Another trading favourites appears to be Laying the HALF-TIME score.
There is no way of knowing how many such results have occurred in the past. So the only way to get anywhere near enough stats is to DIG DEEP into past results.
As is usual I’ll look at the Premiership for last season. I’ve related the matches which DID NOT have a second half goal to the price of the HOME SIDE.
In all there where only 76 instances when a game DIDN’T have one or more goals scored in the SECOND HALF.
Of the 76 games where the score remained the same at full-time a third were in the 1.00 to 1.99 odds group. This doesn’t really tell us a lot, except that the home said probably went down a gear or two thinking about forthcoming matches.
To a lesser degree the same applies to the largest group, those priced from 2.00 to 2.99. Here there were 29 matches making 38%.
The remainder include, from 3.00 to 3.99 only 4 matches meeting requirements. 4,00 to 4.99 has one more,and from 5.00 onwards. There are 13 such matches. This last block of 13 is interesting, in that by the size of the odds on offer it would normally be assumed that the home team were expected to be easy fodder, this was not all ways the case. There were instances where the home side managed to sneak a lead and hold it.
The problem that comes with this strategy is very simple. LAYING at half-time will leave large liabilities. Often finding LAY odds of 5.0 or more. It can be a successful strategy if the bet is left for later in the game. Naturally the longer it is left to make the bet the smaller the odds will be, while the chance of not seeing another goal rises,literally by the minute. Smaller liabilities will however accrue. Literally a case of swings and roundabouts.
One thing that has always baffled me is the number of home team that are behind at half-time but fail to make much of an impact in the second half. I have always thought that the home side would try a little harder in the second half. This is not always the case. Checking thru’ the Premiership and Championship for last season I was very surprised at the stats that I turned-up. Between them all, on only 24 occasions did the home side manage to turn possible defeat into victory.
In the Championship there were 147 matches where the visitors were ahead at the interval. The second half turn arounds were few and far between. There were only 19 matches which ended in a HOME win and 28 were drawn.
The Premiership fared little better. From a total of 90 matches where the visitors led at half-time, 64 ended in AWAY wins. Whilst the number of matches which ended in either a HOME win, in both leagues differed, Premiership 5.55% against 12.9% in the Championship, by a fair amount The gap was smaller when DRAWN games were compared. 23.3% in the Premiership against 19.0% in the Championship. The percentage figures for AWAY/AWAY results were closest of the three outcomes. 71.1% in the Premiership and 68% in the Championship. There will be occasions when the AWAY team is winning at the break that a golden opportunity will be there,waiting to be enjoyed.
There is obviously scope for more research into these results. It will be very interesting to see if these figures hold up in some of the foreign leagues. As always let me say that these are but the bones of the skeleton. It will take time and effort to put some flesh upon them.
There must be a way of making good use of these stats but it will be a case of trial and error.
