The over/under market is always one of the most popular markets to back for both small time punters and customers trading with high stakes. So it got me thinking...Is there a time of the season that we can use this market to see the most profit in the over 2.5 goals per game market?
I used StrataBet and their great Query Tool to try and determine whether my theory was right. I used data from the past 5 seasons dating back to the 2010/2011 season and looked at the data for goals scored round by round.
The rules we were following were:
-We need to be looking at rounds with at least 30 goals, as that gives us 2.5 goals per game so any round with less than that doesn't matter to us.
-We can't look at the data month by month as, obviously, there aren't the same amount of games each month so we've got 46 rounds (I didn't include the playoffs for the huge variables there).
- The top 5 scoring rounds would show us the best time of the season to use the over 2.5 goals market to its fullest potential.
Here are the results:
2010/11
The 2010/11 season was my starting point and it offered some interesting data. There were 1510 goals in total, with an average of 32.82 goals per round and 2.74 goals per game.
There were 17 rounds where less than 30 goals were scored so we ignored those and looked at the rest. It showed us that April was the best month for goals in the 2010/11 season.
Total rounds which averaged 2.5 gpg - 29
Highest Scoring Rounds:
1st - 09/04 (49 goals, 4.08 gpg)
2nd - 29/12 (45 goals, 3.75 gpg)
3rd - 25/04 (42 goals, 3.5 gpg)
Jt 4th - 28/09 (40 goals, 3.33 gpg)
Jt 4th - 02/04 (40 goals, 3.33 gpg)
2011/12
The 2011/12 season saw 1419 goals, averaging 30.84 goals per round and 2.57 goals per game.
This time there were 16 rounds that didn't reach our 30 goal per round target. This time the highest scoring rounds seemed to be spread out a bit more.
Total rounds which averaged 2.5 goals per game: 30
Highest Scoring Rounds:
1st - 20/03 (42 goals, 3.5 gpg)
2nd - 16/08 (40 goals, 3.33 gpg)
3rd - 22/10 (39 goals, 3.25 gpg)
Jt 4th - 18/02 (37 goals, 3.08 gpg)
Jt 4th - 13/04 (37 goals, 3.08 gpg)
2012/13
There were 1478 goals in the 2012/13 season which meant that each round saw 32.13 goals which averaged at 2.68 goals per game.
There were 17 rounds with less than the required 30 goals but the highest rounds were much higher than before with 8 rounds seeing 40 or more goals.
Total rounds which averaged 2.5 goals or more - 29
Highest Scoring Rounds:
1st - 08/12 (44 goals, 3.66 gpg)
2nd - 01/12 (43 goals, 3.58 gpg)
Jt 3rd - 25/08 (42 goals, 3.5 gpg)
Jt 3rd - 14/09 (42 goals, 3.5 gpg)
Jt 3rd - 22/09 (42 goals, 3.5 gpg)
Jt 3rd - 10/11 (42 goals, 3.5 gpg)
2013/14
1434 goals occurred in the 2013/14 season which saw a round average of 31.17 and a game average of 2.59.
Once again there were 17 rounds which fell below the 30 goal threshold and 5 rounds saw 40 goals or more.
Total rounds which averaged 2.5 goals or more - 29
Highest Scoring Rounds:
1st - 03/05 (43 goals, 3.58 gpg)
Jt 2nd - 24/08 (40 goals, 3.33 gpg)
Jt 2nd - 21/09 (40 goals, 3.33 gpg)
Jt 2nd - 08/04 (40 goals, 3.33 gpg)
Jt 2nd - 26/04 (40 goals, 3.33 gpg)
2014/15
Last season saw 1470 goals in total, with 31.95 goals per round and 2.66 goals per game.
Interestingly, there were only 14 rounds which fell below the 30 goal ceiling and 16 (the most of the data here) rounds that saw 35 goals or more.
Total rounds which averaged 2.5 goals or more - 32
Highest Scoring Rounds:
1st - 04/11 (40 goals, 3.33 gpg)
Jt 2nd - 01/11 (39 goals, 3.25 gpg)
Jt 2nd - 26/12 (39 goals, 3.25 gpg)
3rd - 16/09 (38 goals, 3.16 gpg)
Jt 4th - 24/10 (37 goals, 3.08 gpg)
Jt 4th - 07/02 (37 goals, 3.08 gpg)
Jt 4th - 14/02 (37 goals, 3.08 gpg)
Jt 4th - 25/04 (37 goals, 3.08 gpg)
Conclusion
So what can we see? Looking at our highest scoring rounds we can see they fall in the following months:
August - 3
September - 5
October - 2
November - 3
December - 4
January - 0
February - 3
March - 1
April - 7
May - 1
From that data we can discount May, as there is often 1 round in the month and never more than 3.
We can clearly see that April is the month which has the most games with the highest scoring rounds with September not far behind. The remaining months range from 1- 4 and average out at 2.28 high scoring rounds per month,
If we split the remaining months into three's (discounting May, remember) we get the following:
First three months of the season - 10 high scoring rounds
Middle three months of the season - 7 high scoring rounds
Last 3 months of the season - 11 high scoring rounds.
This data shows us that the beginning of the season and the end of the season are the times that you want to be backing over 2.5 goals more often whilst you need to steer clear of the over market in January.
I'll try and revisit this at the end of the season and see if the 2015/16 season carries on the trend but it looks like you'll want to keep your money in your pocket after Christmas if you like the over 2.5 goals market! Maybe save it up for April...
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All the data here is the property of Stratagem Technologies. http://www.stratagem.co https://twitter.com/StrataBet
