Value In The Toon?

Another great weekend of football trading action is ahead of us once again. As we are now nearing the end of the season you have to really appreciate these as very soon they will be gone again during the summer and weekends wont quite be the same again… till August that is!

As I mentioned before this is also the time of the season when market prices can appear pretty out of sync with where they should be. Every Thursday I will look to my spreadsheet and price up the matches ahead of the weekend and every now and then there is one match that pops up that makes me double look and double check.

Value In The Toon?

This week that match is Newcastle V Liverpool.

The markets currently have Newcastle @ 3.15 and Liverpool @ 2.46. Whereas, my ratings suggest that Newcastle should be priced @ 2 for this match with Liverpool actually around 4.4. The only reasonable explanation for such a price anomaly has to be because of the Liverpool “name”. You may have heard the interesting snippet that if the Premier League season began in 2012 then Liverpool would be rock bottom. They have been worse then Wolves and Wigan yet they are favourites against a team positioned 6th in the league.Newcastle are currently 8 points ahead of Liverpool in the table and “the league table does not lie”. Arguably, this season Newcastle are a better team then Liverpool and shouldn’t be the underdogs.

You really have to expect that the Liverpool price will drift by kick off on Sunday once all the sharp punters realise the value that is available in backing Newcastle at those odds.

Other Matches…

Most other matches seem to be right on the money with the prices. Fulham are slightly too short against Norwich, they are priced @ 1.75 on Betfair but should be priced @ 2. Considering , Fulham lost their last home match to Swansea this could also be a price that drifts as punters will be less confident in backing them at home so soon after a heavy defeat. Then again, the recent form of Norwich hasn’t been too strong either so this is one which could go either way and I doubt I will get involved with this one.

The other strange one is Chelsea @ 1.88 against Aston Villa when they “should” be 2.40! I believe this anomaly might be due to my spreadsheet taking into account the fact that Chelsea have only won once at Villa Park in Premier League in the past 10 years. Again, I think Chelsea should drift by kick off. Mainly because of the price correction but also because of the distraction of the Champions League and the fact that Di Matteo might shuffle his team for this clash.

It will certainly be very interesting to see where these prices end up by kick off time!