With Sheffield not coming out to play last night I just used up one of my free entries into the “Reverse Beat The Drop” for Paddy Power Pariahs. So onto round 2 As you can see above tonight’s question involves The Mighty Man City v Doubtful Dortmund over in Germany. This is the second leg the first having been played last week with a 2-1 win in Manchester. Although at-home Man City was leading at halftime thanks to a 19th-minute goal. This is most definitely a trend with Man City as they have been leading at Half-Time in all of their Champions League away games this season except for Porto in which the game itself ended goalless. Dortmund is 7/2 to win this game which seems a bit excessive considering their Champions league record and the fact that they are at home they are however not exactly known for early goals scoring just 25% of their home goals in the first half. As with all of these questions the “Yes” refers to just one of three outcomes – winning at halftime, whereas a “No” answer covers both the draw and losing at halftime, that being said “Yes” gets the vote
So Paddy Power has stopped me from doing the”Beat The Drop” game – I will try not to sink into the depths of despair, and let’s face it I still have the Wonder Wheel to keep me entertained once a day. Speaking of which I won £1.25 on it last night Not being able to do beat the drop sparked a thought that instead of sticking my considerable winnings on three-legged nag I could do the Beat the Drop backwards. Instead of starting with a thousand quid and trying to keep it I will start with 25p (This will give me 5 free goes at it) and work up through 12 questions by the end winning £1024.00 (if you halve £1000 12 times it reduces to 24.4p Question 1 is “Will Both Teams Score?” in the Sheffield Utd v Swansea Game tonight. Pre-kick-off odds for BTTS are “Yes” 1.95 and “No” 1.75 at the time of writing this. Starting with the home side, Sheffield have scored in all four of their last 4 home games, which includes a 5-0 drubbing of Cardiff! In fact, they have failed to score just 5 times in this season’s 19 games. There have been 3 0-0 draws at home this season and lost to Nil just twice. Their place 2nd from the bottom can be wholely attributed to their dreadful away form getting just 14 points from 21 away games. Their home scoring average is a shade over 1 at 1.05 Their conceding rate at home however is less than one at 0.74 goals per game On to Swansea and they have scored in all 3 of their away games against the other teams in the bottom 4 of the championship, and have actually scored in 80% of all of their away games this season. A slightly concerning fact is that they have failed to score in 2 of their lastest 4 away games but in view of the fact that losing a play-off place would be a danger should they lose tonight, these two goalless games could just be a blip and not a trend! A victory tonight would put them 4 points clear of Barnsley in fifth place thereby piling the pressure on Barnsley to try and keep Bournemouth at bay. As I am looking to place these bets at 2.0 (evens) or better to keep doubling my stake. Goal timings will be vital as many of these questions will involve in-play bets due to having to wait for the odds to get to my minimum point. This bet is no exception and whilst the odds pre-kick-off are just below 2.0 there is always the danger of an early goal to upset the movement of the market. To this end, I will now look at the probable time of the 1st goal and which team will score it. Sheffield has had two 4th minute goals this season the first being against Barnsley when they lost 1-2 and the second was last Monday against Cardiff. Generally speaking, though they tend to score their majority of goals between 31 minutes and 75 minutes 10 out of the 20 home goals were scored in this time segment). If the pre-match odds remain as they are then 5 minutes should be enough time for the odds to rise up to 2.0 With Swansea being the favorites to win this game a very early goal by Sheffield would stop the market dead and make this bet untenable. (A note to critics on this point is that my aim is to do the game backwards and still think that both teams will score but need the evens odds to do this. With “beat the drop” odds don’t matter) Swansea scoring first would not necessarily affect the odds significantly but the rise would be slower.
For those of you who follow my “Road to Cheltenham” series of bets, this will be bet No 2 this week so apologies as I will be copying a lot of this blog.
No goals at all last night in the Brentford debacle means I fell yet again at Q3 Question 1 in round 3 will be the serie A game between Juventus and Napoli and the all important question is Will Juventus Win As with everything “Beat the Drop” what seems to be a two outcome conundrum this one has 3 actual results: 1. Juventus Win 2. Juventus Draw 3 . Juventus Lose With both teams level on points in the league, these two sides are of equal ability and I dont know why I picked the question 🙄 Anyway, research is king so here we go! Juventus’ recent home form has seen them win 3 games convincingly and perhaps more importantly lost their most recent home game “to nil” against Benevento. Napolis’ last 4 away games have seen them victorious against AS Roma and AC Milan (both to nil) a 3-3 draw against 9th placed Sassuolo and a 4-2 defeat 3rd placed Atalanta shows that they are not afraid of hitting the back of the net. Napoli have also gained more league points (19)than Juventus (14) over the last 8 games. Juventus have some squad problems with 2 players Suspended, 1 out injured, and 2 out with the Chinese Kung Flu. Napolis’ captain and main goalscorer is also out with a muscle strain. This should be an entertaining game and if the question was will both teams score then I think it would be a no-brainer yes. As things go I am going to go with the majority of outcomes and put my vote for “No Juventus won’t win”.
Back to the beginning we go after Sunderland gave Oxford Utd a good thumping yesterday. Man Utd v Brighton could prove to be an interesting game as far as goals are concerned. Manchester Utd, after Leicester City lost yesterday, have the chance to now go 4 points clear in 2nd place. Brighton are 16th on 32 points and just a point today will help their cause. Manchester Utd have only “won to nil” 29% of their home games this season and Brighton have “lost to nil” in just 21% of their away games suggesting a BTTS result a distinct possibility. As far as form goes, of the last 8 games Brighton have played they have gained 11 points scoring at least 1 goal in all but 2 of them. Manchester’s Home scoring rate is 79% just 8% above Brightons away scoring rate of 71%.
In summary Brighton have failed to score just 4 times when playing away and Manchester Utd only 3 times while at home. Defensively I am not entirely satisfied that Manchester Utd will be able to hold off a Brighton attack should they mount one but Manchester’s scoring ability speaks for itself.
Almost forgot all about this “freebie” and decided to have a look at the questions to see if any were jumping from the screen. In the English League 1 tonight Sunderland host Oxford Utd and there were 2 questions for this game “Will both Teams score?” and “Will Sunderland Win the Match?” As you can see from the screen shot I decided to go all in against the win. Lets take a look at the first question – without odds and assuming both teams are of equal ability. To answer Yes to both teams to score and win Both teams need to score! but if you answer No many other outcomes win. A win to nil for either team will win it or a 0-0 draw but as soon as both team score its all over If you Answer Yes to the second question Sunderland have to win! If you answer No then the match can end in a draw or an Oxford win both teams can score or not score it makes no difference. So with 2 outcomes as opposed to 1 the win/lose question would probably be the favoured yes/no. Now I come to the reasons Oxford are chasing the promotion play-off placings and only 2 points behind 6th place Gillingham with 2 games in hand. With only Gillingham and Sunderland to play this season that are above them in the table a win or draw would be a tremendous boost to both morale and placings. When playing away Oxford have gained 25 points from 19 games. Oxford have won or drawn 11 away games whilst losing 8. Sunderlands’ home record when playing matches against teams who are 5 places above and 5 places below, have won just 2 of these, Ipswich 2-1 and Doncaster 4-1. They have lost against M.K. Dons 1-2 and Portsmouth 1-3. Lincoln and Gillingham ended as draws. These being the cons for Sunderland it would not be fair to exclude their pros for winning this game. They are 3 points behind Hull City at the top with 2 games in hand. They have scored in 94% of their home games and scored first 72%.
Just a final pointer Of the last 5 meetings of these two teams 3 games ended in a draw and the 2 times Sunderland were at home the score was 1-1!
After Falling at the second question last time This is the account of my second try at Paddy Powers infuriatingly difficult “Beat The Drop” Question 1 of 12 Wolfberger v Tottenham Will both Teams Score?
This is the 1st Leg of the 16th Finals and is being played on neutral ground Puskás Aréna (Budapest) due to europe spitting their dummy out and closing borders to our sportsmen and women. How children behave eh? Tottenham have played 6 games and have only failed to score once which was in the game v Antwerp, Wolfsberger have also played 6 games (unsurprisingly) and have failed to score twice (in both legs against Dynamo Zagreb) Even though Wolfsberger is billed at home the stats should be taken into consideration for 2 away teams (in my view), They do seem to score most of their goals in the second half (73% of Wolfsberger AC’s goals have been scored in the second half) and have scored in 88% of their away matches (Austria – Bundesliga). They are currently 6th in the Austria – Bundesliga. Tottenham have a 50% clean sheet rate from all their europa league games but more importantly have a 0% rate when playing away (ie they concede every time they have played away so far) Tottenham have scored in 73% of their away matches (premiership) They are currently 9th in the Premiership Table.
This blog is going to look at the Beat the Drop question posed by Paddy Power and will be my Question No 2. The conundrum is will there be 3 or more goals in the match? This is a mid table clash with both teams looking safe from relegation but not much hope of a Champions League spot. With a total goals scored in a match question perhaps we should look at goals conceded by each team to start with. Benevento have conceded goals in both halves in 40% of matches when playing at home and Sampdoria just 30% when playing away. This in itself doesn’t mean that they don’t let in more than one goal 60% and 70% of the time. The following stats do seem to back these figures up as Benevento when at home concede the most goals between minutes 16-30 and 61-75 suggesting lapses half way through each half. Sampdoria on the other hand let in the most goals between 61-75 minutes. Benevento do make most of their substitutions after about the 75th minute as shown below in the last 5 matches v Cagliari – Insigne 72′ Sau 76′ Lapadura 76′ v Atalanta – Foulon 46′ Ionita 80′ Dabo 58′ Sau 58′ Lapadula 58′ v Crotone – Improa 75′ Tuia 75′ Ionita 65′ Insigne 40′ Sau 65′ v Torino – Tello 68′ Ionita 84′ Lapadula 84′ Caprari 76′ v Inter – Caldirola 60′ Improta 70′ Ionita 70′ Viola 60′ Caprari 76′ N.B The substitutions in the Atalanta game proved to be a bit of a blunder as Atalanta put 3 goals past them in the last 21 minutes 🙂
Sampdoria have pretty much a similar substitutions policy as the following last 5 matches show v Inter – Tonelli 68′ Silva 75′ Jankto 75′ Balde 90 + 2′ v Spezia – Jankto 79′ Candreva 85′ Damsgaard 79′ Balde 86′ v Udinese – Ekdal 85′ Silva 73′ Damsgaard 62′ Verre 62′ Quagliarella 62′ v Parma – Candreva 82′ Silva 82′ Ramirez 70′ Balde 58′ Quagliarella 70′ v Juventus – Candreva 81′ Silva 63′ Quagliarella 68′ Balde 68′
Niether team reply quickly to goals scored against them letting play carry on to take its natural course. In other words they don’t mount an effective counterattack against their opponents but this doesnt strike as detrimental to the amount of goals scored. As the following scorelines show in matches against teams also in mid table a shortage of goals never seems a problem Beneventos’ 5 home games v Mid table sides v Lazio 1-1 v Genoa 2-0 v Spezia 0-3 v Bologna 1-0 v Torino 2-2 Sampdorias’ 5 away games v Mid table sides v Atalanta 1-3 v Hellas 1-2 v Firentina 1-2 v Spezia 2-1 v Torino 2-2
Sampdoria have conceded in everyone of there away games against similar matched sides and in every case 3 or more goals have been scored.
Unlike the English Premiership, Serie A games are much more spaced out allowing players to take proper rests and as such will be more match fit than their English counterparts. Paddy Power is quoting odds of 1.73 for over 2.5 goals in this mach which seems to bare out the liklihood of an above average Goal rate.
Beat the drop is a free game offered by Paddy Power where you answer 12 questions to win £1000 (your Starting Bank). Each day has several different questions from which it is entirely your choice which to answer The idea is that you can gamble all or a portion of your “bank” and if you get to the 12th question and answer it right then you win your pot. Each question has 2 possible outcomes and you are able to split the pot 50/50. If you were to do this then you would win a guaranteed 24p Today is the 22 January 2021 and the first question on today’s list is Will Dortmund Win? Dortmund are playing away to M’Gladbach – The following facts appertain to this match. 1. Dortmund are only 1 point above M’Gladbach 2. Both Teams have played 17 matches. 3. When Dortmund play away against teams in a similar league position they have Lost 1 (Berlin) and drawn 1 (Frankfurt) 4. M’Gladbach when playing at home has beaten both B. Munchen and Leipzig who are 1st and 2nd in the league respectively. 5. M’Gladbach had a spell in the doldrums in December when both of their home matches resulted in a loss and a draw to teams lower in the League. 6. By winning M’Gladbach would jump 2 points and 1 place into 4th position above Dortmund Judging by these stats my opinion would come down on the side of a home win or draw.
Betornot 