A-Z of Festive Football Betting – Part Two

Welcome to Part Two of our Festive A-Z guide to the world of football betting. There is some exciting FA Cup betting to enjoy in the New Year, as well as looking ahead to the Champions League, and of course the big highlight of 2010, the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Here, along with some betting jargon explained, is the second part of your handy guide to betting on football over the festive period.

M = Manchester City. Aha! Thought you be reading about the Red side of Manchester? Well, while the smiling Alex Ferguson’s men are 23/10 at Totesport to win the Premier League, their city rivals are having a peculiar season. Manchester City spent big in the summer and have only managed to play their way to drawing precisely half of their 16 league matches so far. People were expecting a little more punch from the light blues, but it hasn’t happen. They beat Chelsea one week, and then get hammered by Tottenham the next. Boss Mark Hughes must be a seriously frustrated man, and he’ll be hoping his side can pick up maximum points from their festive games against Stoke and Wolves. They are hovering around the top six, and need to build some kind of momentum to be taken more seriously. 888Sport are offering some great Manchester City special bets involving the amount of trophies they will win this season. Ironically, the shortest odds is 3/10 to win nothing.

N = Newcastle. The Toon Army are hoping for a speedy return to the Premier League, and will hope that rivals Middlesbrough (who visit Newcastle on December 20th) don’t. Newcastle are currently a healthy 7 points clear of second placed West Brom (with two automatic promotion places up for grabs) and are looking in good shape. It has also just been announced that St James’s Park has been put forward as a potential World Cup venue for 2018 should the tournament head to the UK, which may have had Paul Gazza Gascoigne partying in the streets. Chris Hughton is the man in charge of Newcastle at the moment and is leading them to great things by the looks of it. It is a welcome change to the horror of relegation from the Premier League which they endured. They are 5/6 at Victor Chandler to win the Championship, 1/4 at SkyBet to get promotion.

O = Over/Under. A great market to take on the goal scoring department. The standard default for this market is 2.5, meaning that you back a match to finish under or over 2.5 goals. Who scores half of a goal, you may be wondering? Decimals are used in betting to negate the chance of a draw (or a push), leaving just two outcomes instead of three. With the starting market at 2.5, there can only be a winner and a loser. This is a betting option which can be used to your advantage by doing a bit of homework. Top teams like Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool will score a lot more goals than teams like West Ham and Bolton. Look at a league to determine how many goals the home team have scored, and how many the away team have conceded. This is usually a good starting place for this. On Boxing Day, there is a game between West Ham and Portsmouth, the bottom two teams in the Premier League as they stand at the moment. Now, they are likely in that position because of one or two reasons. Either they can’t score enough, or they concede too many (or both). Portsmouth have only netted 15 teams so far in the league, so does that suggest all of their games will be low scoring? Not necessarily, as they could get trounced by a good team. But look at their recent games have seen that they have tightened up at the back, making West Ham’s life even more difficult. So it will be down to the punter to decide what the total goals will be. Clearly if you plump for an Under 4.5 then the odds are going to be very low. Check out Unibet for some good Under/Over betting.

P = Paraguay. No, not going for the obvious Portugal and Cristiano Ronaldo Road-show here, but are instead going for a tip for the dark horses of the 2010 World Cup. Paraguay are the kind of team that you would want to pull out of the office sweepstakes to be honest. They had their best ever qualifying campaign and made the last 16 on two of their previous three World Cup outings. They look better and stronger than ever though, with some good attacking bravery, which led to them having the joint most victories in the South American qualifying zone (they tied with Chile). Paraguay finished a very close third behind Brazil and Chile respectively and that should put them in good stead. Football fans in England will be familiar with the name of Roque Santa Cruz, and he is part of a deadly trio which could make Paraguay a real handful at the 2010 World Cup. 80/1 at Expekt shows the extent of their challenge, but they should get out of their group and make an impact. So look out for them.

Q = Queen’s Speech. Ok, technically nothing to do with football, but you can still have a punt on it all the same. If you think you know what she will talk about first, then you can get some money down on it. Favourite price is 2/1 at Paddy Power on her talking about the economy first. Ok, ok, so back to the beautiful game. Q? Queens Park Rangers? Mid table mediocrity in the Championship. Queiroz (Carlos) is the best bet to go with here, as that will lead us nicely into Portugal (of which he is the manager). After making qualification a monumental struggle, they found themselves drawn in the Group of Death for the World Cup alongside Brazil. They are 10/11 at Totesport to qualify from the Group (same price as the Ivory Coast). If you want a further bet, then they are way out at 28/1 at Totesport to win the tournament itself.

R = Real Madrid. Can the new era of Galacticos go where the old regime could not? They have lost a little ground on leaders Barcelona though, especially after their defeat to their main rivals for La Liga title. Cristiano Ronaldo of course is the big name when one thinks of the new Real Madrid, but their entire side is decked out with an embarrassing array of talent. They should go deep into the Champions League competition too, after finishing four points clear of AC Milan in their group. They are an attacking force to be reckoned with, but have shown vulnerabilities. Are all the pieces in place just yet to challenge Barcelona on both the domestic and European fronts?  They are 6/1 at BetFred to win the Champions League, and 2/1 at SportingBet to beat Barcelona to La Liga title.

S = Spread Betting. A means of betting which is more popular in North America, but still is worth finding out about. Spread betting is a form of a handicap, which doesn’t care so much about the result of match, more on how the game is going to play out. Using Total Amount of Bookings as an example, the spread on this may be set at 4 (usually there will be 0.5 to eliminate the outcome of a draw on a market). With that in place you have the chance to sell (if you think the final total will be less) or buy (if you think the final total will be more). Spread Betting has the potential to lose more than your initial stake. If you buy at £1, and there are 7 Bookings, you will lose your initial stake x3 = £3. If you sold at £1 and the game finished with no bookings, then you would win your initial stake x4. So the more right you are, the more you win. The more wrong you are, the more you lose. There are some variants to this on UK markets, which do take simple win/loss scenarios after setting a team to overcome or hold onto a handicap. Sporting Index holds great markets for Spread Betting.

T = Trixie. A good multiple bet to enjoy, and to get yourself familiar with the whole process. For this you just make three selections, and have coverage from three doubles and one treble. You need two out of the three selections to come up in order to get some returns, and although it is just one selection less, it is far easier than pulling off a much coveted Yankee (see Y). Learning when to use a Trixie can make betting on the weekend’s Premier League games a little more fun, and give you some kind of back-up if the unexpected happens in one game. Of course, the less favourites you pick, the better the prices will be, but it is a good way to try and pick up some returns at least. Boxing Day for example has no real outstanding bankers, so it will be a good time to employ it. Try Totesport for some Boxing Day action.

U = Underdog. With the FA Cup Third round happening over the weekend of January 2nd and 3rd, there is hardly a setting more appropriate for the Underdog to have their day. The FA Cup’s reputation is built upon the building blocks of romantic underdog victories in the competition. Plus underdogs always have the greatest prices, and make for a good payday when it happens – which it is good to note, is rarely, hence the prices set. So who is there to look out for in the third round? There’s not a great of enticing games to be honest, but there are four non-league teams in action. Relegation threatened Reading from the Championship host Liverpool. League One side travel to injury ravaged Everton, and Manchester City have a tricky tie against Championship team Middlesbrough. Watch Unibet for some good FA Cup betting action at the turn of the New Year.

V = Valencia and David Villa. Who? Why? Aha! The Spaniards represent some good betting opportunities, although they may be flying under the radar in the company of their more illustrious Spanish rivals, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Although they are pushing on well and competing near the top of La Liga, the best price on them to win it is an incredible 50/1 at Coral, simply because of the strength of the big two. They are however, in the Europa league and are second favourites to win it at a price of 12/1 at Bet365. David Villa, one of Spain’s star strikers, is favourite to be top scorer at World Cup 2010 at a price of 10/1 at Victor Chandler.

W = World Cup 2010. Oh yes, the betting markets are flooded with options already for the big tournament in South Africa next year. You can get odds on the outright winner, which currently stands as Spain 9/2 at Bet365, Brazil 11/2 at Bet365, England 11/2 at SkyBet and Argentina 10/1 at Blue Square. But there are also plenty of other entertaining fields to partake in of course, and you can already take individual match prices at most bookmakers. Top scorer, Name the Finalists, To Reach Final, All Seeds to Win Their Groups, Top Africa Team etc are just some the fun you can already have betting on the FIFA 2010 World Cup.

X = Xavi (or Xavier Hernandez i Crues to officially name him) is 80/1 at Boylesports to finish as the World Cup 2010 top scorer. Great player that he is, and playing for Spain, he’ll likely be there in the final, that probably won’t happen. But Spain he does represent, and therefore there is a fair chance that the Barcelona genius could be a triple winner in 2010. This is a bit of tenuous link to X (other than this, it was talking about X Factor), so anyway, perhaps this is a cool treble to work on as far as Xavi is concerned. He could Win the World Cup with Spain 9/2 at Victor Chandler, win La Liga with Barcelona 9/20 at Sporting Bet, and win the Champions League 7/2 at SkyBet. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Not if you are a Real Mardrid or England fan, no.

Y = Yankee (and York). Wanted to put in a little bit about York, as they have a big day out in the Third Round of the FA Cup on January 2nd against Premier League side Stoke. The Blue Square Conference side will be hoping for the major giant killing act of the round. If York fans want to dream big, they are only 5000/1 at Ladbrokes to win the FA Cup this year, or 10/3 at BlueSquare to be the non-league side to progress the furthest. Anyway, a Yankee is a four selection bet, which is comprised of 6 doubles, 4 trebles and an accumulator. From experience, picking four correct selections is tough, but this is still a popular bet to take. You need two of the selections to come up to get some return on your action.

Z = Zlatan Ibrahimovic – Thinking there would be a struggle for the letter Z? Not here, the giant Swedish striker, who makes club teamate Lionel Messi look even more minute than he is, is plying his trade with Barcelona this year and looking to make a major impact. He got the chance to shine against his old team Inter Milan in the Champions League group stage, but failed to make an impact in either game by finding the back of the net. He also will not be at the World Cup as Sweden stuffed up their qualifying campaign in the final stages. Well, he is out at 28/1at Coral to finish top scorer in the Champions League, but there is better odds on him finishing as top scorer in La Liga, where he is 7/2 at William Hill. Ibrahimovic has 11 goals in 13 appearances in the league so far.