Trading Red Card Over Reaction?

It does seem like the in-play markets are becoming more efficient these days as bots and sharp players are hoovering up the wrong prices that are on offer immediately after a goal is scored.

I have been looking recently at how the markets over react to a red card. My theory is that it’s almost impossible to be able to quickly price up a match in-play when taking a red card into consideration which can cause the markets to be all over the place temporarily.

When a team has a player sent off you have to assess how important that particular player is, how strong the rest of the team is, the amount of time left in the match and also which players might be sacrificed to replace the player who has been sent off.

Therefore, my theory is that there should be some opportunities to be had for scalpers in the immediate aftermath of a sending off.

In the Merseyside Derby recently, Everton’s Jack Rodwell was sent off during the first half. You can see the impact this had on Liverpool’s Match Odds price as they dropped below odds on and then immediately drifted as the market corrected itself.

That screenshot was actually taken 7 minutes after the sending off had happened which is quite a dramatic move in a short space of time. It seems like everyone over reacted to the sending off and chased the Liverpool price down too low before the correction happened and the price drifted.

So this is something that is certainly worth keeping an eye on in future when you are doing some football trading.  Liverpool did win that match but they dropped from 2.80 down to 1.80 after the sending off which is a clear over reaction.