Stats, Stats and Team News (always delve deep)

Hi Folks,

I have been trading in a couple of Champions league matches tonight. I traded the Genk Vs Chelsea match and the Arsenal Vs Marseille match. I made a profit in the Chelsea match, but made a loss in the Arsenal game.

So overall for the night I made a loss of about £25, it is only about 6% of my bank so I am not worried.

However, after each day/night of trading I always sit down and analyze my trades and my spreadsheet. I just thought I would share some of my thoughts on what I did wrong in the Arsenal game. I know you can say hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I think this lose could have been avoided.

Right I did my analysis before the game and overall the last six matches Arsenal had won 4, scoring 17 goals and conceding 11, with only 1 clean sheet and they had lost 2 matches. However, they had scored in every game and 100% of their games were over 2.5 goals. Marseille had won 3, scoring 9 and conceding 4, with 3 clean sheets, they have lost 0. They have scored in 83.3% of their games and only 16.7% of their games have been over 2.5 goals.

Now looking at these stats alone I would say that Arsenal are in a rich scoring form and even though they have conceded more than Marseille I would expect them to score first, especially with them having home advantage, or to be ahead at some point in the game, so I was thinking of laying the draw at this point, although maybe I underestimated Marseille at this point with 3 out of 6 clean sheets. Sometimes you can get tunnel vision into thinking 'oh this is Arsenal, Barcelona, Man United, they score loads of goals at home, they are bound to be ahead', but it doesn't always happened that way.

Next I looked at the last 5 home matches for Arsenal and the last 6 away games for Marseille. Arsenal had won 4 out of 5 and scored 9 goals, conceding 4, with 2 clean sheets, they lost 1 match, which was their first home game of the season when they were down to 10 men against Liverpool. They scored in 4 out of 5 matches and 60% of their games were over 2.5 goals. Marseille on the other hand have won 1 out of 6 away games this season, and that was their last match at the weekend. They have scored 8 goals and conceded 10, with only 1 clean sheet, they have lost 2 matches. They have scored in 66.7% of their games and 50% of their games were over 2.5 goals.

Now this second set of stats was definitely swaying me to lay the draw, thinking Arsenal would take the lead or win the match, I was also thinking of laying under 2.5 goals, especially with Arsenal being at home.

However, if we had looked closer at the home vs away matches, and in particular Marseille, we might have chosen a different path. In the first 3 away matches Marseille conceded 7 goals, so they only conceded 3 goals in the last 3 away matches, they conceded 1 goal in 1 match, 2 in another an 0 goals in another. Also 1 out of their last 4 away matches had been over 2.5 goals. However, I did not look at this.

Then looking at the champions league games so far this season, both teams score 4 goals and only 33% of their games were over 2.5 goals, also Marseille have 66.7% clean sheets. I did not look at this.

Lastly, and this was my biggest mistake, I looked at the team news, and noticed that Van persie was on the bench, Arsenal were playing Chong Park, a new young lad upfront. Now looking at the rest of the team and the stats I had looked at, I still thought Arsenal would win and score over 2.5 goals. To be fair I most probably convinced myself by now that it was obvious, and this brings me on to the key thing about stats. Some stats are more important than others, and sometimes you can twist the stats to suit what you really want to pick. You have to examine stats subjectively. Normally I am good at this, it is most probably because I am a scientist, but this time I did not delve deeper.

Here is another more important stat that I should of looked at when I found out that Van Persie was not playing. In the last six matches for Arsenal, Van Persie has scored 10 of the 17 goals!!!! That stat coupled with the recent defensive capacity of Marseille would have convinced me to not lay under 2.5 goals, and maybe even lay over 2.5 goals. I might still have laid the draw, because Arsenal had the home advantage, but it would have been tight and maybe too risky.

Anyway, I hope folks have found this useful. Just remember to always check the team news and the impact of certain players throughout the season and the recent matches, and also remember to look more closely at the last 6 matches overall and home or away data, it might just reveal some interesting points.

Happy Trading!!!!