Matt talks stats / Matthew Walton / 25 March 2008 / Leave a comment

"Magical" Matthew Walton invites football punters to spread their wings beyond the Premiership in a bid to find better stats-based betting value

There is a perennial argument, usually posed by those of us South of the Border, that Scottish football is limited in appeal (that's betting or otherwise) on account of the seemingly never-ending dominance of the two great footballing powers that are Celtic and Rangers.

But there is a problem with this view. Those who would choose to disparage Scottish football on account of this duopoly of power by the Glasgow clubs are being more than a little unfair.

After all, when we think of Spain do we not just consider Barcelona and Real Madrid, in Germany you struggle to get past Bayern Munich, Holland is all PSV and Ajax, Italy centres around Milan and Juventus and in France we have Lyon going for their 7th straight Ligue 1 title!

We're no better at home in England with Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal carving up the last dozen Premier League titles between them (and also having this year's trophy at their collective mercy).

Hence this week's look at the top leagues of Europe. If we're so misguided about matters this close to home, what are we like when we travel further afield? These days we can bet on all the action right across the continent so we better have a little bit of education in what we should be looking for in these markets.

The table below illustrates the league matches played so far this season (up to and including March 24th) in seven of the leading countries of Europe - and, yes, we'll include Scotland in this exercise!

Now we can make a few observations from this information. For starters, you could argue that the dominance of the 'big four' in domestic English action goes some of the way to explain their domination in Europe this season. If they are so far ahead of the chasing pack in what is widely regarded as the strongest league in Europe, then they must all be very good sides. An overall win percentage of 63% is comfortably the best on offer amongst these nations.

Perhaps a little simplistic but France (51%), Germany (53%) and Holland (56%) all have low home win percentages and none of them have had teams pulling up too many trees in the Champions League this season - only one team between them (Schalke) in the last eight of the tournament.

We then have the flipside to this argument. If the best way to approach English football is to back the league leaders to win, then on the Continent you could very well make your best returns by laying the elite teams.

English sides have the highest win percentage at home (72%) and away (54%) whereas the Spanish have the highest losing figures at home (17%) and the likes of France (32%) and Scotland (33%) have very high losing rates amongst their top sides when on the road.

The relative weakness of national divisions is also illustrated by the French example of the top sides winning just 31% of their away games and in Germany where a 40% success rate for the top sides playing away from home is also pretty mediocre.

You then counter that with a view that Italian football is largely unadventurous, tight and a little dull. Well, the top sides in Italy draw less matches at home than their English, French, German and even Scottish counterparts!

In fact, further analysis shows quite a high percentage of draws in England and Germany (both 25%) for sides playing at home. It's low in Italy (18%) and in Spain you're looking at just 7 out of 59 matches ending in stalemate (12%) when the top four are playing on their own patch.

On the road, draws in both France and Italy (each at 37%) are way above the figures found in other countries.

A couple of weeks ago we discussed the preoccupation of many backers with the Premier League and the same applies for national markets. As backers we are duty bound to search out the best possible bets in whatever markets they are to be found.

This brief spin around Europe should remind you that there's a lot more to football betting than the English markets and, as ever, a decent working knowledge of other nations will give you a significant edge over other exchange users. More and more top level action is being broadcast and this will go hand-in-hand with greater betting activity ... and more ill-informed money floating around, ready for the taking!

Going back to our starting point, Scotland is performing on a par with Spain this season but both lag appreciably behind the top four in the Premier League in terms of win percentages. The Scottish Premier League has its dominant sides, like every country has, but this pre-occupation with Celtic and Rangers is rather unfair.

As we know, these statistics will vary from week to week, from season to season but this article just highlights the fact that there are dozens of other markets out there which you can be profiting from if you have the right information.

Tags: betting value, football stats, Old Firm