ANALYSIS – Premier league goal drought

[FootballFormLabs]

The low amount of goals at the start of the 2013/2014 Premier League season has worried many fans, pundits, and punters alike.

Looking at similar seasons in the Premier League, we can possibly expect a below average amount of goals for the rest of the first 10 weeks, before numbers return towards the league average. However, don’t rule out another drop in goals at the end of the season.
At this stage we’d cautiously suggest that ‘unders’ represents slightly greater value for the next few weeks. However, there could be real value in ‘overs’ from weeks 11-20, as the bookies might over-react to the low scoring start. This is also historically the most profitable quarter of the season for backing ‘overs’ (there tends to be a slight drop in goals in the third quarter, while ‘overs’ gets priced in during the fourth quarter).

Significantly, in the similar 2005/06 Premier League season, we have +3.5 goals odds in our database for 121 of the 200 matches in weeks 11-20 and you’d have made a 32% profit backing +3.5 goals in those games (from average odds), as 35% saw at least four goals. For the other 79 games in that period, we have the +2.5 odds and those would have generated a 2% profit from average odds.

To see the full analysis please go to the Strategies tab within Form Labs.