Premier League 3pms

It’s a massive day in the Premier League with Manchester United v Liverpool playing at lunchtime, Chelsea and Crystal Palace meeting in the late match. We then have the small matter of a host of crucial games playing at 3pm, with the Saturday fixture list dominated by fixtures between the pack fighting it out to finish in the top half rather than the bottom three – it really is that tight!

We’ve got 10pts between Leicester in 8th place and Stoke 19th currently, and if you’ve been reading recently, you’ll know all about the angle we’ve been playing to try to maximise this situation where teams are closely matches, and the stakes are high. A typical match played between two sides outside the Top 6 in the Premier League would see the home team win 42% of the time, a draw occurring in 36% of matches and an away win around 22% of the time. In terms of odds, that means we should expect, on average, 11/8 the home, 9/5 the draw and 7/2 the away. How often do you see a draw trading shorter than 2/1? Almost never is the answer, with the draw usually ranging from 11/5 to around 3/1 in these sorts of ties. Blindly backing the draws in singles over the last 11 rounds of Premier League fixtures would have returned a profit in nine of the 11 rounds, and so we’re following the same strategy this week across Saturday’s match.

This week’s qualifiers are all playing on Saturday (not uncommon given Sky TVs influence over the games picked for Sunday) and are as follows:

Newcastle (7 draws from 20 qualifying games this season) v Southampton (10 from 20)

Everton (4 from 19) v Brighton (10 from 21)

West Ham (7 from 21) v Burnley (6 from 19)

West Brom (8 from 20) v Leicester (8 from 19)

Huddersfield (6 form 20) v Swansea (5 from 20)

Whilst the rates between Huddersfield and Swansea don’t quite meet the ideal rate, goals in their qualifying games have averaged just 2.21, which brings them right back into the equation when compared to the other sides.

We’ll chuck a point at each of the draws – available at 9/4 across the board this week, and we’ll also do the doubles with Betfred (10 bets from five matches)

1pt singles on each of the Draws (5pts total stake) at 9/4 each

1pt doubles on each of the Draws (10pts total stake) at 9/4 each (11/5 West Ham v Burnley) with Betfair.

#Football