It is always quite amusing when you see a team surprisingly steam dramatically pre-match and then go on to win easily. It always makes you think that the markets knew something you didn’t.

If you did not know any better you might suggest the match was fixed but in the Premier League its very unlikely that is the case.

On Monday night, a few news sites were reporting that Di Matteo was planning to rest a few key players for their trip to Anfield on Tuesday night. This sent Liverpool’s price crashing in from 2.80 down to 2.40 by the morning and it steamed during the day too, trading as low as 2.12 before the match kicked off!

It was a pretty easy trade and one of the more straight forward pre-match trades you will ever see. When a team is resting players it usually always means they will drift and the favourite will move in.

Value?

At a starting price of 2.20, Liverpool were ridiculously low and not a good value bet to take at all, or maybe it was?

Well in the end they won 4-1 so it was a winning bet whether it was good value is debatable.

Chelsea clearly had no interest in that match and are just waiting till May 19th whilst Liverpool wanted to go out and get a win for the fans on the final home game of the season to try and make up for some of the pain they have been through recently. Revenge for being beaten on Saturday was a key incentive for them.

In the end you had a situation where one team REALLY wanted to win playing against a team that had little interest and clearly had their minds elsewhere. I know plenty took on Liverpool at 2.20 and it was a good value lay under normal circumstances but perhaps this time it was better to listen to the markets and understand just why Liverpool were steaming so much.

It is all good in hindsight obviously and, personally, I didn’t touch the match once it went in-play but wasn’t surprised when I heard Liverpool went 3-0 up.Then again, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was told it was Chelsea who were three goals up!

This does highlight the difference between in-play and pre-match trading though.

Pre-match trading, in my view, is straight forward when you pick the right opportunities. The punters knew Liverpool wanted the win more then Chelsea so they backed them enough to move the price, this was very predictable.

Once that match went in-play it became very unpredictable  and I doubt anyone reading this would have forseen a 4-1 Liverpool scoreline unless you are King Kenny himself!