short-term stats giving an edge?

> being somewhat bemused by the regularly daft results in the EPL I thought I would have a quick look at the data this season and see if there were any quirks that cropped up.. that may give a small edge in our battle against the rubbish odds offered every week
> the short-term stats can be misleading but can also point to some current trends - and as stats in the long-run usually 'average out' or conform to the expected long-term ranges, there can be short-term spells that you can take advantage of
> right... data for the EPL so far > 49 matches played (5 wks)
> I have removed the big 3 of utd, city and chelsea as they skew the data hugely and I want to spot value in the run-of-the-mill games that are so hard to predict - you can look at those teams separately and back accordingly sometimes; case in point being laying them away from home as Online Trader is doing so successfully (check his blog)
*EPL season so far minus the big 3 >
> that leaves 35 matches > these have provided the following (using bet365 odds data)
homes > 12
draws > 12
aways > 11
avg odds for away team when winning > 3.63
avg odds for draw when match is a draw > 3.34
avg odds for home team when winning > 2.32
* ok.. no value in backing home teams then but there is a profit if you had backed all the away teams irrespectively 
using 1pt per bet level stakes > 35 matches means -35pts staked but returns of 39.88pts (13.9%)
* if you had backed all the draws irrespectively > -35 staked but return of 40.05 (14.4%)
* you could have backed both draw & away each game and seen -70 stakes but return of 79.93pts (profit of 9.93pts or 14%) > 14% return just by avoiding home teams!
* laying the home team would have meant 12 losses at liability of 20.38pts but 23 wins at 1pt per win > thus 2.62pts profit
right, we have some nice returns here just by going with the short-term trends...looking at the away /draws for starters
* backing the highest odds in each game would have shown 25 losses but 10 wins and those 10 games would have given a 40.45pt return so less 35 staked = 5.45pt profit (15.6%), another edge!
* backing the middle odds result would have given 13 wins at a return of 42.28pts (mostly draws as they are usually the middle option odds-wise > profit of 7.28pts  (20.8%)


*stats for the HT/FT result in these games were >
H - H 9 D - H 2 A - H 1 A - A 5 D - A 6 H - A 0 H - D 4 D - D 8 A - D 0  
> this shows the turnaround happened just once (blackburn coming back to beat arsenal)
> of the 12 home wins, 9 of these were already H at HT which seems high.. backing H/H might be an idea there
> of the 35 games, only 13 changed from the HT result to the FT result


summary > very small sample for analysis and could be a completely different set of stats in the next 5 wks but interesting that the higher odds prices are coming in a bit and showing a profit... worth looking at the middle and high odds teams en masse and seeing if this trend continues - bookies often slow to react to the surprising results and last w/end was a good example of unexpected scores again with norwich winning at bolton, qpr turning over wolves, blackburn winning, etc... and the returns will be much better using betfair SP rather than bet365 odds 


weekend fixtures >
bolton @ 15/2 / draw 18/5
wolves @ 9/1 / draw 4/1
blackburn @ 18/5 / draw 13/5
fulham @ 23/10 / draw 23/10
wigan @ 29/10 / draw 5/2
villa @ 23/10 / draw 40/17
sunderland @ 2/1 / draw 23/10
> will paper back all of these and see what happens this weekend!