Champions League Idea: week 3

In week one the bets all won and in week 2 they all lost

Manchester City to by Bayern Munich @3.5 at 3 majors and possibly drifting LOST -1

Marseille +1.75 at Borussia Dortmund @ 1.8 (1.87 max) LOST -1

3/5 :: +1.4

Still in profit and some decent bets for this time round

Arsenal to bt Dortmund @ 2.5 with most (2.55 max)

Napoli to win at Marseille @ 2.65 with Bet365 (2.7 max)

Manchester United and Real Sociedad to draw @ 4.33 generally

Juventus (double chance or +0.5) at Real Madrid @ 2.4 (2.55 max)

 

 

Hit or Myth: Does the bogey team exist? (Betting School Article)

Another Betting School article. This time one I originally wrote in November 2011. This one examines the idea of bogey teams.

Hit or Myth: Does the bogey team exist?

Continuing on with the theme of myths in football this month I have decided to pick bogeys! I remembered an exchange of emails I had a few years back with someone who was convinced that the idea of bogey teams existed. He gave me some evidence of classic bogey teams but wanted me to check the data. I never did, but this month I want to look into this and see if he was right.

What is a bogey team? A definition I found on the internet was ‘Bogey team is British sports slang for a team which usually manages to win despite an apparent weakness.’

I then searched more on this subject in football and came across some interesting examples such as Bolton being a bogey team for Arsenal in the early 2000s. Looking at the results from the 2002-2003 season to the 2006-2007 season Bolton won 4 of 8 matches at the Reebok stadium against Arsenal and only lost in the FA cup at home during that period so Arsenal managed just 1win in 8 games. They had 4 consecutive wins at one point and were rightly considered their bogey team. This all changed when Arsenal won in the FA Cup at the Reebok in 2007 and they won 10 of the next 11 matches totally turning this so called bogey team myth on its head. The Arsenal – Bolton results were often put down to Bolton’s style of play being the antithesis of Arsenal and the commonly held belief that Arsenal did not like it up ‘em.

Another interesting one is Leeds v Cardiff who drew together earlier this season at Elland Road. That was the 12th time they have met since 1984 and Leeds have not won any of those matches compared with Cardiff who have 10 wins in those 12 matches. The theory this was attributed to was that Cardiff see this as a rivalry and it is almost like a derby for them. I think this rivalry is something to do with hooliganism but Leeds do not see this as a derby, I think they probably think they are better than that, and so are not as “up for it”.

In both cases it seems that the indication is that the style of play a team adopts is the main reason for these bogey problems. I would agree that the style of play a team adopts can have a big bearing on some stats in a match but can certain teams not cope with another team’s style? Could it be geographical factors affect teams like having far to travel or the opposite and a local derby really producing a one sided set of results?

The question is how to measure a bogey team. I have collected 11 years worth of data from the English football leagues using the seasons 2000-2001 to 2010-2011 from the football-data.co.uk site to try and work this out. My plan is to try and find some teams that really struggle against others in the first 10 seasons and see if we could have profited backing them in the season 2010-2011.

One of the problems with looking at all this data is that you often are find stats like Man United have played Wigan 10 times n the last 5 seasons and won them all. That’s not a bogey team but more just a gulf in class. However, in those 10 years Spurs have only won 1 of 20 matches against Man United and United have won 15 of those matches. Could United be considered Spurs’s bogey team? That is a personal decision though and in the end I decided the best course of action was in fact to remove all games featuring Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool or Man United from this as they have been very dominant over the time period we are looking at and have numerous bogey teams. I also removed Man City as they are unrecognisable from the team that they were in the early 2000s. Spurs were always a bit of a bogey team for them but that was well and truly wiped out at White Hart Lane this season. In any football analysis I often think the approach of removing the bigger teams gives you more a more consistent set of games to look at.

I decided to cut off the minimum matches the teams needed to have played as 10 matches in the last 10 years which means they would have been matched together for 5 seasons. This meant we did not get Cardiff against Leeds as they only met 6 times. The games I chose had to meet 1 or more of the following criteria

  • The bogey team had won at least 75% of the matches
  • The non-bogey team had lost 15% or less of all the matches and the bogey team had won over half of the matches.

The table below shows the 16 teams that played each other in 2010-2011 and could be considered a bogey team. There were quite a few others which were not in the same division in 2010-2011 so did not play each other.

Bogey Team

Handkerchief

M

Bogey

W D L

H

P/L

A

P/L

Tot P/L

Bolton West Ham

14

10 – 2 – 2

W

1.25

W

2.3

3.55

Cheltenham Lincoln

12

8 – 3 – 1

L

-1

W

2.12

1.12

Coventry Barnsley

10

8 – 2 – 0

W

1

L

-1

0

Darlington Grimsby

12

8 – 3 – 1

L

-1

W

2.4

1.4

Everton Sunderland

14

9 – 3 – 2

W

0.8

D

-1

-0.2

Huddersfield Bournemouth

10

6 – 4 – 0

D

-1

D

-1

-2

Ipswich Coventry

18

11 – 5 – 2

L

-1

D

-1

-2

Lincoln Barnet

12

9 – 0 – 3

W

1.1

L

-1

0.1

Newcastle West Brom

10

6 – 4 – 0

D

-1

L

-1

-2

Norwich Barnsley

10

7 – 2 – 1

W

0.91

W

1.6

2.51

Peterboro Notts County

14

8 – 4 – 2

L

-1

W

1.88

0.88

Preston Coventry

18

10 – 6 – 2

W

1.45

W

3

4.45

Torquay Shrewsbury

12

7 – 4 – 1

W

1.5

D

-1

0.5

Tottenham West Ham

16

10 – 4 – 2

D

-1

L

-1

-2

West Ham Blackburn

14

8 – 4 – 2

D

-1

D

-1

-2

West Ham Fulham

14

8 – 4 – 2

D

-1

W

3.5

2.5

 

TOTAL

     

-0.99

   

6.81

The profit and loss figures are based on the best odds that could have been obtained from the data collected from the football-data site. M is matches, Bogey W D L shows their form in those matches and H and A corresponds to the matches in 2010-2011 when the bogey team was home (H) or away (A).

The first thing to look at is the bottom line and if we had backed the bogey team in all matches we would have come out +5.8 points ahead over the 32 matches which is a healthy 18% ROI. In these 32 games the bogey team won 14 matches, drew 10 and lost just 8.

It is interesting that the away results are exactly the same as home results with 7 wins, 5 draws and 4 losses. That got me thinking about the away results and I then decided to look at the results of teams playing away. This time I looked at teams that had played at least 6 of the 10 seasons in the same division and fitted the following criteria

The home team had won less than 15% of all matches.

The results are shown below and remember the bogey team is the away team in each of these cases. Again M is matches and Bogey W D L shows their form in away matches against the non-bogey team or handkerchief. For example the first line is Bolton v Blackburn and the W D L is 5-5-0 which means Bolton won 5, drew 5 and didn’t lose any of their away games at Ewood Park in the years 2000-01 to 2009-10. A trend Blackburn bucked in 2010-2010 when they won!

Bogey

Handkerchief

M

Bogey

W D L

Res

P/L

Bolton

Blackburn

10

5 – 5 – 0

L

-1

Bristol Rvs

Rochdale

6

3 – 3 – 0

L

-1

Grimsby

Darlington

6

5 – 1 – 0

W

2.4

Everton

Tottenham

10

3 – 6 – 1

L

-1

Lincoln

Shrewsbury

9

3 – 5 – 1

W

1.75

Notts County

Peterboro

7

3 – 3 – 1

W

1.88

Coventry

Cardiff

7

3 – 3 – 1

W

1.4

Sunderland

Aston Villa

7

3 – 3 – 1

L

-1

Nott’m Forest

Watford

7

4 – 2 – 1

L

-1

Fulham

West Ham

7

5 – 1 – 1

W

3.5

Sheffield United

Reading

7

5 – 1 – 1

D

-1

Ipswich

Crystal Palace

7

5 – 1 – 1

L

-1

TOTAL

3.93

There were just 11 matches that we have to look at in this analysis which is a very small sample but once again there are some positive results.  The bogey team won 5 of the 12 matches, drew 1 and lost 6 but as they were away in these games the profit is enhanced and they made a nice 3.93 profit over the 12 matches. If you remove the games where half or more of the previous matches in the periods had been draws you get a 5.18 profit from 8 matches and 4 nice wins but that really is tweaking the results a bit too much.

So is this one a hit or a myth? There could be something in this especially in the lower leagues. The Premier League is so dominated by the big 4, 5 or 6 depending on who you support that they account for a huge amount of the so-called bogey teams. The lower leagues are a more accurate indicator because if one team improves they move up a league and so teams only play against other teams of a similar level and you don’t have the gulf in class as in the Premier League.

My feeling therefore is yes the bogey team does exist. As to why I am stumped. Geographically Bolton and Blackburn are close together and feature in the table above and Fulham and West Ham are both in London but none of the others are. Could it be based on the style of play or could it just be something psychological?

I often check past results between sides before making a bet and will do so more often in the future.

Leon Pidgeon