One of the most popular ways to spread bet is to try and trade bookings in-running during a game that could potentially turn dirty. It's also very tricky and subjective.
Celtic v Rangers is obviously one of the biggest rivalries in the world, so looked like a fun opportunity to have a play on the bookings. I had a look at the prices available before the match, but I pretty much agreed with the spread betting firms, and wasn't tempted into a buy or sell.
I thought it was likely that I'd disagree with one of them during the match, though. The referee was Callum Murray, who as far as I know had never refereed an Old Firm derby before. His bookings average had been quite low in previous seasons, but a bit higher this season.
The game began in a relatiavely sleepy fashion, with not too many hard tackles going in. It was one of the typically obdurate performances that we've come to expect from Walter Smith's sides when they have a tough away fixture. Rangers' top scorer Kris Boyd was left out of the starting line-up again, but I've already had my say on that decision in the article about Aberdeen v Rangers a few weeks ago.
At half time, there'd been two yellow cards, one of which was to Vennegoor of Hesselink for dissent and another to David Weir for going up for a header too vigorously - both fairly harsh. The game didn't look particularly dirty, and I had my eye on a possible sell. I thought I'd wait to see how the second half started, and as after five minutes there hadn't been any more bad challenges or signs that things were about to kick off, I opted for a SELL OF BOOKINGS AT 52, which is obviously a sell of 32 for the rest of the game.
Things were going pretty well for the fifteen minutes after this bet, until Paul Hartley picked up a yellow for dissent. Then on 76 minutes Scott Brown and Steven Naismith went into a crunching 50-50 and were eyeballing eachother straight afterwards, not something one wishes to see when short of bookings.
The referee booked both of them, to put me on 50 with fourteen minutes to go. I thought I'd still get away with a small loss as there still weren't a great deal of challenges going in, but three more Rangers players got booked for silly timewasting or dissent incidents, to bring the total up to 80 by the end, and a nasty twenty-eight point loss.
I felt hard done by given that there had not been many bad tackles in the match, but this shows that trading bookings in big games like this is always risky, and the amount of cards dished out often doesn't reflect how dirty the match actually was.
AR
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