RandoEFC

I hope you bet on this...

No I don't, my algorithm spat it out as 70%+ likely to be over the Bet365 goal line which I think was 2.75 so I bet on that first. Then I've got a column that lights up for O2.5 & BTTS bets where the probability of Over 2.5 is 70%+ and the probability of each team scoring a goal is 85%+ each. Lights up for maybe 1-2% of games that I run the numbers for and this was one of them. The other one was Hoffenheim vs Heidenheim where the odds are 1.75 for the same bet. It's reassuring when other people are noticing the same games at least.

I've had a bit of time on my hands this week so I've been able to dig into even more stats than usual but these are two bets I really like for this weekend. Celtic vs Ross County - Over 10 Corners and Over 6 Celtic Corners This should be quite a safe bet and I'm happy to post something with odds of 1.40 because my other selection is at 2.00. Celtic have been an absolute cheat code for corners this season. If you look at their own corner count, the majority of their games see them clear 10 corners on their own. Last 12 games - 12, 13, 11, 13, 12, 11, 9, 18, 14, 23, 4, 12 - and the 4 was in the Old Firm which is a very different profile of football match than Celtic's usual business of mopping up the cannon fodder. The stats on Ross County's corners against aren't necessarily compelling, just average, but this is enough to tell me that Celtic will do their usual against them. Indeed, Celtic's corner count in their last 8 meeting with Ross County reads 7, 16, 11, 12, 11, 9, 9, 4, 13. Venezia vs Ternana - Over 2.5 Goals and Both Teams to Score Considering the odds on this are effectively Evens, I'm astonished by how good this looks statistically. The only real blot against is that the reverse fixture between these sides ended just 1-0 to Venezia, but onto the positives. 7 of Venezia's last 9 games have seen this bet come in. In fact their last five games have averaged 5.4 goals per game with both teams scoring 2 or more in each one! If you look just at Venezia's home games, this bet has come in seven times in a row and they've scored in every home game this season. Ternana have had BTTS in their last 9 games in a row. A couple of 1-1 draws in their but 7 out of 9 times this bet has come in. If you look just at Ternana's 10 away games in Serie B this season, this bet has come in 9 times with a 2-0 loss at Ascoli the exception. When there's such a huge discrepancy between what the stats say and what the bookies' odds say, I always worry slightly that I'm missing something but ultimately, I'm following the research and the principles of probability here. £10 returns £28

They're just a fan group protesting. I think it's helping a lot of fans feel as though they are being given a voice and helps people feel like more of a collective. Bleed a bit of the negativity out like this and focus on supporting the team on match day. You can agree or disagree with the substance of the messages but I don't think it really matters because the purpose of them isn't really to win the argument. That's the job of the legal team, not the fanbase. Your fanbase would be the exact same if they were put in the same position, let's be honest. I think you need to acknowledge that there's a certain amount of confirmation bias going on here. I've read plenty of stuff for and against Everton's case from experts with and without a vested interest. There's two separate issues here. One of them is whether Everton are guilty of the breach and I think there's a 90%+ consensus that they are. The other issue is whether the punishment of a 10 point deduction is justified and this is the real battleground. I can accept a range of opinions on this one. I'd venture as far as to say that I think most neutrals would say it was quite harsh penalty. Everton fans clearly want to believe they've been even more hard done to than that and people who really hate Everton like yourself are going to want to believe the opposite. That's normal. Everton's fan groups aren't going to impact the appeal hearing realistically and I doubt they see it as a bad thing if some Liverpool fans think they're being silly. In fact, they probably like it. The irony is that Everton and Liverpool fans always think the other group are the biggest nobheads going yet I think you'd be hard pressed to find more fan bases in the country that act more similar, just there's very few of us willing to admit it.

In what sense?

I had a bet on Molenbeek vs Eupen in Belgium for Molenbeek to have under 5.5 corners. They were on 1 corner when the match was abandoned in the 86th minute and they've settled the bet as void. Surely that's BS?

A winner at last. Bristol City vs Watford had 15 corners and Ulm just got their 5th corner vs Unterhaching (10th in the match) with 25 minutes left. +£13.10

Interesting detail and good to see you back. There's a lot of Everton fans being very partisan on social media but I do follow a few and listen to podcasts with people who are more balanced, know people inside the club and across football and stuff. I think I've said elsewhere that Everton are under no illusions that they've breached the rules. The main thrust of complaint seems to be that 10 points is over the top for what's been done wrong and are trying to exploit the point that the Premier League imposed the punishment without a sanctions policy in place. The Premier League will also point out that clubs voted to agree breaches would be dealt with on a case by case basis back in the day. I also think and don't blame Everton for leaving no stone unturned in trying to get away with their offence seeing how other clubs have found and exploited loopholes or managed to push back their case by being obstructive to investigations that started years ago. I've also heard that Everton's second breach is less serious than the first and Forest are in big trouble compared to us. My mean expectation is that our first deduction will be reduced to about 6 points and any further deduction would be less than that so it might well end up around the 10 we've currently had taken off. Forest should be hit with at least 6 points. It also wouldn't surprise me though if the original 10 points stood and we got hit for a further 12 for the second offence because after 30 years of supporting Everton I've learnt to work out the worst case scenario and expect something 50% worse than that.

Just waiting for the Brentford penalty to come in and Palace to not even register a shot on target to ruin the double .

Ulm vs Unterhaching Ulm Match Corners at Home: 10, 8, 11, 12, 11, 10, 12, 11, 12 Unterhaching Match Corners Away: 10, 12, 12, 11, 10, 10, 13, 12, 4 Ulm Corners For at Home: 5, 4, 6, 6, 5, 5, 9, 7, 8 Unterhaching Corners Against Away: 6, 6, 6, 4, 6, 9, 12, 6, 0 I'm surprised to get odds of 1.70 here as there's just one home game for Ulm all season where this bet wouldn't have won, and that one was only one corner away in both cases. Unterhaching's away games are good for this bet statistically as well. The standout exception where there were 4 match corners and they didn't concede any was against Dynamo Dresden who had a man sent off in the first half and were defending a draw (then a surprise lead). Their previous meeting this season had 9 corners although Ulm only had 2 at Unterhaching. My only worry here is that if you include Ulm's away form, there aren't quite as many corners, but Unterhaching still see plenty of corners home or away so I'm happy to take this at 1.70. Bristol City vs Watford I'm sticking it safe here and just going for Over 8 Match Corners as there wasn't anything super compelling on corners for a specific team. Bristol City Match Corners at Home: 8, 14, 12, 6, 15, 11, 12, 16, 13, 11 Watford Match Corners: 9, 8, 12, 9, 10, 10, 14, 12, 12, 9, 14, 12 Watford were a bit low on corners in away games earlier this season so I'm reassuring myself here by using their overall form. 11 out of 12 league games they've seen more than 8 corners just falling short once. Hopefully ignoring their away matches with 3-4 corners back in October won't come back to bite me.

Yeah I don't know to be honest. I've read several accounts now insisting that they "prove" Everton are fine and several others that "prove" they're not and I've reached the point where I'm holding my hands up and admitting that I don't understand enough to agree or disagree with any of the evidence. Invested enough time and emotion into reading and listening up on this all week, now I'm going to just try to wait and see.

That post claims that Everton's PSR problems are because of their overspending on the squad but given that Everton have the 3rd lowest net spend in the league over this period of time, how does this claim even get off the ground? I don't know how people have the energy to dig into all these numbers to be honest. Nobody can "prove" anything at this point because it's going to come down to the interpretation of the rules by the appeal panel. Personally, I'm not going to pretend to understand the stadium loan and interest issue. I think the club are making valid points but my social feeds are obviously going to be skewed. The people who ran the club are twats and it's a case of "don't give the referee a decision to make" isn't it. If the club is guilty and the first breach was indeed by £20m then fine. This stadium discourse is dominating the debate right now. It'll be something else in a couple of days when someone uncovers some other minor rule change or some loophole that another club has been allowed to exploit when we haven't, but I think the overriding issues I and most Everton fans are pointing out are: 1) 10 points is still excessive for a breach of £20m with all the mitigating factors that they couldn't have planned for (e.g. loss of sponsorship and stadium funding due to Usmanov sanctions) and have done their best to compensate for. Especially when it's been plucked out of thin air with no sanctions policy in place beforehand. 2) If we're getting done for 2019-2022 (with such a harsh penalty) then it just seems incredibly harsh and unfair for us to get done for 2020-2023. It's double jeopardy. 3) This emerging media narrative that fans aren't allowed to be angry at the Premier League because it's the club's own fault. The fans have been protesting the ownership for about 3 years and the media didn't exactly give us much coverage. They actually gave our board (Kenwright specifically) more positive coverage than negative while they were systematically crippling the football club. The fans kept going until Moshiri had no chance but to sack the old board and he's agreed to sell up so concentrating on him at this point is about as useful as protesting against Margaret Thatcher outside Downing Street. We're well within our rights to direct our ire at the Premier League.

I have a two-layered algorithm effectively for goals, corners and cards. One layer of counting literally how often a match involving one of the teams has featured over 9 corners or whatever. For team goals, corners, cards, it's a combination of how often Team A gets that many goals, corners and cards and how often Team B concedes them. The second layer is a use of Normal Distribution, which I don't know if you know anything about, but basically measures the average number of goals/corners/cards expected and how consistently it happens to feed back probabilities. I then use an average of the two methods for my final probability and try to stick to betting on stuff that comes out as 70%+ in terms of likelihood. Combining the two methods basically means that if Team A vs Team B comes out as averaging 9 corners a game but are consistently getting 8, 9, 10 corners and rarely more or less than that, and Team C vs Team D also average 9 corners, but that's because they usually get 12-13 corners and there's just been a couple of games where they've had weird matches with 3 or 4 corners, then Team C vs Team D, for example, will have a higher probability of Over 10.5 Corners than Team A vs Team B. The calculation for results and margins is a lot more complicated and I've changed it a lot throughout the season. At first I was literally averaging how many Wins Team A had and how many Losses Team B had just like my goals/corners/cards probabilities. It doesn't really make sense though. E.G. If Man City win 80% of the time and Sheffield United lose 70% of the time, that would come out as a 75% chance of a Man City win but the probability is higher than that. Now my spreadsheet reads data and calculates the winning/losing margin for each team in the matches I've included and effectively pitches each recent home team performance against each away team performance. E.G. if a Girona performance saw them win 2-0 and Almeria lost 2-1, these performances pitched against each other would result in Girona winning by three goals (they were good enough to win by two and Almeria were bad enough to lose by one). However, if another match in the dataset saw Girona lose 1-0, this would come out as a draw when pitched against Almeria's 2-1 defeat. I do this for each team's last 10 games and their last 10 home/away games and add a double weighting to their last 5 in each category, so a full dataset would see as much as 30 Girona performances and 30 Almeria performances pitched against each other, so up to 900 combinations. To get an "expected result" of "Girona to win by 2" means when all of those combinations are calculated, there's roughly as many outcomes where they do better than that as there are where they do worse. I don't know if that makes any sense, there's a lot of steps to it but my document automates it all. Hard to explain without showing to be honest but those are the main principles behind it. Basically it gives me a record of however many matches I have time to copy data for into my spreadsheet and turns key statistics into a summary of what's statistically likely to happen in each match based on each team's recent performances, without me having to look manually. What it doesn't do is take into account injuries, managerial changes and stuff like that. Luckily, because I'm a Maths nerd, I enjoy the process of tweaking the spreadsheet and having it calculate the probabilities for me, and I enjoy the fact that if I'm bored and there's a football match on that's in my database, I can find a bet to put on for it for fun. I never stake too much. If I ever found a properly good method that seems reliably profitable then maybe I'd up it but that would be a massive bonus.

On the bright side, Genoa managed to avoid a penalty today because some late payments that were due actually got paid after all.

It's frustrating seeing national journalists like this failing to get basic facts right. Forest maybe but Everton's problem isn't "irresponsible spending". It's that we're trying to build a fucking stadium you stupid tit. Wolves have a higher net spend than Everton over the period in question for crying out loud. If I can find this, and all the other stuff I posted about the other day, on Twitter then how hard can it be for a reputable Telegraph columnist to find out the same information?

Has he resigned entirely or just resigned his role as vice/deputy chairman? I've not been following it too closely but as far as I gather, the Tory back benchers' latest rebellion is because the Rwanda Bill isn't harsh enough on asylum seekers. Imagine going into politics and that's the hill you choose to die on. Thick nobhead him. Remember when he got caught briefing his mate about what questions to ask him when he was out campaigning before he filmed himself knocking on "random" doors in his constituency and went to his door?

He shouldn't be calling anyone a small club in a league he's supposed to be in charge of. If we're being honest, I don't know if the phrase "small clubs" came from one of the committee members first and he just repeated it or he's repeating it because that's what he's seen being said beforehand. At best, he's an idiot for allowing those words to come out of his mouth. At worst, he does actually see it as there being big clubs and small clubs in the league. The fact he's said that though isn't proof he thinks that. It's an off hand comment really but yeah what an absolute moron for saying that in front of the cameras when he knows he's already being accused of going after low hanging fruit and not having the balls to deal with Man City, and his league is being accused of facilitating a two tier system because of these rules.

Is it true that the British government essentially intervened to help the Saudis get through the fit and proper test?

This is true of course about game state. I'm still finding though that on average, corners and cards are more statistically "predictable" than results or even number of goals. Game state can certainly be a factor though. There's definitely some skill in betting in play on corners but I've yet to try it out. I made most of my profit through December on corners and cards and so far this month I've put on 24 bets, won 14, two refunds and 8 losses. I didn't actually put the bet I posted here in my tracking because I'd already backed 11 Asian Corners in the Charlton game, one of my 8 losses. Hopefully over time I can start choosing some of my winners for this thread and change your mind.

777 sound horrendous in general. Seen enough articles about them on Twitter recently not to need to read into it any further really. Problem is if that deal falls through then it still leaves us with a ghost owner in Moshiri who isn't interested anymore. There were other parties interested but not at the price Moshiri agreed with 777. Some remain interested apparently if the 777 deal falls through and Moshiri no longer has a better financial offer on the table because getting as much money for the sale is all he's interested in now. Doesn't give a monkeys about what sort of owner we get saddled with after him. MSP were nearly there until they found out about some dodgy loan that they would have had to pay back to a dodgy offshore firm run by an old mate of Bill Kenwright's who apparently once got the club out of some financial hole back in the day under the condition that they could veto any future investors or change of ownership or something unless they agreed to pay back this loan (including significant interest presumably). MSP weren't told about this until a long way into negotiations either I don't think. It's all a right old mess and it's just really hard to see how Everton can ever get through this FFP stuff, the 777 stuff and the further layers of trouble Kenwright and Moshiri have left behind that we probably don't even know about yet and survive, at least in any recognisable form, let alone stay in the top flight. Such a shame too as after years of apathetic incompetence on the pitch and in the dugout there's finally a team and manager out there who the fans can identify with making a bit of a decent fist of it again.

Where have you read that? The FFP business is such a mess that people have forgotten. Even if Everton manage to survive this season by winning appeals, court battles, or scraping enough points together to stay out of the bottom three in spite of a points deduction(s?), we've got this takeover hanging over our head. 777 loaned Everton money to help with the running costs to keep the club afloat, apparently. We all assumed that this gets written off at a future date if they take over the club but suppose they don't pass the fit and proper owners test, that's another party we owe money to, hopefully not at the interest you're quoting but it wouldn't surprise me if that was right. And then the scenario where they do take over? I've been seeing articles almost every day about them and other clubs they're involved with being taken to court. They might fulfil their promise to clear Everton's debt and get us financially stable which is supposed to be the positive side of what they offer but aside from that, they sound like the worst owners you could ever hope to find. It's just never-ending. I can't see how even Liverpool fans or some of the Newcastle fans that are weirdly obsessed with us can laugh at this anymore. Everton fans have been put through decades of decline under Bill Kenwright, followed by Farhad Moshiri ruining the club, followed by this FFP saga, followed by these 777 cowboys taking over the club and then fuck knows what happening next. It's one thing being shite but Everton fans don't even know if the club will even still exist in 5 years' time and I'm sorry but it's just not a laughing matter or a case of "banter". It could happen to any club and indeed has happened to Bury, for example, and look at Reading right now for fuck's sake. There's a fair amount of ups and downs you should expect to be able to face as a football fan. Losing cup finals, losing derby matches, even getting relegated, all things you can expect to have to take on the chin and put up with your mates taking the piss out of you for at work on Monday. Nowadays, we spend less than 10% of the time talking about any of that. It's all about the standard of officiating, VAR, financial regulations, state ownership, lawyers and accountants, appeals that could end up changing the league table after the season has finished. Even the clubs who are well run, purely out of the luck of the draw of getting owners who don't turn out to be absolute lunatics, have to put up with the VAR circus and not knowing whether they've been relegated or got into Europe or not because the teams around them have points deductions and appeals hanging over their heads. When I was at school I used to argue with my Liverpool supporting mates which Everton players would get into Liverpool's team. Now when I see them they're like "what's actually going on with Everton then" and I'm sat there talking about interest on loans and the inflation of stadium construction costs. What a load of fucking shite it's become. Is it too much to ask for football fans to just be able to watch and enjoy the sport safe in the knowledge that regardless of whether their club is brilliant or terrible, at least it's still going to be there next Saturday for them to go and see all their mates at the game, or watch on TV? I can't make head or tail of it mate. Last time I thought it was a three-year cycle, now it seems that this one includes those three years and an additional year. Not sure why but apparently something to do with Covid? Every time you think you've got your head around this business there's another aspect to it where you need a degree in accounting to understand. Everton's central issue with it is the double jeopardy. The EFL, for example, have a system where if you get sanctioned for a three/four-year period, then any of the losses you made in that period of time are considered to be "dealt with" and are ignored in all future calculations. The Premier League doesn't have this written into their rules and this goes back to the issue that the Premier League just doesn't have a sanctions policy whatsoever apart from referring clubs to the "independent commission" who essentially have the power to just choose whatever punishment they want. But back to the double jeopardy aspect - for me, surely you either get hit with a big penalty (e.g. 10 points) and then you get a fresh start, or you can have a rolling penalty such as 4 points every year until you get your finances back within the limit.

He'll always be able to get a job with his reputation but you have to wonder at what point he'll stop bothering. Roma are obviously a massive club but for someone who's won the Champions League with multiple clubs to step any further down than where they are in European football is quite rare. Let's be honest, he's been sacked a lot of times in his career but back in the day there would usually be a successful phase before things turned sour. He's essentially failed at his last few clubs without even seeing the success that comes before the fall. All I can think that's left for him is to manage Portugal or perhaps another national team at some major tournaments but it's hard to see a place for him at club level anymore. He's just not got the recent success to be employed by the top clubs and I doubt anyone further down the pyramid than the likes of Spurs and Roma could afford him. I also think the further he gets away from the top of the game, the less effective his management style is.

Enough people have made ill-informed claims about Everton's case that I'm reluctant to go spouting off about Forest in case they have their own mitigating factors that the media have largely overlooked and the club have failed to get into the public sphere. But yes, if I remember correctly that Forest actually signed over 25 players last season despite the fact that you can only register that many to play, from the outside looking in, that does look hard to defend. I'm not on about the offence though, I'm being tongue in cheek but there is a valid comment in there about the process. Everton were transparent and cooperative with the Premier League to the point where we basically checked with them that every transfer and dealing was fine with them as far as FFP is concerned and it didn't do us any favours. Man City have been obstructive and evasive with their case and managed to buy themselves extra time as a result. Regardless of whether they have a case to answer or not, if they think transparency will get them any leniency with this lot then they're sadly mistaken.

Two more things that have come out tonight that I wasn't aware of. 1) When Everton started building their stadium, the rules stated that any interest on stadium payments would not count toward your losses. The rules were changed in 2022, with Everton halfway through building a stadium, so that they now do. Without this rule change, Everton would be compliant. 2) The Premier League are planning to increase the threshold for sanctions from £105m to £218m in August 2024. They're admitting that the threshold needs loosening and Everton would be nowhere near that threshold. Yes we need to be judged against the rules that were in place in the time period in question but if the Premier League have realised their rules need changing then you'd like to think they'd at least be somewhat restrained in what they'll dish out to clubs under the old rules. That's not the approach they took two months ago, we'll see if things are different this time around.

"Understood to have been very cooperative with the Premier League". Poor damned fools. We've seen where that gets you. They should have done a City and agreed a court date on their terms in the distant future to give their accountants and lawyers long enough to get the smoke and mirrors together for their defence.