Tag Archives: BTTS

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.