Getting Good Team Information
In previous posts I have mentioned that being well informed before you make your football bet will lead to safer bets and ultimately more money for you.
In this post I want to focus in specifically on why getting good team information is a crucial part of that. Please feel free to comment below with your thoughts.
Why team information is important
Team information is important because whilst knowing how good historically a team has performed against another team is useful, a team is only as good as the players in it and how well they play together.
Key players being injured or called away on international duties can really change the structure of a team and impact how they play.
It doesn’t have to be as immediately obvious as “player x can’t play” – it could be that a local source has seen the player limping after training. They are maybe technically match fit but could have something going on which means they won’t see out the entire match or won’t be playing at peak performance.
Team information doesn’t always have to be bad news – new players coming up from the youth team and hitting the subs bench and players who were perhaps only getting short runs out are maybe back to full fitness and will be playing the full 90 minutes. Things like this can positively effect the team, or at the very least change the dynamic of the match.
If something changes within a team last minute this could effect what you would historically assume was going to happen.
Membership Perks
We have long decided to try and add team news to as many member posts as appropriate, we feel is helps provide more context to the suggestions Ian makes.
Here is a shortened sample from a recent members post;
Team news
Australian A-League:
Adelaide United – Elsey, Djite, Smith, and Marrone are absent. Jeggo, Mabil, Isaias, Carrusca, and Boogaard return.
Brisbane Roar – Sarota, Lambadaridis, Danning, Jackson, Theodore, Schmidt, Brady, Yango, Pavlou, Theo, North, Stefanutto, DeVere, and Henrique are absent. Brown, Donachie, Kaluderovic, Clut, McKay, Brattan, Hingert, Broich, and Borrello return.Bulgarian A PFG:
Beroe – Zafirov and Hubchev are absent. Makendzhiev and Bakalov are doubts.
CSKA Sofia – Uvarenko, Markovic, and Marquinhos are absent. Sundy returns. New boss – Penev.Czech Republic Synot Liga:
Zbrojovka Brno – Zoubele and Slancik are asbent.
Vysocina Jihlava – Marcin and Sourek are absent.French Ligue 1:
Metz – Milan, Marchal, Rivierez, Rocchi, Nsor, Sido, Vion, Carrasso, Falcon, Andrada, and Krivets are absent.
Olympique de Marseille – Dja Djedje, Barrada, Morel, Thauvin, Sparagna, Fabri, Alef, Jobello, M.Lopez, N’Doumbou, Porsan-Clemente, and A.Sane are absent.…
If you wanted easy access to this type of information you can always become a member – in the next part of this article I am going to give you some tips on collating it all yourself.
Where you get get team information
You can oftentimes find great team information in the same places you can find football news, another place to look is the official website and social media feeds of the teams in question.
Of course the team may not want to share information that makes the team sound like they aren’t at peak performance which is why it is always good to check out local news sources to the team in question. In cases like this you want as much live information as possible, so I would suggest following certain twitter accounts.
Local information is important
Local news sources have people that know key players and managers, attend local matches regularly and can spot things that maybe wouldn’t make major football news but are worth while knowing if you are planning on making a bet or two!
You could argue that in the age of the internet this isn’t something we should be too worried about, a lot of very localised team news will be written in the language of the country and translation services can only do so much.
One of the things we try and do is get people who live in different countries to contribute to our members area with team news that only a local would have proper access to.