Lay & Pray!

Wow, the week has just flown by with all the European action as we look forward to another weekend of crazy football trading action.

Lay & Pray

There is a huge price discrepancy in the Fulham-Man City match on Sunday. Man City are priced @ 1.63, whilst my ratings suggest they should be @ 2.10! This isn’t very surprising though as the whole country is going Man City crazy at the moment and you can expect to see them priced artificially low very often this season. They were actually 1.39 to beat Napoli which seems like madness in hindsight. So whilst the price on Man City looks wrong, should you lay them?

A true value bettor would probably take them on but it’s not something that many people will feel great about doing. Man City went to Craven Cottage last season and put 4 past Fulham and so far this season Fulham have looked like they are struggling in the final third. I was at their match Vs Blackburn last week and they dominated the second half yet no one around me was convinced they would actually score. So if you do want to take advantage of the low price on Man City then this is one of those situations were you just have to lay and pray that Man City have an off day as I don’t think Fulham have a team capable of stopping them when they are on fire.

Unbackable

There are some football teams that are virtually un-backable when they get priced as odds-on favourites and you can certainly put Everton (1.59) and Bolton (1.83) in that Category. Both teams look a bit short according to my ratings too with Everton’s true price being 1.65 and Bolton’s being 1.95. Everton were actually a very similar price when they played Wigan in this fixture last season in a match which finished in a draw, there isn’t much convincing me that Everton deserve to be priced so low against Wigan and I will certainly be looking to oppose them in this match. Bolton Wanderers have lost 4 of their last 5 matches at home which doesn’t indicate strong home form and so you would have to be a little bit crazy to want to back them @ 1.83 for the home win even if it is against Norwich City!

Pick of the Fixtures….

The pick of the fixtures this weekend, is undoubtedly the clash at Old Trafford between Man Utd & Chelsea. Manchester United are currently 1.91 and my ratings suggest they should be shorter @ 1.80. I was quite surprised by this as in my head I expected United to be around 2.20.

It’s important to remember they have a few players missing (Vidic, Rafael, Cleverly, Wellbeck) which wont help their cause, whilst Chelsea will still be missing Drogba. I think losing Drogba for this clash is a big blow for Chelsea as he has scored against Man utd on two of their last three visits here. You can get 1.90 on Both Teams To Score which is a bet that has come in 6 of the last 8 times these teams have met. They met at Old Trafford twice last season and both times the score-line finished 2-1 to Manchester United. The 2-1 correct score is trading around 9.4 on Betfair and could be a good price for a Back to Lay as it’s a price that will shorten regardless of whoever takes the lead.

If you do fancy history to repeat itself then backing Hernandez to score anytime  could be worth a shout. The market isnt The Mexican netted three times against Chelsea last season and is virtually guaranteed to be starting against them this Sunday.

We do have action in all the major leagues across Europe so it’s certainly going to be a busy weekend for football trading. Make sure you prepare and always try and so your research the day before rather then in the hour before!