Man City vs Leicester
With most of the fixture congestion for this holiday week behind us, Jimmy is back to provide his thoughts on the showdown atop the table and the Wednesday fixture between Sunderland and Liverpool.
Let’s chat Leicester!
I’ve been speaking to people in the business and they’ve given me the reasons why they continue to price them as they are. They know they were going to get hammered over the weekend at Liverpool at 3/1 but they were not prepared to move away from their long standing models despite some admitting to me they were only really a 15/8 or 2/1 shot today. They claim adjustments have been made as the line at the beginning of the season would have been Liverpool -1.25 and it was -0.5 today so they have adjusted (By the way Leicester would have cashed on that line) They are also neck deep in £5 and £10 bets on Leicester to win the Premiership at prices up to 500-1 as they did not adjust quick enough early in the season. Those bets have been placed weekly up and down the country in thousands and thousands of betting shops. The cumulative liabilities are gigantic!
I find it quite stubborn and strange business though that they are waiting for results to return to normal. What happens if they don’t? What are normal results this season? Leicester have now played nearly every team as we are eighteen matches into the season. What I will say though is that it has been a perfect storm for the bookmakers that has emptied their satchels. The start the fixture compilers gave Leicester was very generous and they built up their confidence. The first real test they had was against Arsenal and they failed it, losing 5-2. This gave more credence to what the bookmakers thought about them longer term. Leicester then embarked on another great run against the lesser lights which further lined our pockets and gave the punters great belief in them. Then they had this run of home fixtures to Man United, away to Swansea, home to Chelsea and away to Everton. The bookies thought those results would normalise though and priced accordingly, us punters were loyal to the blues and the bookies got hammered!
How often do we go on about the over 2.5 goals is 9-3 in the last twelve meetings of the sides. Bookmakers use those kinds of statistics to price under/over markets yet those are stats going back six years and most of the data is unrelated to the current squad of players. Yet here we have a data sample of eighteen and they are not reassessing their prices. It is madness and as I said before this Saturday’s podcast until the madness stops just keep on backing Leicester. I am not prepared to give up on them just yet…but the time may come.
Leicester City v Manchester City (Tuesday)
Manchester City -0.5 and 3 goals
Man City won both of these meetings to nil this season, 1-0 in this fixture and 2-0 back at the Etihad. This line opened Man City -0.5 but I can see perception changing based on the weekend’s results. Let’s sit and wait as the money may pour in on the visitors. Before the season started this line would be Man City -1 or -1.25 so could it head back towards minus one? If it does and if it gets there I will be all over Leicester. Even Sunderland scored against Man City and Kompany is out again so we will see the defensive clowns on show again for Man City..
Update on health of EPL leading scorer Jamie Vardy
Sunderland v Liverpool (Wednesday)
Liverpool -0.5 and 2.5 goals
Liverpool ground out a 1-0 win last season when the sides met back in January up in the north east. Historically this has been a dour game at the Stadium of Light as under 2.5 goals has gone 8-1 over the last nine seasons. With the goal line set at 2.5 I will take the unders as the home team will definitely look to sneak this game 1-0. Sunderland are not the best defensive unit in EPL history but they should be able to sit off and limit this Liverpool strike force, as long as they get through that important first twenty minutes which they didn’t do against City.
