EPL and La Liga Thoughts 12 October

As always, follow at your own risk, and bets are with Smarkets unless indicated otherwise.

 

EPL

Backed Villa at home to beat Chelsea at 4.6. Chelsea’s away form has been a bit iffy this year, narrowly beating Palace and Everton, but losing badly to Leeds and narrowly to Southampton. Palace, Everton, and Southampton are all at the bottom end of the table, and Villa have been reasonably good at home (a draw against Man City was impressive, though they did lose to West Ham).

Backed Manchester United to beat Newcastle at home at 2.04. Pretty simple really, Manchester United have had one defeat, to the current champions, since their awful start and their results have put them in the top five. Newcastle are just a point below them but Man United have a game in hand.

Went for Southampton to win at home versus West Ham at 2.98. Losing half their home matches looks bad for Southampton but one was versus Man United and they have beaten Chelsea at home. Away from Home, West Ham have won one and lost three.

 

La Liga

Backed Mallorca at 2.98 to win at home against Sevilla, although it’s worth noting I saw when I added the bet to my spreadsheet that I’d made home side beating Sevilla bets before and they ended up red…

Also split one stake evenly to back Real Betis beating Almeria 1-0 at 7.4 and 2-0 at 8.4. Betis have a solid defence and are a top five side but have the lowest goals for in that echelon. Almeria have conceded 12 goals in total, home concessions being one or two (including against Real Madrid). 

At 5.6, backed Osasuna to win away against Villareal. Considered this a bit and could’ve opted out. They’re close in the table (Osasuna just higher) but Villareal concede very few. Tricky but I feel the odds are longer than they ought to be.

 

Note: October’s a very busy month so it may be I end up skipping some fixtures. We shall see.

Morris Dancer

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

F1 2014 - Second and Third Tests

Image
Bit of a whopper of an article, but it didn’t make sense to write two for the Bahrain tests, as they were so close together. Many of the rule changes are helpfully outlined here: http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/22058/9077826/gearing-up-for-2014-the-rule-changes-uncovered-and-explained-part-one This is one more reason why reliability is to critical. Losing a whole power unit (exceeding the 5 per season limit) means starting the next race from the pit lane. Losing a component, such as the turbo, means a 10 place grid penalty. On day one of the first test in Bahrain it appeared the Renault/Red Bull woe might continue. However, both Red Bull and Toro Rosso got in good running on the second day. Any remaining issues seem more to do with the car rather than the power unit. It’s been suggested the Renault requires significantly more cooling than rival engines, but apparently there are upsides. If the horsepower rumours were true (Mercedes being mighty and Ferrari better
Read more

Japan: early discussion

Image
As we enter the latter stages of the season we have multiple pairs of back-to-back races, hence this discussion starting a day after the Korean Grand Prix (which may be the last, incidentally. The circuit’s too isolated, surrounding developments haven’t been built and the organisers are annoyed by the high cost of staging the race which is the only use of the circuit all year). The Suzuka circuit is a proper one, with lots of elevation changes, a very fast flowing section (similar to Silverstone) and some very high speed corners. Sadly, I expect this will mean it’ll suit Red Bull. However, given their resurgence, it’s worth mentioning that last year Sauber had a strong result at Suzuka, when Kobayashi got third. Perhaps Hulkenberg will be able to get good points again (thanks to him Sauber are now tied on points but ahead of Toro Rosso in the Constructors’) and Gutierrez could nab his first point or two. Lotus benefited from some fortune with the safety car timing in Kore
Read more

America: pre-race

Image
Q1 saw the pointless teams ditched as usual, but there was a stark divergence between the Williams’ drivers. Bottas was 1st (in Q1 only), and Maldonado 18th. Turns out money can only buy seats, not speed. Surprising to see such a difference between the two drivers, though. Sutil went out in 17th, and may have suffered some sort of technical problem as he peeled off after his final lap. During Q2 it was confirmed Sutil had a problem, namely a slow puncture. Q2 saw the surprise departure of Rosberg. The Mercedes seemed to be the best of the rest, so that’s quite a shock. Not only that, he’s 14th, behind Ricciardo, Di Resta and Button (although Button suffers a 3 place grid penalty for ignoring red flags during practice). Massa is behind Rosberg, followed by Vergne. Impressively, Sauber got both of their cars into the top 10. Q3 was surprisingly close, but Vettel narrowly got pole ahead of Webber. Grosjean continues his strong form with 3rd, followed by Hulkenberg, who is
Read more