Football Food For Thought / Tareq Quiroz / 23 February 2009 /

Tareq Quiroz on why stats such as head-to-heads and records on a particular ground should be used as one of many tools for researching football bets rather as a definitive source of truth.

Things can change very quickly in the world of football. You can be challenging for several trophies and a couple of bad results and before you know it the season is washout. It is times like this that the powerhouses come to the fore and sweep the weak teams aside. Only the strongest squads will come through the brutal stretch between now and the end of the season unscathed. Regardless of how many competitions your team is in, you can bet that problems will be on them in the next few months. It's how you cope with them that determines who will survive.

With all the top teams back in action in the Champions League this week there will be extra pressure on the managers. Big decisions have to be made and big results are needed. That is never likely to change but the prediction of what is likely to happen is becoming ever more prevalent in the world of football. There is a greater demand than ever for previews of forthcoming games and for predictions for end of season results. Opinion is great and there are a great many views that are well respected. However, it seems to me now that we are faced with more and more stat based previews.

Records have always been around but with the development in computerized systems over the last few decades collated statistics have become very well documented. But are they really any use in trying to forecast results? The answer isn't that easy unfortunately. The truth of the matter is that some of the stats are very useful and can be particularly helpful. On the other hand many of them are useless pieces of information.

We will start with one of my least favourite stats yet one that is repeated time after time. We constantly hear in the approach to a game that a team has only won once at this ground in the last dozen visits. How is that relevant to the game in question? Almost certainly there won't be even one player who played in all the games so it might as well be a totally different club for the purposes as a worthwhile stat. As a fan you can take it with a pinch of salt but as a punter please don't get sucked by such pointless stats.

That previous example is not to say that there are not good stats out there. Take the Monday night game for example and the over/under 2.5 goals market. If you can trawl the relevant websites then you will find that 75% of Hull City's home games have had over 2.5 goals. You will also see that opponents Tottenham have had over 2.5 goals in their away games 58% of the time. This is over a fairly substantial part of the season so the stats are relevant and recent. Next step is to check out the Over/Under 2.5 Goals market for that game and you will see Over 2.5 Goals trading at [2.06], based on the stats alone that is a cracking price.

They are two extremes in quality of stats and then you also have the midway point where you just aren't sure if it is useful or not. A fair example of that would be the fact that no team has ever successfully defended the Champions League crown. A rather surprising statistic considering how many of the top teams win their league title in consecutive seasons. Maybe it is just coincidence or maybe it is simply that the competition is so tough that coming back to win it consecutively is just a huge ask. My head says there is no good reason why Man Utd cannot defend their title this year and at current odds of [6.4] you would be hard pressed to against them just because of the previously mentioned stat.

Statisticians and many others who constantly quote these so called facts will have you believe that if something isn't pure chance then these stats will point you in the direction of the result. I would concur that some of the stats will assist but in general there is simply no substitution for knowledge. Know your teams and you won't need endless stats. Be aware of niggling injuries, suspensions and do your research. Trawl the net and find out what the managers are saying, know who you can trust and who regularly talks nonsense.

There are no shortcuts to predicting the outcome. Nor is it an exact science. Immerse yourself in the game and what is going on all around you. Many people can do that for the team they support but have no idea what is going on elsewhere. Put the time and effort in and you will get your rewards.

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