Its no secret that making a profit from bookmakers is incredibly difficult, betting is a “mugs game” as they say.
It’s also said its stupid to do the same thing again and again and expect different results (Einstein). So we either stop betting or we try new strategies to improve our results.
One of the newest advancements in football betting is Xg statistics. This is an important development as it helps give a more accurate view of how many games should have been scored in the game versus actual goals.
There are several betting markets that this influences. Goal markets obviously as predicting the number of goals in the next match is in theory easier if we have a more accurate picture of the games that have gone before.
If we predict a game to be Over 2.5 based on a teams previous high scoring games we might think we are on to a winner. However if we consider also Xg (expected goal) statistics we may find that while on paper it seems the team is putting loads of goals away or conceeding a lot (Xga) the goals flatter the reality of the games.
The reverse of this is true, low scoring games can not reflect the amount of chances in the game so actually would indicate the next game may be high scoring.
Is Xg perfect? Of course not, but it gets us nearer to an accurate picture of previous games which is all we have to go off when making future predictions.
A couple of good websites to check out to explore Xg statistics are footystats and understat. You can google others also. Each site has its own algorithm. So unlike actual goals Xg is not a fixed stat, it depends on the algo.
When looking at teams you want to explore Xg and Xga to see the expected for and against goals in the game. You can compare this to actual also. You can also look into things further watching replays to see the chances in the game for yourself.
The figure is an average so it won’t be 1 or 2 goal. It might say 1.3. E.g. the team scores 1.3 goals on average. You can use theses figures to formulate a likely outcome for the score. You could use this figure for Under/Over, BTTS or Correct Score markets. You could also use it for win markets as teams who score often win.
You can also take a shortcut and choose a tipster who does the statistical analysis for you and all you have to do is back the bets. One such website is Goal Predictor. They use Xg statistics to formulate tips on the BTTS Yes and Under/Over 2.5 goal markets.
