Football Betting Week 5

OK, Monchengladbach beat Schalke 04. That was a little unexpected. Every time I lose a bet, I keep the slip and I scribble a “moral of the story” behind it. My moral of the story is “do not bet against a team which is fighting relegation at the end of a season.”

I suppose the key word was “fighting relegation”. As opposed to “letting relegation happen to them”, as is the case of teams like Arminia Bielefield.

But some things are only apparent in hindsight. When I looked back at the match results, I found out that, yes, I did my homework. Monchengladbach were really coming off a bad run of form. And Schalke had been winning (except that they lost the match before Monchengladbach)

Because of the recent spate of mistakes and bad results, my account is now in the red.

In the middle of the week I had the opportunity to redeem myself.

Hamburg vs Bochum. 1 title contender (probably will be former title contender very soon) versus 1 relegation candidate with bad form. I won by betting on Hamburg to win.

Berlin vs Cologne. Another title contender versus another mediocre team with bad form. I won by betting on Berlin to win.

Munich vs Leverkusen. Another title contender versus another mediocre team. I don’t know why the odds are so low for this, but I bet anyway. Win.

Wigan vs Man U. Wigan are good but they’re not good enough to beat a steamroller who has to win this match to secure the title. Win again.

See, when I stick to safe and trusted methods, things go right for me. But I made a mistake. I listened to fat boy and bet on Young Lions to eat ball vs Super Reds. Is fat boy trying to screw me up? I lost, and lost back almost all the profits from the 4 winning bets.

Well I’m on my way back towards the black anyway, so I shouldn’t complain.

Actually I could complain. There were a few other matches whose results seemed possible to predict. Werder Bremen, after a lot of consistency, is hitting a run of form, and they thrashed Eintracht Frankfurt. I’d have settled for the win and collected money. My hunch (proved correct) was that Stuttgart was going to beat Schalke 04. You could say, on hindsight, of course Monchengladbach would win Cottbus, but given it was settle by 1 last minute goal, maybe it was still too much of a risk. And given that Hoffenheim is looking good again, you can bet on it to beat a relegation candidate Bielefield.

But I suppose, since I had earlier judged those matches too risky to play, I should stick to my decision no matter what.

This weekend, this is contingent on the odds. I will bet on Dortmund to beat Bielefield, Stuttgart to beat Cottbus, Bremen to beat Karlsruhe, Hamburg to beat Cologne.

Wolfsburg should beat Hannover, but since Hannover is in such good form of late, I will pass that.

Man U are playing Arsenal. Ordinarily, I would say, Arsenal’s defence is in such bad shape, on current form they will lose to Man U. But since only a draw would see them get back their EPL, it’s not good to bet on that one.

Liverpool, however, should still be too strong for WBA (even though most likely they no longer have anything to play for.) Similarly for Chelsea vs Blackburn, you just can’t see any other possibility, other than a Chelsea win.