It almost goes without saying but for anyone new to betting Over/Under betting is when you bet on a certain threshold either being met or not met in a match. For example, Chelsea take on Liverpool in this weekend’s Premier League. Currently Over 2.5 goals is 1.61, Under 2.5 goals is 2.49. If you bet Over 2.5 goals you need for at least three goals to be scored for your bet to win. If you bet on Under 2.5 goals, so long as less than three goals are scored you’ll win.

In today’s article we want to speak about some factors you should be paying attention to in order to make betting Over/Under football betting tips; Form and Averages vs Occurrences. In Part II, we’ll speak about Expected Goals (xG), Motivation and Greed.

How to Improve your Over/Under Football Betting Tips

First of all we need to look at form, so recent form, recent home/away form and recent head to head fixtures between the teams.

Form

Something we see a lot of is that so many of the form websites only give you the five most recent matches of the teams involved, this isn’t enough. On Bet Dynamo because we know how important home advantage is in sports, especially in football, we look at home and away fixtures to get our stats.

When making a bet, the more knowledge you have the better. It’s good to drill down further into teams to get to know more about the trends involved. Let’s take our Chelsea vs Liverpool matchup. Chelsea have have a mixed run of fixtures, they’ve played two promoted teams, and three of last season’s Top 10. Liverpool have had it easy, one promoted and three from last season’s bottom seven. One from the Top 5. Should we only look at those matches or go back into last season to look at how they finished the season? We think you already know the answer.

Averages vs Occurrences

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of looking at averages rather than occurrences. On average Chelsea have conceded 2.2 goals per match this season. One of those was the 4-0 hammering at Old Trafford at the hands of Manchester United. If we remove that match the average falls to 1.75. Do we dismiss the United match because it was such an oddity? Over the whole of the last Premier League season Chelsea conceded 1.02 goals per match and only 0.63 goals per game when playing at home.

OK, we can now say with some confidence then that the 4-0 defeat at Old Trafford was a freak occurrence, for anyone who watched the match they’ll know that the scoreline was not reflective of the match, but that’s football and these things happen. What we can see though from this season is that in all but one match so far this season in all competitions Chelsea have conceded 2 goals or more. Only Leicester failed to get two past Kepa Arrizabalag, they only got one.

When it comes to looking at Over/Under betting it’s better to look at how many times, for example, Over 2.5 goals has been scored in matches involving a team. We can look back at Chelsea’s last 10 Premier League matches; 30 goals in 10 matches; 3 goals on average. However, Over 2.5 goals has occurred in 6/10 matches. Looking at averages gives you a great insight into large samples of matches, but it’s good to match those averages with occurrences so you get a true reflection of what’s been happening in recent matches.

In Part II, we’ll speak about Expected Goals (xG), Motivation and Greed.