Over 0.5 Goals Betting Guide and Strategy

At look at this low-odds, low-risk option

Best Strategies for Betting

We totally get it. This is a football betting option that is going to have so little appeal to punters that it doesn’t even register on the radar. That is because the chances of it happening are high and that means that the odds on the option coming up are going to be wholeheartedly disappointing. Really as a ballpark figure, you can expect to see around 1/10 odds on an over 0.5 betting option on a match.

All that the bet needs to win is one goal. That’s it and you have success. But getting anything back out of this option naturally requires a big old chunk of a stake that will be at risk. If you have £100 stake to throw down at the option on a game that’s a lot of risk just to make a £10 profit.

But the counter-argument to that would be, is that it does look a relatively secure betting option to take and to back that up, we will take a look at the stats.

2017/18 Premier League example

Just 8% of all games played (of 760 games in total) ended 0-0 during the Premier League 2017/18 season. Let’s go and have a look at the top six finishers from that season and see just how infrequently a 0-0 draw turned up for them.

Man City 2 (1 at home)
Man Utd 3 (1 at home)
Spurs 1 (1 at home)
Liverpool 4 (3 at home)
Chelsea 3 (2 at home)
Arsenal 2 (0 at home)

So you can see that if you had frequently backed their games, particularly the home fixtures involving the big clubs, to finish over 0.5 you would be frequently winning some kind of return. The trouble is, the odds on games involving the league’s stronger teams at home means that you are looking at even less appealing odds on an over 0.5 result coming up.

One example we saw an Arsenal v West Ham game from August 2018 at 1/66 on over 0.5 goals. It’s just not worth touching those kind of odds with a barge-pole.

But there is a trend to all this and you avoid the top teams, because let’s look at some of the mid-table finishers from the 2017/18 Premier League season at how many 0-0 draws they were involved in.

Newcastle 1 (1 at home)
Crystal Palace 4 (1 at home)
Bournemouth 2 (1 at home)
Leicester 3 (1 at home)

So you can see the occurrence of a 0-0 is very rare in a final result in the Premier League. Again of the 760 games played during the top flight season, just sixty of them ended up with a blank. If you are looking at games involving mid-table teams going over 0.5 goals then you can generally find that 1/10 odds benchmark to look at.

It is unlikely that you are going to find a team who didn’t return over 30 games of their season above the 0.5 goal mark. So again, there is some stability in terms of a strong likelihood of the bet not losing. If you pick and choose your teams and fixtures then you do have an opportunity to settle on some consistent returns.

Over 0.5 Strategy In Play

But the poor prices on the option regardless will deter punters and that is totally understandable. But that doesn’t mean that the over 0.5 options should be dismissed totally and we can take a look at a strategy involving the option. It is one that is a little more involved than just sitting back and waiting for a match to complete itself because one way of addressing the Over 0.5 goals option is to head to the in-play markets.

What you can do is wait until the game has gotten underway and then simply wait, try to read the game and exploit any opportunities that do present themselves. For this strategy, we are especially looking at the second half in-play options. We have touched on this before, that there is a high frequency of 0-0 draws at half time in matches and if you find a match that gets there, then that’s 45 minutes chopped off the overall match.

The longer a game goes on at 0-0 the more likely it is that the odds on Over 0.5 goals are going to drift. If you can get to the last half hour of a game that is at 0-0 and then look at the price then you will see the difference in value. More value creeps in. Bookmakers don’t really react to how open a particular game is, their price options are based on the odds offered pre-match and the amount of time elapsed in the fixture.

Reading the Game

Naturally, you are going to get some snooze-fests where there is so little goalmouth action, where there are so few chances flying around that you would rather be watching paint dry. But the way to look at this Over 0.5 goals in-play strategy is to keep an eye on ongoing stats for a game. If you can find a game that is at 0-0 with half an hour to play, but there are plenty of chances being created in the game, either by one team or by both, then it could be worth taking that in-play over 0.5 odds option.

Look at Leagues

Don’t just be dialled into one league for this, try and expand your horizons a bit. This is actually good advice for any betting strategy. For example, the 2017 Norwegian top flight saw 94% of all matches produc at least one goal. Australia’s 2017/18 A-League saw 97% of all games played produc a goal and 82% of games in the league produced at least two goals. So these are the kind of things that can increase your chances of returning from Over 0.5 goals bets. Those are higher percentages than the English top flight was at last season.

Summary

In summary, you are looking at low odds. But if you can stick around the 1/10 odds mark and constantly churn out results is it worth the risk/reward? That is down to the personal preference of the punter of course. In our opinion though there is barely enough meat on the bone in general just to warrant backing the outright options.

If you backed Leicester last season for every one of their games to go Over 0.5 goals at average odds of 1/10 odds with a £10 stake. This is what would have played out.

38 x £10 = £380 staked in total
4 of Leicesters games ended 0-0 so minus £40 loss in stakes
34 x £1 return on each winning bet of a £10 stake = 34

Even if you could string together ten successful results
10 x £10 = £100 stake
Profit would be £10 for that £100 risked

So there’s not much there in terms of risk/reward. You could, however, just wait until after kick off and say after twenty minutes back the same Over 0.5 goals option at a better price than you would have gotten pre-match and that would change things a little bit for you.

We feel that the real strategy is looking for the in-play options on game with around 60 minutes having been played. That is where the real value in Over 0.5 goals betting really is.