Betting tips & predictions

How to Improve your Over/Under Football Betting Tips, Part II

18th September 2019

Articles

In a recent article called How to Improve your Over/Under Football Betting Tips we spoke about the importance of paying attention to Form and Averages vs Occurrences. Regarding form, it’s important to look deep into stats and previous matches to look for trends and anomalies. When it comes to comparing averages and occurrences it’s important to know that while averages can give a good indication of what may occur, occurrences show you how many times an event has actually occurred, a couple of high scoring matches can being up an average and give a false impression of how things are really going for a team. To read the full article, click here: How to Improve your Over/Under Football Betting Tips Part I

Today we want to talk about three other factors that are important for improving your Over/Under betting tips; Expected Goals (xG), Motivation and Greed.

Expect Goals (xG)

OK, we know that this could be a controversial pick especially among the older ‘football men’ but really, since it became a mainstream stat, thanks largely to BBC’s Match of the Day, it has become yet another tool to be used for making better-informed betting tips. xG while similar to average goals scored is different in that it analyses how many goals a team should have scored from the chances created in a match.

Let’s have a look at an example from this weekend’s Premier League where Southampton are at home to Bournemouth on Friday night. Southampton have scored five and conceded six goals so far this season, at home they’ve scored two and conceded three. Bournemouth have scored eight and conceded nine, scoring three away from home and conceding four. From that data alone we can see that at home, Southampton average one goal per game and concede 1.5 goals per game. Bournemouth average 1.5 goals away from home and concede 2.

As said above the xG data shows the goals a team should have scored in a match so it gives a better indication of how many chances a team creates in a match. In Southampton’s home matches so far their xG has been 2.14 and 0.77, against Liverpool and Man United, so a total of 2.91, an average of 1.45. In the Cherry’s away matches their xG was 1.63 and 0.55, a total of 2.18, so 1.09 on average.

If we compare the goals scored and the xG of both teams we’ll get a better overall picture of how their season is going. The Saints average a goal a game, their xG is 1.45, meaning they’re a bit wasteful, but are certainly creating chances. Bournemouth average 1.5 goals per match yet their xG is 1.09, meaning they’ve been more clinical than expected so hopefully this trend continues.

As you can see then, xG is another powerful stat to use to learn more about the teams involved.

Motivation

The Italian Serie B league is world famous for the ability of teams to draw matches towards the end of the season. Indeed, there have been plenty of incidents in Italy’s Serie A of it happening as well between teams with little to play for as the season closes. Looking at odds you can sometimes get a little caught up in what you believe might be a good price, or value. While it’s incredibly important to be able to find value picks it’s good to keep in mind though what the players actually playing for.

We can see this all too evidently in the League Cup in England, the vast amount of managers like to blood new players or give an opportunity for fringe players to make a case for their inclusion in the first team and they can be highly motivated to win a match. However, it might also be the case that there’s a few first teamers in the lineup and they’re not too bothered about the League Cup because there’s a derby coming up next week and then they’re away to Italy for a Champions League tie. On the other hand, a former manager could be returning to his old stomping ground and his former players want to make a point about how bad he was.

These are just a couple of hypothetical examples, but it’s easy to imagine such things happening. Because of this, it’s important to know how motivated both teams are coming into a match so try and read some previews regarding the match to get a better idea of what’s on the line.

Greed

Finally then, keep a cool head and don’t get greedy. If you’re on a winning streak of a few matches don’t up the stakes because you’ve started to believe your own hype, have a good staking strategy, be that level stakes, proportional stakes or whatever suits you best, but keep things simple and keep thinking about long term goals. The same goes for losing streaks, stick to your staking plan and don’t chase losses by trying to martingale your way out of trouble, that only ends in an empty bank and frustration.

Keep in the know

Subscribe to our mailing list!