Right,
So welcome to the Advanced Training section of the Goal Markets Betting System. Within these pages we are going to be dissecting the key components that determine how many goals will be scored in a given match. Armed with this information you will be able to dominate the various goal markets that we discussed in the Introduction Manual.
The information in this part of the course is designed to be Educational rather than instructional. The Advanced Training we aim to give you should be used so that when you are researching matches you can quickly identify the likely number of goals a game will have and then bet accordingly, making profits as you go. If you are looking for a system with rigid rules to follow then I recommend you following the Beginner's System until you are comfortable with the ideas outlined in this Advanced Training to move out from the rigidity of using systems and start using your own intuition (backed up with solid research) to master the total goals market.
Basically the point of this part of the course is to improve your intuition into games. Your intuition is effectively the gut feeling you have about how a match will go. When you look at a game and you kind of just feel that there will be lots of goals this is your intuition at work. Intuition is effectively the subconscious weighing up the facts at its disposal to give you a gut feeling about the result. The more RELEVANT information you have the better your intuition will be.
In this part of the course we will be looking at all of the RELEVANT information that determines the amount of goals in a game, so that when you take a look at a game your subconscious will be weighing up all of the relevant facts to make a better assessment of how it will go and your 'intuition' will start yielding much higher returns for you.
The line up of the two sides will have the most impact on how many goals will be scored in a game. This much should be obvious as they will be the ones who are scoring the goals. So what we need to be doing is researching the likely line up and then making our decisions based on this.
To do this I like to check out the major fan forums the day before and see what the popular opinion is. After all fans who are members of forums about their teams are going to be very knowledgeable about their side. I use this to my advantage. I check out what the general opinion is of the lineup and then use this to judge how many goals there will be.
The major forums for the Premiership teams are as follows:
Arsenal - http://arsenal-mania.com/forum/
Aston Villa - http://www.villatalk.com/
Birmingham - www.bcfcforum.co.uk/
Blackburn Rovers - http://boards.rovers.co.uk/
Bolton Wanderers - http://www.the-wanderer.co.uk
Chelsea - http://forums.cfcnet.co.uk/
Everton - http://www.bluekipper.net/
Fulham - cc.fulhamfc.com/forum
Liverpool - http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php
Manchester City - http://www.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/forum/index.php
Manchester United - http://www.redcafe.net/
Newcastle United - http://www.toontastic.net/board/
Stoke City - http://www.delilahsforum.co.uk/forum/forum.php/
Sunderland - http://www.safc-fans.com/forum/
Tottenham Hotspur - http://www.thfctalk.com/forum/
West Brom - http://www.westbrom.com/forum/index.php
West Ham - http://www.kumb.com/forum/index.php
Wigan - http://boards.footymad.net/forum.php
Wolves - http://www.the-wolf.co.uk/
These are the ones that I use, some of them will require you to sign up to read the posts but I recommend you do this as the information gained can sometimes be vital. If you are betting on other League football or on foreign sides then simply type into google "Team Name Forums" or "Team Name Fan Forums" to find a list of online discussion boards talking about that particular team. A great resource I use for this as well is the betfair forums. This can be found on the betfair site!
The reason we go through all of this effort instead of just relying on the lineups when they are announced is that we want the information to come a long time before kick off so we have ample opportunity to make our decision.
Also often times these forums will be able to tell you some great inside scoops about key players being injured or some other juicy information. For example I once read in a forum how a guy had seen his local super striker in a local bar until the early hours the night before a match. Now obviously this could have been pure fiction but sure enough the next day the same player was ruled out having 'picked up a stomach bug in the night'.
So try to get RELIABLE information as quickly as possible. When it comes to internet message boards the reliability will always be in question but if a large number of people all agree on a particular lineup then you should work off the assumption it is correct.
Now that you know the expected lineup you can start to dissect how many goals each side should be scoring. You need to be looking at the team as a whole as each player plays a part in how many goals are scored in a game.
The obvious things you will be taking into consideration are the presence/absence of big name strikers, unbeatable defenders and super keepers.
Less obvious things you will want to take into account are the history of the defensive lineup. How many times has this particular defensive foursome played together. If they are a relatively new backline then there is an increased chance of them being broken down as they are not yet used to how each of them play. Next time you watch Chelsea play watch how John Terry goes for a header and his position is instantly covered by one of his team mates. This is because they have all played together a lot and know exactly where everyone else is at all times. New partnerships do not have this history and are often unsure of where their fellow defenders are and often lose cover.
Midfielders are often overlooked when it comes to Goal Market betting but their influence on the number of goals is massive. Midfield players account for the majority of assists in Premiership football so a particularly good midfield player being left out of the side for whatever reason will have an effect on the number of goals are likely to be scored. Some good examples of this can be seen in Man Utd. When Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs are playing you will more often than not find that they will assist a goal in the game. This is because they are fantastic play makers and split defenders wide open, so while they do not score all of the time a lot of goals are scored because of their penetrating play.
I have already mentioned defensive lineups but perhaps even more important are strike partners. Teams with two main strikers will often have a solid partnership formed whereby both players play off each other and therefore are more likely to score when they are featured together. The majority of the time one of the strikers will have considerably more goals than the other. If the other striker does not feature one would assume that the other striker will still score just as frequently, but if he was scoring because of his partnership then his goals will dry up.
So to sum up the lineup you are looking at major inclusions/exclusions that will have an effect on the attacking/defending capability of each side. Big strikers and safe handed keepers are obvious examples of what to look for while play making midfielders and regular defenders are others. Also an important point is team chemistry as a whole. A team that plays together often will often gel together better and will be more likely to score.
The next factor in determining the number of goals scored in a match that we will be looing at is team mentality. There are two forms of mentality that we will need to factor into our betting, that is the mentality that is produced from recent form and the mentality that is instilled into the team by the fans, the manager and history.
Recent form will play a huge role in how many goals a team will score in a given game. A team that has won 8 of their last 10 games and in those games have scored a total of 30 odd goals (3 a game) will likely continue in this fashion and score a nice amount of goals again. This is because this team is said to be flying and will be riding high on confidence which will spillover to the pitch and will strike fear into their opposition.
Conversely a team who has been losing consistently week in week out will be unlikely to run rampant in their next match because they will be lacking confidence.
When you are looking at teams the combined mentality of the teams caused by form is important. Two teams that are flying high and scoring lots of goals are likely to have a very open game with lots of goals going in. Whereas two teams who are flying but only with 1-0 and 2-0 victories every time are likely to have a very cagey and highly defensive encounter.
Then of course a team who is flying high scoring lots of goals playing against a team coming off the back of a string of upsetting defeats is likely to knock quite a few in past them but the poor performing side are unlikely to reply. These examples are not taking into account the actual abilities of the two teams just their form, obviously a Big 4 team in a slump is still likely to beat a newly promoted side on a good run but these are just things to think about.
So the second mentality we need to look at is that which is instilled into the team. A classic example of what I am referring to is the Mourinho effect. Whenever Mourinho joins a team they start winning. However if you take a look at the results Mourinho got especially in his reign at Chelsea and Inter is that a large amount of his games were 1-0. This is what I mean by the mentality instilled into the team. Obviously Mourinho is happy with 1-0 victories and once his team goes 1-0 he urges them to camp out and defend effectively killing off the game. Teams like this are not likely to score many goals. The Mourinho effect has declined since he joined Real Madrid as they have been scoring a lot of goals in matches. I suppose not even Jose can tell Ronaldo and Higuain to stop scoring goals and defend!
Chelsea post-Mourinho however have proven to be rather different, especially towards the end of the 2009/10 and beginning of the 2010/11 season where they hit a number of 6+ against teams. This is obviously therefore a change in the mentality of the team whereby just winning is no longer enough, they must win in style. Arsenal are a similar example of this, they will win in style and scoring goals accomplishes this.
Man Utd on the other hand when they go a few goals to the good will bring off their big talent in order to rest them and bring out their young talent instead. This type of play means that when we judge the lineup for teams like Man Utd we will need to judge the subsititutes as well and see how likely they are to score in the particular game.
Pretty much when you are looking at the mentality of the teams think about how their recent results will affect their goal scoring ability and think about how many goals the team will even try to score before they sit back and are content with the score as it is. There is nothing worse than backing Over 2.5 goals and a team scores 2 in the first half but then play 45 minutes of keep ball in the second leaving your bet in the wind.
There are a huge number of different game types and the type of game will directly affect how many goals there are in a specific game. You will have already seen all of these types of games but will not have thought about how they would affect the number of goals. Here is a rundown of the types of games that often arise and how they normally affect the number of goals.
Obviously this type of game concerns those teams who are near the top of the table playing against a team who is fairly low down the table. Chelsea vs West Ham would be a good example of this. When you are looking at these types of games it is relatively obvious that the 'Top' team has the advantage over the 'bottom' side.
What you should be looking at in these games is how many goals the top team are going to score against the bottom team. Obviously the bottom team has a chance of winning the match but in the long run the top team will win a lot more games than the bottom team in this circumstance.
So in this circumstance we need to look at how many goals the top team can score against the bottom team. What has the top team done against similar teams already this season?
In your mind you need to think; will the top team hit in 3 or more goals against this lesser opposition or even though they will get beaten will the bottom team manage to scrape a goal themselves?
Some bottom teams are great at low scoring matches when at home while some top teams will just get to a comfortable 2-0 lead and will just play pass ball from there. These are some of the things you will need to consider in this type of matchup.
One of the most exciting matches you can watch is a Derby. There are loads of derbies. Even in the Premiership alone there is a huge host of derbies. There are several London derbies, the Merseyside derby, the Tyneside derby, the Midlands derby, there are loads of them.
And the thing they usually have in common is there are no rules. There is no form when it comes into a derby, everything that has happened before this game means nothing. Everton could be bottom of the Championship having lost 30 straight games and come derby day they could thrash Liverpool 3-0. It's the derby day mentality.
With this though you can sometimes predict if it is going to be a high scoring derby or a low scoring derby based on the past fixtures in the derbies and the recent form of both sides. If both teams are used to having 3-3 battles with each other and they are both coming into the derby having each scored 10 goals in their past 4 games you can expect another goal fest to be coming. If conversely both teams are struggling for goals you can expect an immense battle of a game whereby 1 goal nicks it.
As I said derbies are a tough one to predict so I often try to stay away from them if possible but as there are so many of them around its pretty hard to avoid them all the time.
My advice is to look at the team and how many goals are in them, look at the past couple of games but most importantly look at past derbies to see how the derby affects the players in that particular team. Some teams like Arsenal sometimes play exactly the same as they always do during a derby but then teams like Man Utd recently have stopped playing their usual level of quality football and when at City play like it was Sunday League.
The big games, these days it would be better to probably change this to the Top 6 with Man City and Tottenham joining in the fun, or maybe the Top 5 if Liverpool don't get their act together! These are the games that make supporting football enjoyable, and they are a Over 2.5 Goal backer's dream due to the odds and the number of 2-1 victories in games like this is very surprising. Because both teams are quality you would expect that they wouldn't be able to break each other down but that isn't the case.
Obviously there are only rare occasions were games like this break the 5 goal barrier but breaking the 3 goal barrier comes often. When looking at these games you want to be looking at both sides attacking nature. If both sides are playing with their best strikers on the pitch and these strikers are proven goal scorers then it doesn't matter to them who they are playing they will score goals.
These games however are rarely run aways so you do need to look at both sides teamsheets as opposed to the topvsbottom encounter were you just look at the top team. Look at the past results for both of these teams against similar opposition paying particular attention to how many goals they conceded, as that is what is key to these games. The strikers just have to be there for a chance to score, the defenders have to make a mistake in order concede a goal!
So another thing you need to take into account when betting the number of goals; what type of competition is the match? There are a number of different competitions and all of these competitions have different stages that decide how many goals there are going to be. To name just a few there are Leagues (Premiership, La Liga, Championship etc.), Knockout Competitions (FA Cup, League Cup, Later stages of the Champions League), Group Stages (Europa League, Champions League).
All of these will affect the scoring as well. Take the Cup Finals for example, generally speaking these are going to be low scoring affairs, more often than not a 1-0 or 2-0 encounter. In fact in the last 16 years the Under 2.5 Goals bet would have won in 12 of the last 16 FA Cup Finals. On the other hand however the Champions League finals would have been a tie with 8 matches finishing under 2.5 goals and 8 matches finishing over.
This means there are obvious differences between English and European Finals with English finals tending to be low scoring affairs and European Finals being a mixture (interestingly the only time in these statistics that 2 english sides met each other in the Champions League Final the result was under 2.5 goals!).
So that's finals, in the beginning of the competition it is similar to a topvsbottom encounter with a notable difference. The 'top' teams whenever playing lower league competition always tend to play a much weakened young team, Arsenal, Chelsea and Man Utd are shining examples of this. This is when Giant Killing comes in. This needs to be factored into your betting, if the team is a completely new starting 11 from their last 5 encounters then you cannot include those results in your reasoning. Do some research into the players that are starting and determine their likelihood of scoring past the opposition and work from there. If you cannot find any information about them then just move on, there will be plenty of matches on cup day that you will be able to find some qualifying bets.
Another Competition type that you should look out for is the end of the season. When it gets to this point in the season you are sometimes better off (if you can watch the match or get live up-to-date analysis) not betting until after 5-10 minutes. This is because play is very tense, if a team is trying to break the top 4 and needs a win they are just as likely to have a 0-0 draw as they are to cruising 4-0 in the game. This is because the tension gets to them and if they are unable to string passes together and build momentum the match will start to turn and their opposition will be more than happy to sit back and defend. This is why you should watch the first ten minutes and bet in play. You will be able to see if the team can build their momentum and you will be able to judge for yourself the likelihood of them breaking the deadlock, more often than not when a team in that type of position breaks the deadlock the pressure will be off and the good football that got them to that position will start to shine through and more goals will follow.
Another kind of match that will crop up towards the end of the season are relegation fodder grudge matches; where two teams who are battling to stay in the league face off against each other. These are usually low scoring affairs as both teams are hanging on and trying not to concede and then trying to nick that winner.
Obviously nothing you can do about luck in a football match, but you shouldn't just believe that it doesn't happen. Liverpool fans will tell you that every now and again a beachball will fly on the pitch and score a goal against you!
Not only beach balls but how many times have you seen an offside decision rule out a perfectly decent goal? There are a huge number of lucky goals or lucky not goals that you should bear in mind when you are betting on the total goals:
Even penalties can be seen as a form of luck. If a penalty is given there is a 70% chance (approximately) that penalty is going to result in a goal.
As I said before there is nothing you can do about luck in a game of football but there is something you can do afterwards if you bet in-play.
Goals are big things in a game, they can open the flood gates for more goals or they can kill the game off and ensure that there are no more goals. Keep an eye on the play and use your reasoning to determine what will happen from here. If a team were knocking on the door the whole game and a fluke puts them in front there is a good chance that they will go on to score a couple more. If however a team was on the back foot and a fluke put them in front then they might just set up shop and put every man behind the ball until full time.
Last but by no means least we will discuss the odds. Life would be much simpler if the 2.5 goal market was Evens for the Overs and Evens for the Unders. Unfortunately for us however life does not work like that. Life has given us odds.
The problem with the odds is that a lot of the time you will find a game that you are certain will go over 2.5 goals based on everything we have spoke about in this guide and look at the odds to find they are too low for you to consider betting on.
This is the part of the guide were I cannot help you, all I can do is offer advice. What you need to do is before you even look at the odds look at all the games that are being played and think about how many goals there should be based on everything you now know about goals in football. Then convert this into your own odds for example:
Man Utd are playing Everton, I think the game will have at least 3 goals and I am 70% confident, meaning I believe I will be right 70 times and wrong 30 times out of 100. So the odds in my head should be 3/7 (~1.42 decimal odds) for Over 2.5 goals.
[This is right imagine you backed £1 each time, for the 7 times you win you would have won £3 and for the 3 times you would have lost you would be £3 out of pocket].
If I now find that the odds are infact 1.7 for the Over 2.5 goals then I should back it because at 1.7 I will win 7 times for a profit of £4.90 and lost 3 times for £3 leaving overall profit of £1.90.
This is what professional betting is at its core finding odds that are higher than what they should be so that in the long run you have an edge over the bookmaker.
The key is mastering your predictions by utilising what I have mentioned in this guide, if I wasn't 70% sure then I wouldn't have been able to come up with the odds I thought the Over 2.5 goals market should be and then I would not have been able to place my bet because I would not have known if there was any value in it!
So will leave you with this:
Know the market, know the odds, know the value.
Remember get the best odds and a free £100 match bonus from Bet365 by clicking this link.
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