Although BOTW was up and running last August, I did not deem it worthwhile to put together a detailed preview of the 2009 -10 campaign in the absence of a significant readership.

Irrespective of that, I did place (and ultimately profit from) a number of ante-post selections which returned a decent chunk of the sites inaugural annual profit of circa 140 points.

Although Peter Crouch failed to meet expectations, Antonio Valencia cantered to his goal spread by Christmas and while he has since departed for pastures new, Rafa Benitez’s position at Liverpool was never realistically under threat mid campaign.

Subsequent mid-season selections of Chelsea to win the EPL, James Milner to make the World Cup squad and Rickie Lambert to be the leading scorer in League One were all successful and resulted in BOTW recording a circa 28.7 point net profit in 2009/10 on its long term football selections.

Before I dive back into the new season’s ante-post picks later this week, I thought I would use this opportunity to drill down into some of the more detailed analysis that is required if you want to be a consistently profitable football bettor.

To avoid this turning into the longest post in history I am going to break this up into a daily series leading up to opening day next Saturday, so keep checking in for the next installment.

The opening day of the football season may well be my favourite day of the year.

I have to confess, I am a bit of a scrooge. Christmas isn’t really my favourite time of the year. Birthdays aren’t my thing either. For me, the only thing that beats the excitement of the opening day of the football and baseball seasons is probably a meaningful Champions League final day. And let’s be honest, they don’t come around too often!

Anyway, back to the point at hand. As much as is possible, try to forget everything you think you know about the EPL.  Leave all your rivalry biases, player grudges and strategy preferences to one side for a while and let’s look at the league from the foundations up.

As Butch Harmon once told me, improving your football analysis is just like improving your golf swing. You can fiddle around and improve the odd thing and counteract some inherent weaknesses but if you really want to get better, the only real solution is to start again from scratch. Return to the basics of stance, grip and takeaway.

I am guessing most of you bet (or at least consider betting) on the EPL almost 40 weeks a year. So as you are so eager to invest your hard earned cash into it, let’s see what you know about the basics of the league. A quick quiz:

• How many games are played in total during a Premier League season?
• How many of those games are draws?
• How many points do these games generate?
• How much do these numbers fluctuate from year to year?

If you instantly reeled off the answers to those questions without even batting an eyelid, head off down the local pub and check back in here tomorrow!

For those that didn’t, there are 380 games in a Premier League season.

How many of those games are draws? Although the exact answer may not be at the forefront of your mind you probably know this without even realising it.

What are the odds of a draw in an EPL game? It is very rare to see odds shorter than 2/1 (33%) and the bog standard price is 12/5, which translates to a 29% chance.

So considering that there is clearly not going to be an arbitrage opportunity on general draw pricing, you can be pretty sure that there will be less than 120 drawn games a year.

And you would be correct. The most draws in a Premier League season since the league moved to the current 20 team structure 15 years ago was 119 (31%) in 1997 and the least was 77 (20%) in 2006. But these two were very much outliers in what is otherwise a very stable market.

Check out the data in the table and chart below:

Historic EPL points summary

Season	Games	Wins	Draws	Points
1995/96	380	282	98	1042
1996/97	380	261	119	1021
1997/98	380	286	94	1046
1998/99	380	265	115	1025
1999/00	380	289	91	1049
2000/01	380	279	101	1039
2001/02	380	279	101	1039
2002/03	380	290	90	1050
2003/04	380	272	108	1032
2004/05	380	270	110	1030
2005/06	380	303	77	1063
2006/07	380	282	98	1042
2007/08	380	281	99	1041
2008/09	380	283	97	1043
2009/10	380	284	96	1044
Average	380	280	100	1040

Historic EPL draws by season

It is the number of number of draws that drives the total number of points in the league season. The maximum achievable point tally would be 1140. For every game that is drawn, this total decreases by one point, as draws generate 2 points versus 3 points for a result.

As you can see, the number of draws has been decreasing over recent seasons, with the norm now being in the 95-100 range (25-26%). As a result, the average points total each year is 1040-1046.

Is there anything that could be driving this decrease in drawn games? For what it is worth, here is my take on the situation.

The decrease is driven by an increasing disparity between the “Top 8″ sides and the remainder of the League.

From a points perspective, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are going hungry – although I have to commend Rafa on his fantastic charity work in recent years! His regular one point donations to the mid-table sides have truly made a difference!

Consider the following “extreme”scenarios:

• A league consisting of 10 current Premier League teams and 10 local pub teams; and
• A European Super League consisting of the top 20 club sides from Europe’s major leagues, with salary cap restrictions.

Which of the above do you believe would generate more drawn games? For me, it is clearly the latter.

Over the last 5-7 years I feel that the EPL has seen a material shift towards a two tier league – and with the emergence of Manchester City as a possible new footballing superpower, we have a distinct “Top 8” and a “Rest of the League 12”.

The only none “Top 8” team to finish in the top 6 in the last five years was Blackburn Rovers back in 2005/06. In comparison, in the 5 years prior to that, six teams broke into the traditional European places – Bolton, Newcastle, Blackburn, Leeds and even the mighty Ipswich.

I can only see this disparity increasing in the absence of some form of salary cap, spending tax or revenue sharing agreement.

So there you have it. Now we have scoped out exactly what we are dealing with, we are in a much better position to analyse the historic data and to produce a more accurate forecast for the season ahead.

We know we have 1040-1046 points to play with and all we now need to do is dish them out between the 20 teams.

How hard can that be really?

I’ll leave it here for now though.  Check back in over the weekend for something more meaty.

Cheers.

<Click here for part two of this series>