ranked fourth in the world and yet to win a Grand Slam had to consider himself the outright favourite. Still, it is hard to argue against form and there is little doubt that, going into the Aussie Open, Murray was the form player in men’s tennis.

THE MATCH

Murray’s second round opponent was Marcel Granollers – an up-and-coming Spanish baseliner with whom Murray was familiar from his junior days in Barcelona. Entering the match as a 1/100 favourite with many fixed-odds firms, there was little value in backing Murray to win, or even a 3-0 whitewash at a best price of 2/9.

It is on these occasions that the spread betting firms really come into their own, offering markets such as ‘total games played’ and ‘game supremacy’ (i.e. how many games, aggregated, one player will beat another by).

Fancying Murray to thoroughly outclass Granollers – who, while a promising young player, is not and will likely never be in Murray’s class – I made an aggressive move and SOLD CROSS-COURTS AT 58 with one spread betting company.

This market is formed by multiplying each player's number of games won in a set and adding them all together – for example a match ending 6-4 7-5 would make up 24 (6x4) + 35 (7x5) = 59. When it comes to best-of-five sets matches, sellers live in fear of a high makeup - in theory, over 200 points is possible, which could make things very ugly for the brave seller.

This time, there was no need to worry. Murray, while never at his brilliant best, had far too much for Granollers and ran out a comfortable winner, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2. It was a routine win for Murray, will little of note occurring and unlikely to feature any nostalgic retrospective of the 2009 Australian Open in a few years time. However, this is just the sort of easy win that cross-court sellers live for: a solid, 10 point winner and any potential five-set bullet dodged.

JW

Barcelona v Deportivo La Coruna, Primera Liga - 17/1/09

I can't remember a team playing as well as Barcelona are at the moment. It seemed before this game that there was just no way Barcelona wouldn't win this comfortably, despite the fact Depor are possibly the best team outside the top six of Sevilla, Atletico, Real Madrid, Villarreal, Valencia and Barcelona.

When Messi and Eto'o play together up front they are verging on unstoppable, especially at home, as evidenced by their goal difference of +46 at the midway point of the season.

In the 87th minute Deportivo were already 4-0 down having been absolutely hammered, when Puyol burst into the box and was brought down by Depor's keeper Aranzubia. Deportivo had used all their substitutions, which meant that midfielder Juan Rodriguez would have to go in goal for the final three minutes plus injury time.

Eto'o banged in the penalty. After that the situation was as follows; Barcelona were hammering Deportivo, who had ten men, looked utterly demoralised and had an outfield player in goal. You could buy total goal minutes at 284 with one spread betting company, with the so far on 257. This obviously means that you're buying goal minutes at 27 for the rest of the game, when the average goalscoring minute is obviously going to be around 90.

There's a lot of factors to take into consideration when it comes to thinking about whether it's a good bet. Are Barcelona going to care about scoring another? Are the Deportivo players going to try a bit harder to protect their goalkeeper? How much time is the referee going to add on?

Is there any chance they'll score two? Any chance that Barcelona or the referee will be more sympathetic towards Deporitvo? Problem is, you haven't got long to make the decision, so I just went for it, a BUY OF TOTAL GOAL MINUTES AT 284.

Nothing much really happened, one cross went in which the keeper fumbled but held onto. There was a bit of Barca passing the ball around in their own half, and the referee blew up early. Probably not the best decision to make in retrospect but at least there's lessons to be learned, although it's not often you get an outfield player in goal on a game you can place spread bets on in-running.

A more interesting question would be what would happen to the markets if an outfield player had to go in goal in the first minute. How many more goals are the other team going to score? It's a subjective and interesting question and maybe at some stage in the next few years it'll come up.

AR

Barcelona v Atletico Madrid, Copa Del Ray - 14/1/09

This Spanish cup match was being shown straight after Valencia v Racing on Sky Sports, but because the Valencia match went to extra time, I couldn't watch the first twenty minutes of the Barca match.

The tie was interestingly poised, with Barca having won 3-1 away from home in the first leg from a Messi hat-trick. With the away goals rule, this meant Atletico would have to come to the Nou Camp and score three times, but given the weak line-up the Catalan side had put out, I didn't think that was impossible.

Atletico had a strong team out, although they decided to rest Diego Forlan for this game - Spanish clubs have never taken the Copa Del Rey particularly seriously, sadly it looks like the FA Cup is going the same way, but I'll save my rant about mid-table teams resting players in the cups for another day.

No spread betting firms were quoting anything for the first twenty minutes, but once the Valencia extra time was finished Sky put the Barcelona match on, midway through the first half with Atletico one-nil up. I thought that this might be an opportunity to catch one of the spread firms out, as their prices would surely be more likely to be erroneous if they hadn't watched any of the first twenty minutes.

One price caught my eye - Atletico team corners. They hadn't got any so far, but they looked like they were going to have a real go at Barca and try and get the two further goals they needed to go through. The quote on Atletico team corners after forty minutes was 1.5-2, I thought that was too low so BOUGHT ATLETICO CORNERS AT 2.

They got a couple of corners quickly to put me well onside with the bet. Barcelona scored fairly soon afterwards, but that shouldn't in theory have made much difference to the shape of the game - Atletico needed two goals beforehand and still needed two after that goal.

Football doesn't really work like that though, and you could see Atletico starting to give up in the second half, especially when their best player Aguero went off with cramp, with no striker (such as Forlan) on the bench to replace him. They ended up with five corners - definitely a good bet that won well but perhaps a missed opportunity for a big make-up.

AR

Hearts v Hibs, Scottish Premier League - 3/1/09

In my experience there's little to get excited about in Scottish football, so if I was going to watch the Edinburgh derby I'd have to find a bet to make the experience that little bit less dry. I had a look around for a potential first goalscorer bet, and since Hibs were likely to play three strikers in Riordan, Johansson and Fletcher I thought I'd focus my attention on the Hearts players.

Even though they were favourites for the game and have had quite a good season, hardly any of their players seem to score any goals. Their striker Christian Nade plays on his own up front and would possibly be taking penalties, but he has a truly pitiful scoring record - one goal this season in twenty appearances, and sixteen goals in his entire footballing career, despite the fact he's a 24-year-old striker.

Presumably because of this record, one could buy him at 11 on the 0-100 first goalscorer market with one bookmaker, a market which makes up 100 if the player scores first and 0 if they don't. Buying that at 11 is equivalent to having a bet on him to score first at 8/1.

Despite his terrible scoring record, it sounded like he'd had a lot of chances in previous games and would surely find the net soon. There's just no way that a striker on his own up front and possibly on penalties, playing for the team that's favourite, cannot be a bet at 8/1. So against my better instincts I BOUGHT CHRISTIAN NADE FIRST GOALSCORER AT 11.

DURING THE MATCH

Perhaps Scottish football is actually really entertaining most of the time, with lots of incisive passing, goals and excitement, but I just happened to have mainly watched the games that are very dull and lacking in quality. Then again, if one observes Rangers' heroic but unfathomably dour UEFA Cup run last season, and then considers that they're one of the two best teams in the league by miles, I think my cynicism about Scottish football is justified.

I did feel sorry for Christian Nade in this game. Everyone really wanted him to score, chances kept falling to him, but he just missed over and over again. He hit the woodwork twice, had a couple of efforts saved and blazed one embarrassingly over.

This was the sort of bet that had to be worth doing, but was just always going to lose. I'm not sure what betting lessons I've learned from this nil-nil draw, but one thing's for sure, I won't be watching the repeat of this fixture at Easter Road this weekend.

AR