In the final part of our series on which football stats to pay close attention to when betting we’re going to look at Team News and Team Motivation. Previously we have written about why Head to Head stats (Football Betting Stats, Part I ), Recent Form stats (Football Betting Stats, Part II ) and why Home Advantage are all important factors to pay close attention to. Catch up on those articles to learn more about making better football betting tips.

We need to keep an eye on team news for obvious reasons. Should a team announce that a star player is missing for an upcoming clash various prices in the market will rise, or drift. People often say ‘drift’ instead of rise in football betting jargon, they tend to say ‘shorten’ when a price falls in value. Anyway, enough of the jargon lessons, let’s say that new Juventus manager Maurizio Sarri announces during the week that the Old Lady will be without Cristiano Ronaldo and Miralem Pjanic for their opening day Serie A fixture away to Parma. Currently, Juve are priced at 1.33 to bag the three points. We can make an educated guess that their price would drift out to between 1.50-1.60 if that were to happen.

When one betting market moves others tend to follow. Over 2.5 goals for the match is priced at 1.68, if those two stars were in fact injured it would move a good bit closer to 2.0. The prices for all the Over/Under markets would see a fair bit of movement as would the Both Teams to Score price and the Asian Lines too.

Of course, if you were someone in the know and knew before the announcement that some injury news was going to be made then you could make a tidy profit by trading the pre match prices on a betting exchange. In this example you’d Lay Juventus at 1.33 then trade out at 1.55. It’s incredibly rare though that punters have this kind of knowledge and there are tight rules in the game about team staff betting on matches involving the team they work for.

Many articles about betting claim that you should bet on a match early for better prices, but in many cases it’s better to wait until after a press conference because some injuries can be announced that will force movement in the market. It’s simple really, don’t bet on an event occurring in the match until you know all the prematch facts.

Suspensions, players returning from injury/suspension and new signings are all other major factors in this area too and it’s very important to know that changes to team lineup can have a huge effect on betting markets. Keep an eye out for when Harry Kane inevitably gets injured this season and compare the odds of Over 2.5 goals in previous matches involving the Spurs hitman and matches without him, there’s a huge difference. A new manager taking over also affects betting odds, punters love to believe in the romance of the ‘new manager bounce’ and they’ll heap money on his new team. In reality, the new manager bounce is a myth, it’s a nice one, but it’s not true and you’d actually make more money betting against a new manager.

Motivation also has its role to play. In Leicester City’s title winning season the Foxes were determined to show the world they could do it and none more so than striker Jamie Vardy who wanted to beat former Manchester United striker Ruud van Nistelrooy’s record of scoring in 11 Premier League matches in a row. He now sits with Jimmy Dunne on 12 goals scored in a row in top flight matches.

Momentum also falls under motivation here, it’s good to keep an eye on the recent form of teams, as we’re written about before (Football Betting Stats, Part II ), and look for trends just before they happen. For example, in last season’s Premier League West Ham beat Huddersfield 4-3, coming from 1-3 down to beat The Terriers. However, they then went on a run of 4 matches taking just one point. If you’d seen the downward trend of West Ham and that their confidence was knocked you’d have made a tidy profit betting against them in the Asian Handicap markets. So it pays to keep an eye on the form stats and look for momentum trends to make betting betting tips.

That wraps up our series on which football stats to pay attention to when making your betting decisions, it all boils down to one simple rule though, the more you know the better. Make informed betting decisions for successful betting tips and always look for true value in the betting markets.