Something For The Weekend 04/09/10

Interesting couple of days - Pittsburgh and Middle Tennessee State both lost games they were supposed to, but they were far closer than I thought they would be (Pittsburgh lost to Utah in overtime), which shows the potential calibre of those teams within their individual conferences.


South Carolina and Iowa State both won, England won 4-0 and Shamrock Rovers were drawing 0-0 at half time but went on to win 1-0 courtesy of a spectacular Billy Dennehy free kick. So all good right now...but it's times like this that it pays not to get too cocky before the sadly inevitable fall ;-)


Anyway, there's money in the bank and there are loads of opportunities in the lower reaches of the Football League this weekend so let's get to work.


League 1:
Milton Keynes Dons v Hartlepool (live on Sky Sports 2 from noon GMT)
Hartlepool have never beaten Milton Keynes/Wimbledon away from home - so I'm dutching MK Dons/draw on Betfair and having a go on MK Dons win at whoever has the best odds on Saturday morning. That's where Oddschecker.com is incredibly useful - this game is also the most likely from those mentioned here to feature Over 2.5 goals.
There's also quite a big advantage in this game being a couple of hours earlier than the rest of them - it's a live trading opportunity and if the outcomes are the ones we want then the money can be recycled later in the afternoon.


League 2:
Barnet v Cheltenham Town
The draw looks really tempting here, especially as three of the last four meetings between these two in Hertfordshire have ended all square and Cheltenham have never won at Underhill. Some kind of combination of Barnet/draw looks like the way forward especially as in Pete Nordsted and Matt Finnegan's 'Premier Football Betting Handbook' there's a straightforward way of dealing with prices for The Draw where that outcome is more frequent than 'normal'. When this method is applied, Barnet have a much better chance of the win. So having a side bet on a straight Barnet win wouldn't be the worst idea anyone's ever had.


Burton Albion v Hereford United
Hereford have only won once at Burton (five meetings) and there's never been a draw between those two at The Pirelli Stadium, so the stats favour a Burton win. One thing I wouldn't recommend in this type of scenario is laying The Draw - just because there hasn't been one before doesn't mean there won't be one in the future and it might happen tomorrow. Admittedly at the new £4 stake the liability is 'only' £11, but that's still too much in a situation where there are potentially profitable outcomes to be had; another one is that both teams could score


Chesterfield v Lincoln City
Should be a home win for the Spirerites. This is a very similar situation to MK Dons v Hartlepool, except Lincoln have won at Chesterfield (twice in the last ten meetings, last time four seasons ago) and at time of writing this the best odds for the primary outcomes are identical to those for the Milton Keynes match. So it shouldn't come as too much of a shock that I'm recommending a similar course of action.


There were a couple of games I looked at that didn't make the list and without going into massive amounts of detail it's worth a short explanation for future reference. Shrewsbury v Rotherham is one of those games that'll is too close to call in any case, but Rotherham have only drawn one of their last 20 league away matches; if this game was later in the season it might be a bit clearer as we'd have some sort of idea how Rotherham's 'in season' away form was shaping up. Bradford City v Port Vale is a weird one because Vale's away record is superb - once again, it may be worth coming back to them later in the season to see if they've maintained this record.


That'll do for now. More college football tomorrow...triple header on ESPN America but I doubt if I'll make it to the second half of Boise State v TCU though. I need to get some kip at some point ;-)