Podcast 139: Late Goals – Opinion and how to use

By Ryan Carruthers •  Updated: 08/16/23 •  26 min read

Welcome to another episode of the Betfair Trading Community podcast! In today’s episode titled “Late Goals Opinion and How to Use,” we dive into the exciting world of trading late goals in soccer matches. Our expert speaker stumbled upon this strategy and has found incredible success in betting on over 2.5 goals. They share their insights on how halftime and full-time score differences can be used to your advantage. But it’s not just about placing bets our speaker believes in gradually trading to extend opportunities and reduce panic. They discuss the importance of filtering and focusing on specific games, as well as the benefits of trading late goals in lower league matches. However, it’s not all about the trading strategies; our speaker emphasizes the need for balance and avoiding negative impacts on relationships and well-being. Join us as we explore the world of late goals, testing strategies, and the significance of pre-match research. And don’t forget to stick around for some valuable insights from Ryan, our guest collaborator. Get ready to take your trading to the next level with the Betfair Trading Community podcast!

Timestamp: 

00:01:56 Focused on late goals, making profitable trades.

00:07:00 Stumbled upon new strategy for late goals.

00:12:49 Pre-match research worth more than in-play statistics

00:21:46 Keep trading simple, research data for success.

00:23:14 Focus on yourself and improve your trading.

Key Topics & Bullets 

Transcript: 

Martin Futter [00:00:01]:

Hi guys and welcome to another podcast from Betfair Trainingcommunity.com with your hosts today, Martin and Ryan. Hello, Ryan. Hello, Martin. How are you doing? Yeah. I’m good. How are you?

Ryan  [00:00:15]:

Yeah. I’m good. Thank you. it’s funny hearing your voice more because it’s like, it doesn’t change, does it? What do you mean? There you go. A little bit of happiness into that voice. You’re quite, like, there we go. That’s what we want. We want a little bit of energy, a little bit of what?

Martin and Ryan  [00:00:32]:

I feel like it’s because I feel like I’m really expressive and I’m sitting here, I’m moving my hands and everything, and then I listen to myself where I watch the videos and I think I don’t I look like I’m, you know, my face is dead or something. Yeah. it’s very it’s very disappointing because I feel like I’m, I feel like I’m being quite expressive. But anyway, today we’re gonna talk about late goals, which is one of my great passions, fortunately. we’re also going to talk about laying the current score line. So they’re kind of intertwined as a strategy. They’re kind of the same thing.

Ryan  [00:01:07]:

obviously depending on what time you’re entering the market. I know Ryan you’re kind of more interested in the laying the current score line part of money. Yeah. Don’t you think though it’s like, one of the things you’re trading is this is, like, this is a nugget for people to take away is they’re the same thing you hit on it there. It’s like, people get so fascinated by sort of like, am I doing a late lay the late goals or a lay the current score? It’s the same thing there’s like, whether you’re if you’re laying the current score, like, when I lay the current score, it’s usually at halftime, and I’m in for the whole well, I I start at halftime, and then I’m probably in at, like, 60, 65 minutes, but I’m in for the rest of the half. So I need a late goal. So effectively, I’m doing the exact same thing as as like a a late goal backing or laying. It’s the same thing.

Martin and Ryan  [00:01:56]:

Yeah. I think you’re right. I mean, so many people get sort of caught up on the semantics of and the language and it’s like at the end of the day, all we’re really interested in air is making money, trading on welfare and I think that’s something I try and you know reiterate to to you guys to the members all the time because what we can we can get lost soft and we can get lost in strategies, ways of thinking, you know, spreadsheets, etcetera, etcetera. the key question is, where’s our path to making profit? We’re not already making profit. Where’s our path to making profit? Unfortunately for us the late goals and the laying the current score lines is is a market or a strategy that has proven very very fruitful I mean, you’ve only got to go on the Betfair trading community forum for 5 minutes to see kind of how well that strategy does and I know there’s quite a few people few members who just trade that and quite often enough other good traders advice and and they make they make good money just from doing that. So, it really is a fascinating market. So, I’m gonna talk a little bit about how I trade it and then I’m gonna I’m gonna switch it over to Ryan and it’s good to have obviously it’s good to have Ryan here kind of bouncing ideas off each other. We’re gonna try and do that moving forward and I mentioned this in the last podcast. but yeah, I think I think it was really successful the last one and hopefully we can can get things going today. So, with the late goals for me, I really like quite a late entry point. So, what I find is that there’s a lot of people who just trade and they’ll put I know you don’t even do this right now. They’ll put their full stake in a half time Sometimes the odds are really short, you know, 1.2,1.25. and and the problem is Now there’s nothing wrong with trading a strategy like that that makes profit over time. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. The problem is you need such a high strike rate And then when you do hit a downswing and you do hit 3 or 4 losers in a row and you will do that no matter how good your strategy is, That’s a really heavy hit for your profit line to take. now like I say, if over time it’s making money, that’s fine. If you can keep the discipline in those situations, that’s fine. But I think most traders, you know, we wanna we want the juicer odds. We want the juicer value. You know, we don’t want to be taking massive risk to try and hit really, really high strike rate and that’s why I like the late goal. I like to look at goals from around 60 minutes onwards. Often I’ll enter

Martin Futter [00:04:40]:

5, 70 minutes.

Martin and Ryan  [00:04:42]:

sometimes I’ll do split stakes where I’ll put a little bit in at 60, a little bit in at 75, a little bit in 85, and you know, where where I’ve done well on that is finding strategies where the goals are coming in 85th minute onwards. and there are, I mean, like I said, the thing with testing is if you test your strategy, you can spot certain trends. So those strategies are tested. I might not have even been looking for late goals and then I’ve looked at the data and gone wow, this goal is coming after 85 minutes, you know, nearly 40% of the time which is a ridiculously high strike rate for that. I’d make money just trading 85 minutes onwards. so yeah, for me, the nice thing was the late goal strategies is that you do get better rods, you know, and we see some of the guys on the floor and we do that. They jump in later on. They get the better cards and you’re not you’re not as you’re not under as much pressure to win every single trailer as I feel sometimes when you’re getting in at super sure odds. You’re you’re under a lot of pressure. I mean, for example, on the members’ fielders at the moment, we have Gary’s second half goal. which is a great strategy. I know a lot of people who follow that and a lot of people have made money using that strategy over the last year or so but what I advise is to wait on that strategy, wait a while, you know, see if you can get to 66 5 minutes and if the second half goal hasn’t been scored, jump in then, jump in later, you know, because you know that you know, this strategy has a really high strike rate. And if there hasn’t been a goal as it gets to later in the game, why not take the juicier odds in those situations So many people have a fear of, but what if I miss a goal? Yeah, you will miss the old goal. You will miss the a tray where there’s a goal in the 50th minute, you know, the 55th minute. But to be honest that the prices you’re gonna get at halftime you’re not missing out on as much as you think and getting in later can be can be such a goldmine I find in these games So Ryan, what’s your kind of, you know, your overall impression of delaying the current score line?

Ryan  [00:07:00]:

Yeah. I mean, it’s a strategy that Just picking up on a few things that you said there is it’s a strategy that I stumbled across. So we always talk about test, test, test, gather the data, etcetera, and I’ve even built spreadsheets that people can can get from us to do that. But I was going for an over 2.5 goal trade. And that’s how my, lay the current score in the second half came about because what I was doing was I was testing the the games. And I found that the score at halftime and the score at, full time wasn’t the same in, like, over 85% of the games. which is a massive amount of games. So then it was about, oh, okay. Well, over 2.5, that strategy isn’t working but I’ve stumbled upon this strategy. This is what the data is telling me. Fantastic. So then from there, it was about sort of dripping my stakes in. I I like to drip mistakes in. There’s loads of benefits for that. You know, people talk about, oh, well, we need to be in. You missed the goals just like you said, but what happens if you’re in a a match at 45 minutes? So the second half whistle to start it has just gone you’ve got the price that there isn’t loads and loads of value, you need a really high strike rate. The time that it takes from that whistle starting to a goal happening is killer for you and your mindset. Because what a lot of traders, well, most traders, 99% of traders see is they see that red figure getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and panic sets in because you’ve put all of your steak in there. Now if you can drip that steak out over sort of like just getting a little bit later, just wait 5 minutes, getting at D, you’ve got a better price already. Now if you put, like, 25% of your stake in and then you wait 5 minutes, put another 25% in and then 5 minutes 25 and then 5 another 25 or whatever it may be, whatever works for you, you’ve extended your trading opportunity window. So you are you are better mentally, you’re getting a better price because all that happens is that you just get a better average price, betfair puts all of that together And you might be getting in at, like, you know, 2.0 and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So it would just average that price out. So it even better for you. So you’re getting more value. For me, I think it’s a wicked strategy. I think you don’t need to be picking teams who are gonna score first, you, you just need a goal. So as soon as a goal goes in, you can celebrate like the striker or the midfielders that scored it maybe even the defender that scored it, but it’s just it’s easier to to get that data as well and easier for you to manage. And then you can start to look at things like so here’s a tip. There’s more goals in the 2nd half if there’s been a goal in the 1st half. So just pick your data. Just look at that. Look at your data. Rubens in the first half. Does that correlate? Does does that have an impact on the second half? Okay. What do I need? Well, this is I need these amount of shots on target. I need this and this and this. It’s easier to read the match as well. Like, it’s so much easier. And if people are struggling for match reading, go and watch lower league football. Like, go and watch league 2 and league 1. because the game doesn’t change. So you can it’s just speed. Like, it’s just speed. The game moves quicker in terms of the players and mistakes are punished once in a a Premier League game, whereas they might not be punished in a lower league game so often. So you can see the things that lead to goals and you get more chance to recognize them. If you’re watching Man city, when they had Sergio, for example, if he gets a chance, if a defender makes a mistake, once he’s gonna capitalize on that, but you might see that mistake or the build up to that mistake 3 or 4, 5 times in a lower lead gain. So you can start to see it, and then that’s where you can you can start to read the match better. So these late goals are easier to spot. But I just sorry, Martin. I’m on the I’m on them. Alright. So box now on that. I don’t think I’m gonna be a little bit controversial now. I don’t think just by in play, in play watching and watching stats from the in play alone, you can trade late goals. I think you need to filter the games that you are following because otherwise, how the hell do you even decide what you’re trading? Do you just turn the computer on at, like, 345 and start looking at some games? It’s like when you fire a shotgun, you’re hoping to hit a target. It literally just fires loads. Like, it just boom. But for me, it’s like, want to be a little bit more, I want a little bit more finesse. I want to zone in on a target, like take my time, zone in on that target, and take it out of a sniper rifle. Like, I know where my focus is going. So, yeah, that’s my, that’s my opinion of the, the late goal. I love it. but I think you still need a way of filtering because, we’re gonna talk about this on the next episode. We’re gonna talk about a balance of life and sports trading. I know firsthand firsthand, friends of minds, relationships have suffered because of trading, not just to, like, a little bit like, deeply suffered because of trading because all they’ve done is sports trade because they haven’t narrowed down these games. They felt like they have to do these trades. Now We know that football happens on a Saturday afternoon. So that is usually family time. So how

Martin and Ryan  [00:12:49]:

Just by sitting at the computer, watching all of these games, hoping to get on one of them with a light goal, why would you why would you do that? Yeah. Why would you do that. And I mean, I couldn’t agree more with what you’re saying. And I actually I’m I I remember writing about this in I think in one of the football kind of master class things we did and I think I kind of put it. I almost put a sum on it. I think I put a percentage on and I said, I actually believe prematch research in terms of weight is worth 2 to 1, the value of the in place statistics. So I believe that 66 percent of the importance of your trade should be placed on the pre match and 33 should be placed on the in play. Now, that’s not to dismiss the value of looking at the in play and watching those stats. What it’s saying is that actually what I found through my research over many, many years, pre match statistics are a better indicator of what’s about to happen than in play statistics. So, you know, and you might watch your game and and you see there’s, you know, there’s tons of shots and you’re like, right, I need to get on this trade bang. I get in. it finishes Nil Nil, and you sit there and think, how on earth did it finish Nil Nil? So you go back and you’ve researched again, and you notice that actually quite a few of their few games have finished no mill, and there’s your answer. There’s what happened. And I wonder for you guys listening now, how many times were you jumped in on March it’s not looking at the pre match. And then you’ve gone, oh, how’s that trade lost? I wonder if you guys have actually gone back and looked at pretty much that and worked out, would I have got in on this trade knowing what I know now? and and another thing I say on that is that Even if you’re one of these people that’s really adamant, you don’t want to do you know, you don’t want to have these filters filtering out your games. Well, why not if you fancy a trade in play and you see an opportunity, why not take 2 minutes, 3 minutes to go and look on betfairtrading.community.comsoftware and check the match and see, right, does this match suggest goals? Is this a good trade? Because I’ll tell you what, for those couple of minutes you take and probably you can narrow it down to about 30 seconds when you get quick at it. For those 30 seconds you take, you could save yourself hell of a lot of money in the long run and make more money by doing so. so that’s what I’d say. That’s what I’d say on that. and another point you’ve really picked up on that. I really liked that, Ryan, and you’ve really just summed it up. You only need a goal. Alright? So Sometimes we make trading so complicated for ourselves, right? Trading or betting, whatever you want to call it, but In this situation of just going for a late goal, laying the current score line, you need one goal. Now that there’s so many less variables to cover you’ve got one variable, goal, right? Goal or no goal, that they’re your variables, right? So you’re not making it complicated. You’re not going right. I need 3 is okay. When do I need the first goal to be scored? When do I need the second goal? When do I need the third goal? You know, you’re not you’re not laying a score line and go, right? Well, you’re not backing, you know, the nil nil or whatever. I’m going, well, every time the ball goes near the box, I’m gonna have a heart attack. Right? You’re just hoping for one goal. And what I like about the simplicity of that is the the statistics the testing. It’s so easy to do. You know, you can run tests on all your selections for, you know, months on end if wish and you will get so much good data. It will be so easy to track. Even if you’re not able to watch the games, etcetera, you can track all that stuff in spreadsheet really easily. and you know, especially for new traders, I just feel like this strategy is so easy to implement. and then sometimes that’s what it’s all about. Make life easy for yourself. As Ryan mentions that, you know, and we’re gonna talk about this in the next podcast. Do you wanna be in front of your PC all afternoon, or do you wanna have certain sections where you’re doing the work where you can go, yeah, I’m gonna be busy here. but I know that that frees me up for the rest of the afternoon or, you know, x, y, and zed, I’ll do that and then I’m done. I know what I’m doing. so for me that’s that’s a massive, massive benefit of of trading these these markets, and this strategy that the people often overlook and that’s one thing I do think. I think we often can overlook the simplicity of things. You know, I see some guys coming out with these amazing g’s and they’ve got so many different variables going on so many different things they’re looking for and I think, Hey, look, that’s brilliant. working for you and you’re making money out of that more power to you. I certainly don’t want anything that complicated when I’m trading. I’m a simple guy. I want I want nice, easy strategies to follow, make me money over time, that give me the freedom, you know, to go and do other things. You know, I’m not I’m in a situation where I’m fortunate enough with my trading, my strategies, but I’m not having to sit at my computer all day every day just trying to wait for an opportunity, you know. And the software has helped with that. We I cannot stress enough how much Shebetfairtrainingcommunity.comsoftware has helped me as a trader, you know, it’s it’s it’s got its value just in that. I mean, I know you’re the same, Ryan. So for me and Ryan, we used to, I mean, I used to go through, you know, these soccer statistics, web every day for hours, you know, doing my pre match research. I on a Friday, I would often spend the whole of Friday doing that. So, you know, you’re maybe talking 10 hours of solid work going through to pretty much statistics to find games. It’s the longest you’ve ever worked in your life, isn’t it? There’s to find games that fit into my strategy. It’s insane. And now with with the with the statistic software, I have it all straight away. As soon as I log in in the morning, my selections are there. and and to be honest, I can then go and have another look at them. I can give those games a second look because now I’ve got time and that’ll that’ll only take me, you know, 30 seconds per game. So, you know, I’ve cut so many of my trading hours through statistics software. but also means there’s no mistakes. You know, I don’t make the mistake of missing a game. I might have missed when I was trying to do things manually. I mean, the next step for me and the thing I really wanna look into maybe we should do a podcast on this Ryan is is automated trading. Oh, yes. I mean, I’ve never I’ve always been a little bit scared of it because of just in case something goes wrong or, you know, the software lets me let me down and things like that. but, with the automated stuff, I think it is the future. It’s what a lot of traders are doing and, yeah, I mean, I know Adam was really well off the automation, doesn’t it? That’s, that’s basically his thing. It takes human error out of it, doesn’t it? You know, we talk about about that you know, the human error. We we men you mentioned that as well with the, you know,

Ryan  [00:20:05]:

with tracking your comp making your filters, your strategies complicated. the more complicated you make it, the more likely things are gonna go wrong. And don’t you find as well? How we’ve been successful on Betfair for a very long time, like, very, very long time. We spoke on the previous episode how long I’ve been trading on Betfair, and you’ve been trading a very long time, and Adam has been trading a very, very long time as well. And the key to our success, I think, is our simplicity because once you’ve got a strategy that works that’s simple, if things do change for whatever reason, then it’s easy to spot what is going wrong. If you have, like, oh, my game needs to have this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, how do you know, like, the weight of those decisions? Like, how do you know the importance of those stats of that information against something else because there’s so much information there. Like, how do you tweak that? You’ll always be tweaking and tinkering. Whereas if you’re just looking for 1 or 2 things or 3 things, it’s so much easier to see which ones are important. in your in your trades.

Martin and Ryan  [00:21:23]:

Yeah. And I think that’s the thing. You know, and we’re trying to we’re trying to work this out and make it as easy as it can be. And I think that’s why I love trading the late goal. That’s why I love trading. The next goal that’s kind of my thought. Have you got anything else to add, Ryan, or is that pretty much it? That’s pretty much it for me. It’s like, this is a really

Ryan  [00:21:46]:

You know, we always say that it’s simple. Keep your trading simple. For me, I love what you say about 66% of the of the trade is pre match. If you take that pre match, you do your research, narrows down your selections, and then you take that in play. Look at the data which you you found. It it tells you what you need to be looking for on those trades. So it tells you the average shots on target per goal. So then you can track that. Okay. Well, is this team doing that? not just, oh, but they’ve had 6 shots on target. Well, yeah, they might have had 600 shots on target, but how many do that team need to convert? They might have been teke or front who needs a lot more than Harry Kane does. So by knowing the data, it puts weight onto it so that you can actually start to look at what you’re seeing in play. Does that relate to the historical data? And my final sort of point on that would be that if people are saying, yeah, but it pre matches rubbish, the the stats are rubbish. It’s like, teams are always set up to play a certain way. Pep Guardiola’s teams play a certain way. Jurgen Clop’s teams play a certain way. So you get that information by doing your research, and you are preparing yourself for success. And that would be my my sort of final words on that matter.

Martin and Ryan  [00:23:14]:

Yeah, that’s really good. And again, like I said in the last podcast, guys, really take what’s been said here and apply it to yourself. That’s that’s one of the keys and I keep reiterating this message but I think sometimes we can get so caught up in other people, how others are getting on what they’re doing. We need to make sure a lot of our trading focuses on us because effectively what you do in your trading you’re making money. That’s really all that matters. I mean, that’s why Betfair trading community.com exists. We’re literally here as servants for you to help you improve your trading. So thanks for that, Ryan. Thanks for being a guest today.

Ryan  [00:23:52]:

thank you for having me. The last thing that I would say is just Go check out that tweet. We are putting tweets linked to the podcasts. We wanna know what your big, moment was. What was your, oh, that was good, guys. That really hit home for me. If you put that on the tweet and you’ll see it, it’ll be linked to this episode,

Martin and Ryan  [00:24:11]:

then let us know your takeaway, and thank you for having me, Martin. No problem. We’re, of course, with Twitter, you can always just message us or reply, I think can add us in a tweet. It’s just at BetfairTC. yeah, that’s a really easy one to remember. And, we’ll be back with another podcast soon.

Ryan Carruthers

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