Now that we have come to an advanced stage of all the domestic leagues, it is easier to interpret patterns in the results during the season to date, and take advantage of them. What we are trying to identify this week are teams that draw away from home far more often than the league average. By using the “Season Summary” on www.statto.com, the Premiership has seen 25% of all games to date end in draws, whilst in the lower leagues the percentage is slightly higher – between 27% and 28%. Yet there are teams regularly drawing over 40% of their away fixtures, and it is these matches that we are looking to gain an advantage from.
An example is shown to the left of the Away Score Distribution for the Championship to date. The three circled areas relate to the teams who have a much higher than average draw ratio away from home than that of the league – Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest have both drawn 47% of their away matches, whereas Swansea City has drawn 39%. Identifying these trends when the season is developed is much more reliable with a larger number of games played, and by using this method to go through the four major divisions of the English leagues, you will find 27 teams that fall into this category, of which 12 are playing away this weekend.
The full list of applicable games is:-
Fulham v Manchester City
Blackpool v Crystal Palace
Queens Park Rangers v Swansea City
Stockport v Brentford
MK Dons v Southampton
Walsall v Colchester
Oldham v Brighton
Southend v Carlisle
Leeds v Millwall
Northampton v Morecambe
Cheltenham v Port Vale
Dagenham & Redbridge v Macclesfield
It is highly unlikely that all 12 matches will finish in a tie (1,388,670/1), so how is it best to back the information that we have in order to bet profitably? We know that the overall “league average” suggests that three of these games will end as a draw, so we are looking at covering 3 winning selections as a minimum. Backing any 3 from 12 is expensive (220 bets) when a successful treble only pays just over 33/1 based on the average bookmaker`s price of a draw in the above matches (9/4).
So, we are going to apply a simple permutation of any “one draw from each of three groups”, with each group containing 4 matches – a total of (4x4x4) 64 bets.
How are the returns calculated?
At the average price of 9/4, a successful treble pays a total return of £34.33 to a £1 stake. With 12 matches covered containing teams with an average draw ratio of 42%, there should be 5 draws amongst these selections. To roughly calculate the returns, multiply £34.33 by the number of winning lines in your permutation – ie 1 correct result in group 1 –x- 2 correct in group 2 –x- 2 correct in group 3 = 4 winning lines x £34.33 = total return of £137.32. I shall show you how calculate multiple returns from permed bets next week.
This method of perming bets works in other sports also, and is an item that we will be returning to throughout the year.
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