Back in January I wrote an article, “Notsoshabby”, to support that days selection of Notts County to beat Barnet, which I had identified as the best value bet of that particular weekend.

This was one of my favourite selections of the season, and over the months that followed I backed County twice more on BOTW and I also backed them personally on numerous other occasions.

I was rooting around in the back of a virtual drawer the other day and found some interesting stuff in the darkest depths of a spreadsheet, so I thought I would share it with the masses.

Let’s have a look at what the league table looked like going into that day:

Position	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pt
1	Rochdale	27	17	5	5	58	25	33	56
2	Bournemouth	26	14	4	8	30	28	2	46
3	Rotherham United	24	13	6	5	37	24	13	45
4	Bury	26	13	6	7	37	35	2	45
5	Shrewsbury Town	27	11	9	7	39	33	6	42
6	Notts County	23	11	7	5	50	21	29	40
7	Aldershot Town	25	11	7	7	42	32	10	40
8	Dag & Red	26	11	7	8	39	34	5	40
9	Chesterfield	26	12	3	11	37	34	3	39
10	Morecambe	26	9	11	6	46	40	6	38
11	Accrington Stanley	23	11	3	9	37	34	3	36
12	Northampton Town	27	9	9	9	37	36	1	36
13	Burton Albion	26	10	6	10	40	40	0	36
14	Port Vale	25	7	13	5	28	25	3	34
15	Crewe Alexandra	26	10	4	12	42	42	0	34
16	Bradford City	25	7	9	9	35	41	-6	30
17	Macclesfield Town	25	6	11	8	30	37	-7	29
18	Barnet	26	7	8	11	27	34	-7	29
19	Lincoln City	25	8	4	13	19	32	-13	28
20	Torquay United	26	6	8	12	35	38	-3	26
21	Hereford United	24	6	8	10	27	34	-7	26
22	Cheltenham Town	26	5	10	11	29	43	-14	25
23	Grimsby Town	26	3	10	13	19	40	-21	19
24	Darlington	24	3	2	19	13	51	-38	11

As you can see, at this point in the season Notts County appear, at first glance, to be meandering along having a fairly decent season without setting the world alight.

Their performance to this point had been somewhat overshadowed by all the off-field developments at Meadow Lane.  Notts seemed to be having to deal with more emergencies and dramas than you would even expect from a Saturday night out on the town with Paul Gascoigne!

The club had already seen Sven Goran Eriksson installed as the dreaded Director of Football, two takeovers, including the arrival (and swift departure) of Middle Eastern “riches”, two chairmen and three management team in only six months.

The club was also staring down the barrel as a result of a significant £600,000 unpaid tax bill.

And to top it all off, who can forget the brief cameo from Sol “this dressing room is a lot smaller than I expected” Campbell.  At least he didn’t turn up with a fishing rod and eight cans of premium strength lager!

I don’t want to rehash all of January’s post, but for ease I will quickly summarise the key messages.

If you weren’t a BOTW reader back in January, I would definitely recommend that you do read this post, as it demonstrates a number of key learning points you should be aware of if you are hoping to accurately assess, price and therefore profit from, mid/lower league football in the UK.

The key things to remember were:

1. At this point the League Two table was distorted by a significant “games-in-hand” imbalance.   Although this may seem a very obvious statement, and something too simple of impact prices, you would be surprised how often I notice teams flying under the radar in the lower leagues because of this.
2. County’s goal difference of +29 was quite remarkable, given that the team had only played 23 games and were only sitting on the fringes of the playoffs.   A few drawn games and some consistency struggles had impacted the teams point haul – but that is always likely to be the case if your management team changes every 4 games.   At the end of the day, scoring the most goals, conceding the least goals, keeping the most clean sheets and losing the least games will always only lead you one way.  Up.
3. In addition to this historic data, you may recall that the Magpies had put in some really strong performances over the festive period, evidencing a step change in their performance levels.
4. It should also be noted that the Magpies were coming into this game on the back of successive away league wins against Burton Albion (3-1) and Dagenham (3-0) and had been unfortunate to only hold Premier League mavericks Wigan Athletic to a 2-2 draw at Meadow Lane a week earlier – whom, for the record, they would go on to beat 2-0 at the DW Arena.

So with the joy of hindsight, can we find out if this position could have been exploited to make a tidy profit?

Well thankfully we can, due to the awesome work of the guys at Football-Data who provide full game by game results/statistics and bookmakers pricing data, for all the major European leagues, free of charge.

Their data is a wonderful resource for those who like to play around with a good spreadsheet in their spare time, when they aren’t busy at work… playing around with spreadsheets.

The graph below is created from their base data, and shows the cumulative profit/loss throughout the 2009/10 season of placing 5% win bets on Notts County in each and every one of their 46 League Two games last season.

Before we go on, I would like to point out that obviously I do not advocate backing a team in every single game going into a football season without some pretty detailed insight.

However, when looking back, such analysis can give a real good feel for how well a team has performed and how well they were perceived/valued in the market place.

Notts County 2009-10 – Cumulative position based on 5% back stakes

What is the phrase?   A picture paints a thousand words?   This is a pretty powerful visual even at first glance.  Here is my interpretation of what this indicates:

As highlighted by the red section, County has a stumbling start to the season, with a number of draws hitting both the clubs point tally and punters pockets.

• However, after getting first team affairs in order and with a little regression to the mean, County began to improve. The seasons low point was after a tight 1-0 loss away to fellow BOTW favourites Rochdale at Spotland (1).
• As highlighted by the orange section, once County turned the corner they actually began to steam off at quite a pace. Four comprehensive wins, including three away from home, sandwiched a lone defeat to Accrington Stanley across December and January, in addition to a number of good FA cup performances.
• At this point I started to take noticed and identified that the market prices for County were not adjusting appropriately given their improvement of form.
• The grey dashed line highlights the point at which I published Nottsoshabby (2).
• As highlighted by the green section, after an small stumble due to a couple of 1-1 draws, County continued to outperform their market price for the rest of the season right up until sealing the League Two title at Darlington at the end of April.

So what would the bank manager be taking from this scenario?

Backing the Magpies for 5% of your trading bank for the entire campaign would have seen you chalk up an absolute return of 11.5% on the season.  Not bad, not amazing.   And as I mentioned earlier, this is not something you are ever going to see me recommending anybody does.

At the point at which I determined that Notts County were a significantly undervalued asset in the market place, you would have been sitting on a cumulative loss of -11.2%.

If you had entered the market at this point, and proceeded to back County for the same 5% stakes until they claimed the League Two crown, you would have recorded an absolure return of 26.3%.   Covering the 21 fixtures, this would have resulted in an ROI of over 25%, in less than three months.   Nice work if you can get it.

I would also highlight that, unlike with traditional investments, you do not actually tie up the cash  for the entire 3 months period when sports betting and as a result it can be utilised elsewhere simultaneously.

In this instance you could have recorded this profit without actually having to utilise more than 10% of your trading balance, as within a matter of weeks you would have been staking using previously generated profits.

Although I don’t want to linger on it too long, as I am aware this post has turned into a bit of a monster, hopefully everyone is well aware that regularly backing away wins is highly unlikely to be a profitable strategy unless you have Yodaesque levels of insight into your chosen league, and so I thought I would show you the equivalent cumulative return profile achieved by backing County using the same 5% staking structure – but only for their home fixtures.

Notts County 2009-10 – Cumulative position based on 5% back stakes (home games)

I have used the same axis as above to allow a direct visual comparison with chart 1.1.  As you can see, this profile is much shallower, with a less pronounced “loss” during the early part of the season, followed by a slightly lower but more stable profit during the second half of the season.

This strategy would also have returned a nice healthy profit of 16.6% with a ROI of circa 28%.

You may regularly read that you can only generate a 4 or 5% per annum return from ante-post football betting.   As I have tried to stress many times, although this is not quite a “myth” it is certainly a fair generalisation.

But, if you are disciplined, prepared to carry out detailed analysis and keep yourself up to date with the many intangible nuances that impact league football on a week-to-week basis, higher returns can be made.

You just need to know where you are looking.

Until next time guys, happy punting.  Only the good kind of course!

Case Study - Notts County 2009-10, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating