We are approaching kick-off for the 2024/25 club football season. Across England and Europe, teams are finalising their pre-season preparations. Fans and bettors, too, will have an eye on the looming start date for the Premier League and England’s other leagues.
While a new campaign is always exciting, it can feel a little unpredictable in the heady days of August. Good teams can have slow starts, whereas others may have difficulty bedding in new players or re-integrating stars who were involved in the Euros or Copa America. For betting, there can sometimes be a sense of potluck. Although, some might see the unpredictability as an opportunity to get some value in the odds.
Bet Builders Have Surged in Popularity
However, we wanted to focus on one particular area of early season betting – the football Bet Builder – and ask whether it is better to have patience, waiting until later in the season to start using this particular bet strategy. Why? For the simple reason that Bet Builders are, if you are using them astutely, based on stats, and the stats will change from season to season.
To explain, let’s consider some of the changes from the 2022/23 season to the 2023/24 season. Last term, the Premier League averaged more goals (an average of 57.26 per team) than the 2022/23 season (55.37). There were also rises in the number of yellow cards per team and the number of corners.
Some of the rises look quite modest. Corners, for example, rose from an average of 200.79 per team across 38 games to 209.79. This “only” represents an increase of less than a corner per game. Yet, this sort of insight is crucial for statistics-based bet-building strategies. If we know the league is going to trend higher in goals, corners, yellows, shots on target, and so on, we can implement that into the Bet Builder.
The problem, of course, is that we only know this information in hindsight. Moreover, even if the averages of the league rises slightly, we can see significant drops and rises from individual teams. For example, Chelsea were much more successful attacking in 2023/24 season compared to the previous one (50 goals versus 38), whereas Fulham became way more conservative (55 versus 40).
Predicting How Teams Will Set Up
The pertinent question is whether you can predict these changes. Going back to Chelsea, for instance, we know that the team will play differently under Enzo Maresca than the Blues did under Mauricio Pochettino. Maresca emphasizes possession and control in midfield (although that wasn’t evident in Chelsea’s pre-season humbling in a 4-1 defeat to Celtic). That said, we can see from Leicester last season how he wants to play, and it might suggest even more attacking intent from Chelsea, as well as more corners.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=I5popJOR1FA%3Fsi%3D5BWWSAwYYuiJsnk5
That said, the EFL Championship is not the Premier League, and we can only guess at how successful Maresca will be. Again, it underlines our argument that it might be better to be patient, seeing how teams set up in August, analysing statistics for the new season, and running with it as you create your stats-based Bet Builders.
Bet Builders, in general, have become a huge part of the betting landscape, especially football betting. The allure of combining several metrics across a game has caught the imagination of many fans. Yet, to be successful, it’s important to match up your Bet Builder with solid statistical analysis. Historical stats are useful, yes, but you should also try to get as much up-to-date information as possible. You don’t need to wait until mid-season to use a Bet Builder, but as with all betting, relevant stats are your friend.
