Betting’s infamous reputation might have painted an impression of ‘Riding on Your Luck’ in most people’s mind but when it comes to sports betting, or rather football betting is an art that involves an awful lot of skills.

Your predictions in football games could be very close to being accurate (if not always accurate) if you spend enough time in analyzing the factors that impact a 90-minute game—it could be form, fixtures, statistics, team’s morale, speculation, bans, injuries, and a lot of other factors that you’re going to learn about in this article.

If you’ve been a casual punter, you could have multiple light bulb moments in the next few minutes. Let’s roll!

Factors That Affect Premier League Betting

In this article, we’d be focussing on psychological, statistical and some other factors that impact betting the game in different ways. Let’s start with the most underrated and tricky one.

Psychological Factors:

You must have heard it said many times that a lot of games are won even before the players come onto the pitch. Moreover, you can also see a team playing their A-game in one fixture and looking like a completely different team in the other fixture leaving most fans awestricken. Teams like Arsenal, Manchester United, Bournemouth were a great example of this last season.

Home And Away Factors:

Remember how Liverpool were almost impossible to beat at Anfield last season? Even if you don’t, their astonishing comeback against Barcelona in the Champions League would surely be etched in your mind. A lot of people called it the Anfield effect, quite rightly so.

Old Trafford in the last decade also had the same reputation. Teams celebrated getting even one point there.

The point being, some stadiums are really hard to play and some teams, and as mentioned earlier, play like two different teams when they’re playing their home and away games.

For example, Bournemouth stunned Chelsea in a 4-0 game at Vitality Stadium and tasted defeat on the road in the game following that against Cardiff at—which was one of the least impressive sides in terms of attacking.

As blasphemous as it seemed, a lot of people were still unsurprised by the result. If you look at their home & away record, they only lost 6 games at home and 13 games on the road. Doesn’t look much surprising result now, does it?

Imagine Spurs failing to win a single game at Stamford Bridge in the period of February 1990 to April 2018!

So, a team’s record at home and away should never be overlooked in your thought process before placing a wager.

The Bandwagons:

The game of football can be very unpredictable and the way people hype teams, players and managers, the pile of unpredictability only thickens.

Remember how Manchester City were magically going to win trophies right from their first season when Pep Guardiola (because he never had a season without winning a trophy) stepped in as a manager? They won zero trophies that season (Ouch?). David Moyes was supposed to deliver similar success which Alex Ferguson did?

Fun fact: This is 2019 and Manchester United are still in their transition phase.

It’s always the best practice to avoid betting on events like these. When a new manager comes in a team, sit back and analyze how he’s going to get the best out of his team and how his tactics may play out against the opposition.

You might actually get a great value in the betting market—which should be your #1 priority when betting on soccer and all sports.

Statistical Factors:

Data is beautiful. Thanks to the advent of so many websites that keep track of different statistical aspects of the game, there are a lot of advanced statistics to work with when analyzing soccer betting markets.

Bettors can make great use of the available data to refine their decisions and there are lots of football betting stats that every bettor needs to know.

Quite easily, teams that create more chances and have more possession of the balls are usually more likely to be involved in higher scoring games. Of course, this is factored into the odds, but you can still interpret the data to your advantage, especially if you bet early.

So, first things first, where do we get this data?

Best Sources To Get Premier League Statistics:

The most recommended one for this matter would be WhoScored. We won’t be a surprise if you come back to reading this after getting derailed for 5 minutes in the stats provided by WhoScored.

Apart from this, you can also check 11v11 which is a pretty handy site if you’re specifically looking to compare two teams’ record against each other.

SoccerStats also has a surprisingly gargantuan database. Their navigation is very simple and you can easily find a team’s home and away record, relative home and away performance rating, expected points per game, and a lot of other useful stats too, without going through too much mental gymnastics.

Use Goal Differential To Check The Reliability Of A Team:

A team’s goal difference is a fair reflection of their offensive and defensive prowess. Manchester United were a great example of that in the last season. Their defensive record was shambolic and they struggled to get their GD above 15+.

Spurs under AVB could also be seen as an example for this. They used to beat weaker sides without much fuss but were usually thrashed by the big teams.

If you see it from betting’s point of view, think of such team playing weaker teams for a few weeks. Their wins would raise punters’ trust in them and you can expect their odds mushroom and stay that way even if they go against a bigger team following that winning run—again a moment where you can find value.

Use Fantasy Football Scouts:

The fantasy football community is a pretty underrated medium to draw assets from. There are some fantastic twitter accounts that post stats comparing different teams and players taking metrics like xG, xGA and expected clean sheets into account. You can also find stats related to touches in the box by an individual player—this could be helpful in the case when you’re going to bet on a player to score in a game.

Here are some of the best Twitter accounts that you should follow for soccer information and stats:

• Ben Crellin: You can find different excel sheets related to different aspects of the game in his account (probably in his bio). He’s a very active user and keeps coming up with useful insights.
• Andy: He runs a Youtube channel. His videos are short and an easy resource to grasp useful info in no time.
• Fantasy Football Scout: One of the most popular and sophisticated sources for FPL related information. They upload individual analysis for every team which could come handy to analyse teams and its players’ output.

You could also go to Soccer Betting Sub on Reddit if you have any queries related to the football betting. It’s a pretty active community and it won’t take long before you get your answers.

Data tells a lot about a team’s weaknesses and strengths. Chances created by a team is one of the most important statistics in football betting and we’d recommend weighting it heavily in your decision making process when placing bets.

Deeper Soccer Betting Analysis:

Stats are useful, but if we go to the basics, the best practice is to ultimately follow games. You can try watching extended highlights if you can’t watch full games.

Football is a game of fine margins. A red card, an injury or a suspension could literally change a game. So, even these tiny-looking factors could have a profound effect on the game. Given below are some of the major factors that do the damage we’re talking about.

Injuries And Suspensions:

Injuries are cruel and could easily take a toll on a team. Same goes for suspensions.

If we recall a recent memory, Chelsea’s was hammered 4-0 by Manchester United in their first game in the league due to the absence of Anthony Rudiger and Kante (who arrived at the field when the damage was already done). Their defence and midfield clearly lacked the sharpness it needed and they were punished for it.

Another recent example would be Manchester United, when Luke Shaw and Anthony Martial picked up injuries and they failed to beat Southampton in a game they should have gone home with a win.

So, before you make the final call, make sure you know the available players for the matchday.

The best resource to get information about injuries in the Premier League is through the ultimate injuries’ expert, Ben Dinnery.

His feeds encompass injury updates and responses to fans for their injury-related questions (yes, even you can ask him your questions). You can also check his website.

Form:

Make sure stats don’t mislead you into ignoring a team’s form. In simple terms, if a team is enduring a bad form, don’t think twice before ditching them. On the contrary, it’s not really a bad idea to bet on a team which is in a fine form—unless they’re going against an evenly-matched or a superior side.

Team Mentality And Dressing Room Atmosphere:

Sometimes transfer talk, the chemistry between a manager and his players, or poor club management could reflect in a team’s performance too.

Mike Ashley’s poor management and fans’ discontent with the club ultimately made them lose a great manager, and they are arguably one of the weakest sides in the league right now.

Jose Mourinho’s final season at Manchester United resulted in a toxic atmosphere in the dressing room, as most sources suggested. There was quality in the team but things were not clicking for them.

As soon as the club parted ways with the Portuguese manager, they got back to their winning ways in a spectacular fashion.

Teams in such scenarios are a little difficult to trust and could actually open a great betting opportunity for you the other way round.

Fixtures:

Fixtures aren’t just about seeing a small team play against a bigger team and you deciding whether or not to bet on it. Fixtures could have serious impacts on a team’s line-up and ultimately its performances.

For example, a manager who would play a crucial cup game just 3 days after a league fixture would most likely drop some of his important players and could also take a disappointing result for that game.

Another fixture related problem is fixtures-congestion and most top teams get victimized by it after the month of December. Teams are often forced to play 3 games in the span of 10 days sometimes. It easily affects a players’ fatigue and the manager is often forced to rotate his squad more frequently than he likes.

For example, put in perspective the Wolves of last season and this season. They clearly don’t look like the same team this year and their Europa League qualifier games have a clear impact on it. They’re actually doing well in their Europa League campaign but it is coming at the price of an underwhelming league run.

So, fixture-analysis could help you avoid trusting teams that are affected by their fixtures.

In Conclusion:

It’s fair to expect better results when your choices have the right mix of understanding of statistics and all the important factors we have discussed above.

Remember to amass important in-depth knowledge of each team that is involved in your bet and wave goodbye to your emotions whenever you’re betting in football.

Last but not least, DON’T PUT YOUR MONEY ON A TEAM WITH A FRAGILE DEFENSE (*coughs* Arsenal!)

Bet wisely!

About the Author

Shubham Singh has worked in the content creation industry for 4 years (and counting) and has written for SBS, Content Ninja and Thought Collect. He specialises in Sports, Online marketing, Cannabis and Tech—not to mention he has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science Engineering. As you read this, he’s probably busy writing whilst having a questionable amount of caffeine in his system.