When you are trading football matches in-play you should also look out for, what I like to call, surprise goals as these can give you a great opportunity for profit. When a goal goes in against the run of play, you can often find the match eventually goes in favour of the run of play and that goal was just a mere blip along the way.
As we all know, goals can, literally, come out of nowhere during football matches. Sometimes, goals can be as a result of a defensive mistake or a moment of magic and doesn’t fully reflect that teams performance leading up to the goal. The interesting thing is that the markets simply have to move with the goals and so you might see a team that hasn’t been in the game, take the lead and then obviously trade at a much lower price then they should be.
I recently mentioned an example of this in a match between West Brom and Wolves, however we also had a good example in the Champions League match last night.
Napoli
Every man and his dog was backing Napoli to beat Chelsea last night.
The opening price on Napoli was 2.60 and their price was hammered into 2.30 by kick off. As soon as the match started you could clearly see that Napoli were looking the brighter team and well worth their title as favourites to win the match.
However, from nowhere the Napoli defender Cannavaro slips up and allows Mata to score for Chelsea in the 27th minute. That was a real surprise goal as Chelsea had showed no sign of taking the lead or even any sign of being able to contain Napoli for the full 90 minutes.
Low and behold, Chelsea’s price crashed from 4 down to 2 and a good laying opportunity had presented itself.
Chelsea were leading by a goal but you couldn’t be confident that they would hold that lead and certainly not anywhere near 50% of the time against a Napoli team that were cutting the Chelsea defence to shreds with every attack.
Napoli were a bit stunned immediately after the goal but they eventually got their act together and equalised within 10 minutes and eventually ran out as 3-1 winners and deservedly so too.
This is something you should really look out for when football trading. Many teams often score against the run of play and it ends up presenting you with good value odds to be had as, in most cases, the flow of the game will eventually be restored.
Real Madrid
The action in the Champions League last night was pretty entertaining, unless you were one of those who thought they were buying money backing Real Madrid at low odds when they were leading 1-0 against CSKA Moscow.
Real Madrid were trading below 1.10 for the majority of the second half but the lead was “only” the one goal. As mentioned at the top, goals can come from nowhere. A mistake, a moment of magic, a free kick, corner, long ball into the box are all ways to score surprise goals.
CSKA Moscow managed to get one in the 93rd minute as Madrid showed they are still susceptible to crosses and after trading @ 1.01, Real Madrid had failed to win. I am sure they will turn it around in the second leg but it was pretty entertaining to see nonetheless.
My view is, and always has been, that in a sport like football where a goal can change so much, you really shouldn’t be seeing teams trade below 1.05, never mind 1.01, when its only a one goal lead and taking them on when its only the one goal difference can be a great position to take!
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