Too stupid to bet ?
I have made an average ROI of 117% on free to view content over the last seven years, mainly on the GOWI blog, but recently on here the clubgowi website and Facebook. Every single one of those previews is still available to view. Anyone with even a moderate understanding of betting, would kill for those stats across a 3-6 month period, let alone seven years !
Nowadays, only about 2-3 of my weekly previews are available to read for free, which is what I meant by referring to the "Golden Years of Blogging" in this recent article. The other 25 or so previews per week only appear on the clubgowi newsletter, this is not a free service, the occasional free copy is sent out as a sample, but anyone seeing just free content is only going to have access to maybe 120 previews over a full year, subscribers to the full service will get around 1,300+ ! As I explained on the Gambling and Other Wholesome Interests blog recently, only seeing freebies is a little like going to a restaurant and leaving after the hors d'oeuvre !
To subscribe to the email service for one year would cost you 888 euros, if you had just followed blindly and bet everything I gave as a suggestion or selection over the last 12 months for a 50 euro unit stake, you would have won about 10,000 euros. If you had been able to have done so for the last seven years, maybe you would be 60-80,000 euros ahead of the game, the biggest single bet you would have placed in that time would have been 100 euros and there were only a handful of those. Your subscription fees would have cost around 8% of your total profit.
That is kind of worst case scenario, you could have used a little personal knowledge, fine tuned the picks to your own taste and maybe won more. There is a LOT of information on the newsletter which is never recorded statistically, for example, recently I wrote.
FOOTBALL LEAGUE STATS :
I like the attempts on goal stats as a starting point for looking at games, they can be a good indication of who has been lucky or has overachieved and lopsided figures, like teams with a big conversion rate, or high percentage of attempts on target etc, can only be maintained for so long.
LEAGUE 2:
Port Vale are currently in second place in the real table, but are down in 21st in the attempts on goal chart, with just 210 in total, of which 123 are on target and that is an unsustainable number percentage wise, they have shown a bit of a fragile side at times and I would not not rush to back them at low odds against anyone.
Amongst the bottom clubs, Bristol Rovers are the biggest and best supported of those in real trouble and I fancy them to pull away, they are a second half of the season team in any case, collecting 11 points more after New Year in each of their last two campaigns at this level and their "mid table" number of 266 attempts on goal is 80 more than Barnet.
Since writing that, Vale have collected 18 points from 13 starts,which equates to 64 points over a full season, just about enough to see them finish in midtable, they have also failed to score in five of their last nine matches. Rovers have picked up 29 from 14 starts, 95 over the full season, enough to have seen them go up as champions in each of the last four seasons! Included in that sequence was a 2-0 win over Port Vale last week.
I have put up a handful of long term bets this season at odds over 10-1. Cardiff City 12-1 in the Championship( now 1.12), Watford also in the Championship at 66-1- to win , 14-1 for promotion (now 2.25), San Francisco 49ers in the Superbowl ( lost in the final, traded at big odds on), Aldershot Town circa 40-1 in League 2 (oops!), Brentford in League 1 at 16-1, 20-1and 33-1 to win and big odds to be promoted, I basically begged and pleaded week after week for everyone to back them ( now 5.0 and 2.0 respectively) and the most recent one, Benfica in the Europa League @ 25-1 + that is reproduced below, given less than five weeks ago and now trading @5.50 !
They were my ONLY big priced long term selections ! Although Justin Rose was given at 10-1 in the Race to Dubai ( now a few clicks less) and you can read that preview here on the website.
If you cannot see the value of information like this, then no offence, but you are too stupid to be betting and I suggest you never go near a bookmaker ever again and try to find another hobby !
Good Luck.
Thursday February 14th
Europa League:
The last ten runnings of the Europa League/ UEFA Cup have seen seven winners from the Iberian Peninsula, five Spanish winners and two Portugese, they also supplied four losing finalists between them and all four semi finalists last year, the other three winners came from Eastern Europe, with two Russian winners and one from the Ukraine.
The Eastern teams are at a disadvantage early, coming off their winter break, but once we are in mid/late March, the pendulum swings the other way and they are fresher and at their peak, when others are beginning to tire.
This says as much about how these countries view the competition than anything else, they always show it respect and want to do well. Italian teams have a terrible record and since it was renamed the Europa League, only one has got past the Round of 32 and they lost in the Round of 16.
There are three Serie A teams left in the competition, Lazio, Napoli and Inter, but all have other major objectives for the season and I would offer a word of caution about all of them, not to say that they cannot win/ progress, just that I doubt that they are overly bothered.
The final is in Amsterdam this year and we can expect Ajax to be very motivated, but they might well have to see off Chelsea in the round of 16..
Atletico Madrid and Levante are the only two Spanish teams remaining and are drawn to face each other in the Round of 16, Atletico are looking to win for the third time in four years and given their league position, 12 points behind Barcelona and 11 clear of the fourth placed team, they already look assured of a Champions League spot for next season and I see no reason why they will not again be fully focused and this looks a decent draw for them, they have to be favourites IMO and 8.0 is a perfectly fair price, although a little skinny for my liking in a 32 runner race.
Despite facing a difficult tie with Bayer Leverkusen and going toe to toe with Porto for the domestic title, Benfica keep catching my eye at 29.0 in the outright market, they would play either Dynamo Kiev or Bordeaux next and I would favour them to beat either. They are unbeaten domestically, 14-4-0 and were a little hard done by in the Champions League. They look committed to this and all the big guns have travelled and they do have some very impressive weapons ....
Benfica: Artur Moraes, Paulo Lopes ,Bruno Varela, Melgarejo, Maxi Pereira, Luisinho, Luisão, Garay, Roderick Miranda , Jardel , André Almeida, Ola John, Enzo Perez, Salvio, Matic, Nicolás Gaitán, Urreta , André Gomes, Rodrigo, Lima, Cardozo.
They can field a starting eleven full of internationals and have a very nice mixture of experience and exciting young talent. Garay, Perez and Gaitan were all in the Argentine squad for the recent friendly in Stockholm, Salvio was in the squad for the previous international and is the youngest of the quartet. They have the class to go deep in this if they wish and the squad they have taken to Germany looks a statement of intent.
Leverkusen host Augsburg on Saturday afternoon, what is it with the Bundesliga ? Give them an extra day for goodness sake ! They are going to make some rotation between the two games of course, boss Sami Hyypiä admitted that and also that "a couple of our players have slight problems", refusing to give fiurther details. Almost four thousand visiting supporters have tickets for the game, which will make for a very good atmosphere, if pushed, I like the visitors with the handicap start, but must admit that +0.25 ball at sub 2.0 is not my favourite quote and if we are taking the outright anyway, I am happy to stick with that. 1 unit Benfica to win Europa League outright 26.0 + , there is bigger in a place or two.