A few months ago I read a very interesting betting article that describes how to compile betting ratings through which to make predictions for football matches. Unfortunately, the article didn’t describe how the rating is calculated, because they want to keep the information for themselves, but it was explained that the main thing in the rating is the attacking play of both teams. According to them, the attack was the factor that makes the difference between winning and losing in a football match.
I admit, I don’t have much experience in compiling such betting strategies, but I decided to do something and see what will happen. Since it is about attacking football I thought I could start with a simple excel table, where to store information about goal attempts each team creates and respectively the goals the teams managed to score. In the same table I collect the opposite information – goal attempts allowed by a team and the number of received goals.
Since there is a difference in the presentation of the teams at home and away, I decided to divide the betting research into two parts. When playing a match, I consider only the matches as host for the host team and only the away matches for the visitors.
Apart from this, as the teams naturally are not in the same form during the season, I take into account only the last four matches that the teams have played at home or away.
What is next in this betting system? I calculate the number of goal attempts a team has made versus the average number of their opponent. By doing this I get a number above or below a unit. When the team has created more goal attempts than the average number for their opponent then the number is above 1. When less than the average for the opponent, then the number is below 1. Then I multiply the result to the average goals attempts that the team created in a match and get the most probable number of goal attempts the team will have.
In this betting system follows the multiplying of the above number to the number of goal attempts a team needs to score a goal. By doing this I finally get the probable goals that a team will make in the match. I turn the probable goals into betting odds for a home win, a draw and an away win and I find out if there is a value in this betting prediction.
I’m still in a very early stage of developing this betting system, but when I have more information I will write again.