The expectation that Arsenal would win by at least a two-goal margin against a weakened Brighton side was realized yesterday as Arsenal won 4-2 away to Brighton. Satisfied with the stake of 14 on this bet and it returned 41 profit as Arsenal won the game on xG (1.16 v 3.22).
The bet on Eddie Nketiah to score a hat-trick in the same game lost as he scored only 1 of the 4 Arsenal goals. It was a poacher’s goal, and the expectation was that he would get played in a number of times during this game as well as being able to find space in the box, but this didn’t happen as he only had two shots during the game. If we look at his heatmap (from whoscored.com), we can see that he was working hard for the team all over the pitch.
With this positioning, he wasn’t going to score a hat-trick. Compare this to the position of Martinelli for example, who had five shots against Brighton, 3 more than any other Arsenal player.
Martinelli would have been a much better bet. We can note this for the future.
Aside from this, I decided to get involved in a few other of the games yesterday but none of them returned. Here is a list of the decision making from yesterday.
After Manchester City created so many chances against Leeds during midweek and considering how well Newcastle have been playing and the chances they were creating. I decided to place a bet on a Almiron hat-trick after all of the opportunities that fell to Grealish. This was done even knowing that Tyler Adams would be back for Leeds. The short turnaround for Leeds between these games was a factor in thinking that if Newcastle got a lead early then the game would open up later on. This didn’t happen. Newcastle created plenty of chances but the quality of them wasn’t that good but they still could have had three goals based on the xG (2.79 vs 0.52).
While Almiron was the furthest player forward for Newcastle he only had one shot and it was from outside the box.
Mahrez was the man of the match against Everton (According to Whoscored.com) but only had two shots on goal and the chances of him scoring from these shots was only 16%. The odds on him to score were 3.5 (Betfair) which means a 28% chance of scoring, so this was not a good bet on review.
Southampton were 34.0 to be winning 2-0 at half time against Fulham and I decided to take a piece of that on the basis that Southampton have some good players and can play but so far this year they have not found their best eleven. Their manager Nathan Jones will continue to try things until it works and after reviewing the teamsheet I thought there was potential for them to get play well and get a couple of goals.
Reviewing the xG Timing Chart from understat.com they did OK in the first half so perhaps it wasn’t that bad of a call.
Finally, Rayan Ait-Nouri did play against Manchester United but only got introduced with 17 minutes remaining. In hindsight, it would have been best to wait until he was on the teamsheet to place this bet, but I wanted to try to take advantage of this price to score. When he did come on, Wolves did move to a back three, and he played left wing back and was able to get high up the pitch and into attacking areas. He was also on set-piece duties and crossed the corner for Raul Jimenez in injury time; however, he had no shots on goal himself.
