Royal Ascot Preview
June 17, 2013
The meeting, as it does every year, gets off to a scintillating start with 3 group 1’s on the opening day and the thoroughbred quality is sustained up until Saturday. Below is a brief preview of the 6 biggest races to look forward to this week.
Queen Anne Stakes (Tues 2:30) – Royal Ascot usually attracts the best race horses from across the globe and this year is no exception. All eyes will be on the horse from the USA, Animal Kingdom, who will likely go off at odds-on favourite. Those who follow international racing will recall Animal Kingdom’s valiant attempt at the triple crown in 2011 before winning the Dubai World Cup earlier this year. Likely challengers for this 1 mile race will include O’Brien’s Declaration Of War and Gosden’s Elusive Kate. Declaration Of War was a disappointing favourite in the Lockinge while Elusive Kate has yet to run this season.
St. James’ Palace Stakes (Tues 3:45) – Like Declaration Of War, Dawn Approach was also a disappointing favourite in a group 1 last time out. The potential superstar and last year’s Coventry winner will be looking to retrieve his reputation after a U-turn from his trainer to run him. Toronado, who was beaten by Dawn Approach in the 2000 Guineas in May, will be hoping to reverse that form and live up to his own expectations for Richard Hannon. Irish 2000 Guineas winner Magician will also be vying for favouritism in what looks to be a great battle between the 3-year-olds.
Prince of Wales Stakes (Wed 3:45) – Probably the most exposed race of the week as the two clear market leaders have met each other already this season. Roger Charlton’s flagbearer Al Kazeem beat the heavily odds-on Camelot in the Irish Gold Cup in May. Camelot, the 2012 Guineas and Derby double winner, looked a shell of his former self in his seasonal reappearance. Although nothing should be taken away from Al Kazeem, this rapidly improving colt has the Eclipse and The Arc in his sights this season and will be looking to prove that his win against Camelot was no fluke. Possible challengers to this pair could be Maxios, who boasts good form in France, as well as The Fugue for John Gosden.
Ascot Gold Cup (Thurs 3:45) – Thursday’s feature race is the Ascot Gold Cup for the stayers over a mammoth 2m4f and this year’s contest looks wide open. 2012 winner Colour Vision will try and retain his crown against the likes of High Jinx, Time’s Up, Simenon and Saddler’s Rock. Estimate, owned by HRH The Queen, was a popular winner at last year’s meeting and will be looking to repeat that success again this year. Dermot Weld’s Rite Of Passage is another with the ability to win, he’s yet to run this season but will be fresh and has won after a lengthy break three times in the past.
Coronation Stakes (Fri 3:45) – The Coronation Stakes sees the best fillies come up against one another over a round mile. Just the Judge was just pipped in the 1000 Guineas by Sky Lantern and it looks as if the two will do battle once more. Just The Judge has since won the Irish Guineas equivalent is likely to be favourite on the day. Another horse to note is Sir Michael Stoute’s Pavlosk, a ready winner at York who has been supplemented into this race at quite a large cost.
Diamond Jubilee Stakes (Sat 3:45) – Saturday is time for the sprinters to take the stage over a straight 6 furlongs in the Diamond Jubilee. The horse with the best form is the likely favourite Society Rock. James Fanshawe’s little sprinter won this race in 2011 before making ground to finish 5th behind Black Caviar is last year’s spectacle. Challengers to Society Rock may include Gordon Lord Byron, Mince, Hawkeyethenoo and Reckless Abandon.
Life after Football at Smarkets
June 3, 2013
For football betting enthusiasts the summer months can leave a gaping hole in the sporting calendar. There is no major tournament this year meaning football will be sparse between June, July and August. Below are three sports that can get us through the summer until the football season returns in August.
With Frankel and Black Caviar retired, some believed 2000 Guineas hero Dawn Approach could be the next superstar before Saturday’s Derby disappointment. The next big meeting after the Derby is Royal Ascot, a place where there’s as many good horses as there are top hats. No less than 7 of the season’s 32 group 1 races will be run in front of a royal crowd during the 18th and 22nd June.
The Eclipse on 6th July will be the next big race after Royal Ascot week. The Sandown Group 1 being a possible target for the likes of Farhh, Dawn Approach and Animal Kingdom. Following the Eclipse there is further racing action from Glorious Goodwood between the 30th July and 3rd August.
The French Open is currently under way at Roland Garros until June 9th. Rafael Nadal thwarted Djokovic’s attempt at a grand slam last year and is hard to oppose as favourite this time round. Serena Williams is currently in the form of her life and is the likely favourite to win the women’s tournament.
Wimbledon 2013 will promise plenty of trading action between June 24th and July 7th. Murray shed a tear after losing in last year’s final to Roger Federer but will be hoping to go one better this year round. Novak Djokovic will be the likely favourite for this seasons tournament, with Spaniard Nadal looking to win at Wimbledon for the third time.
With the IPL ending last Sunday the cricket focus heavily falls upon the upcoming test matches. England, currently leading a test series against New Zealand, will have one eye on their big clash against Australia in the 2013 Ashes Series. The Ashes Series begins on 10th July at Trent Bridge and ends in the final week of August at The Oval. Alastair Cook’s England side will be likely favourites for series. However, the English summer weather may produce a few unwanted draws during the series.
Over the summer there will be multiple friendly games, the confederations cup and the U21 Euro Championships. Champions League qualifiers start as early as July with the main tournament returning in September. The Premier League will return on 17th August with the Championship commencing 2 weeks before. August will also see the return of the League Cup, La Liga and Serie A.
Betting Exchanges Offer Better Value Than Bookmakers – Here’s How
November 13, 2012
In the gambling industry, bookmakers have traditionally been the dominant force, and have been calling the shots for punters for roughly as long as people have been betting on things. However, with the rise of the internet as a huge part of all our lives as well as the main communications medium of the modern age, that monopoly is being challenged by betting exchanges. These exchanges can and do offer better value to bettors than bookmakers, and we’re going to explain exactly how.
The crucial difference between the two is that, where bookmakers -as their name suggests- make the odds and then sell them to bettors, exchanges merely provide a service for their users to trade odds and prices with one another. Bookmakers turn a profit by slightly increasing the prices they offer for odds on events, whereas exchanges generally make money through charging commission on winnings. Both methods are valid as a way for gambling businesses to make money, however, it’s demonstrably true that exchanges usually give their customers better value in comparison.
Let’s look at a fictional football match between the Netherlands and Denmark as an example.
First, let’s take the bookmaker’s odds:
Netherlands to win: 4/7 (64%)
Draw: 11/4 (27%)
Denmark to win: 11/2 (15%)
As we stated before, they build a profit margin into the odds they offer on events; this is known as the “overround”. In this case, the percentage odds given above add up to 106%, so the overround comes to 6%.
Overrounds are the standard way for bookmakers to turn a profit, and can go as high as 20% above the “real” odds they’ve calculated. In the above scenario, they’d be making £6 on every £100 spent with them, no matter the outcome of the game. Most people who use bookmakers for their betting aren’t aware of overrounds, let alone how bad a deal they can sometimes get as a result. Considering the vast amounts of money which change hands between punters and bookmakers before a big event, that adds up very fast. As such, you’re unlikely to see an impoverished bookie.
Now, let’s examine how a betting exchange might deal with the same event. Betting exchanges don’t set odds, so in this example these odds are taken from the market on that putative event:
Netherlands to win: 1.62 (62%)
Draw: 4 (25%)
Denmark to win: 7 (14%)
Here, the odds add up to 101%. As betting exchanges don’t make money selling positions on events (because they don’t give odds themselves), but rather merely provide the service allowing people to trade positions and odds on those events, there’s no mechanism to rig the odds to produce a profit. The extra 1% on the market in this example is a product of the traders in the market very slightly over-valuing an outcome.
Betting exchanges make their money by taking commission on their users’ winnings. Any overrounds or underrounds (the same principle, but where the odds come to less than 100%) on exchanges are purely a product of the markets as composed of individuals with different opinions on events. Unlike bookmakers, they’re not set by the company to produce a particular profit margin.
There are some advantages to bookmakers over exchanges in terms of the ability of the former to take on unusual bets or odds on very specific occurrences, while exchanges can usually offer only markets that will appeal to a wide audience. However, as we’ve seen, the vast majority of the time exchanges usually offer better value to bettors through their commission-based structure and ability to generate fairer odds. Both types of gambling enterprise seek to make money, but the way in which betting exchanges do so enables them to offer significantly more value to their customers.
Syndicates and Fundamentals
October 30, 2012
Betting syndicates are groups or organisations whose goal is to make a profit from sports betting using different methods. There are a variety of tools they can use for this, two of the main ones are arbitrage and fundamentals trading.
We’ve already covered arbitrage in detail here. But essentially, it’s the practice of buying and selling stakes in the same event across different markets in order to guarantee a profit. People who arbitrage are taking advantage of a discrepancy in prices and placing opposing bets so that they make money no matter what the outcome of the event is. It’s also very short-term, with most arbitrage opportunities disappearing within minutes.
Fundamentals or value betting is slightly more complex than arbitrage. Fundamentals betting syndicates work by exploiting instances where they believe the market has mispriced assets. They analyse past and current statistics on participants in events, or companies in the case of syndicate groups on the stock markets, and try to find assets which they believe will do well long-term. This is usually done through a combination of computer and human analysis of past performance and the fundamental (hence the name) strengths and weaknesses of the particular asset. In sports betting, this would typically be horses, sports teams, or individual players which the syndicate believes will do well in the future. It can make you a lot more money, but doesn’t guarantee a profit in the same way, because it relies on your analysis and conclusions about the participants in events being right.
A famous example of this would be the man who’s known as probably the most successful gambler ever: Allan Woods. Woods moved to Hong Kong in the 1980s, ditching card-counting in Blackjack (dangerous, as Casinos tend to…vehemently dislike card counters, to say the least) to set up a syndicate with two friends. After consistently losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first two years, Woods and his friends turned a $100,000 profit in their third year, and continued to make millions for years after. Woods used complex computer programmes which he wrote himself to attempt to predict the outcome of races, and was remarkably successful in so doing. He’s considered the richest gambler of all time, and amassed a personal fortune of over $670m before his death in 2008.
Allan Woods is an outlier, a somewhat extreme example of the success one can have with programmed analysis and syndicate betting over a long period of time. But he is an illustrative one, as he lost nearly as much as he made at various points (he lost over $100m trying to short the NASDAQ exchange at one point, for instance). While betting syndicates do use complex computer programs to analyse past performance of, for instance, a particular horse or football team to attempt to determine whether they’ll bring in returns over a long period, there’s no guarantee that their analysis is going to be right. However, they often are and when the analysis -human and machine- is correct, they make a lot of money. When new information about events or the market is made available, the parameters are adapted and new prices generated based on those data. It isn’t uncommon for these operations to make millions on a yearly basis, though not usually quite so much as our example above.
Syndicates which use fundamentals analysis to make money from a spread of bets rely heavily on programmers and statisticians to work. They’re effectively trying to predict the future of an event or market from past performance and statistical probability, and that requires both a huge amount of data and processing power, as well as complex algorithms, to work. As with trying to predict the stock exchange, if a particular team, athlete, or horse is doing well, the likelihood is that they will continue to do well, and therefore they’re a safe bet. However, no one can predict when a team or player is going to burn out, or when a company’s fortunes will take a turn for the worse, taking yours with them. Consequently, fundamentals betting is best undertaken when you can spread your bets widely enough to avoid investing too heavily in one asset, thereby avoiding over-exposing yourself and your funds.
That’s not the only pitfall, however. Syndicates also occasionally find their accounts shut down by bookmakers, as they’re often considered to have an unfair advantage over regular bettors. However, syndicates are certainly not illegal, and practices like arbitrage and fundamentals analysis are entirely above board and considered necessary instruments to rebalance markets and exchanges. They’re a very good way of making money, if done properly.
Arbitrage: A Practical Guide
October 23, 2012
Having looked at the theory and general practice of arbitrage (or “arbing”) in our last post, this article examines the nitty-gritty and practicalities of it.
Arbitrage is a trading technique used by individuals and firms on exchanges in order to guarantee a profit. It’s made possible by price disparities between and within markets, and works in both the stock markets and betting exchanges like Smarkets. The practice has a long and varied tradition in the stock exchange and financial industry, and there have been firms whose entire business practices revolved around arbitrage. In sports betting, it was traditionally done through legwork and surreptitiously placing bets at multiple bookmakers. Online gambling and betting exchanges have made this unnecessary: now, you can do it from home. By buying at one price and selling near-instantly at another, higher price, you are able to take advantage of the aforementioned price-differentials to make money.
To give an example: If Ladbrokes gives odds for Arsenal to win at 2.2 and you can sell a stake in them on Smarkets at 2.1 (meaning you’re betting against them), this represents an arbitrage opportunity. Lets use a £10 bet as an example. (Note: ‘Backer’s stake’ refers to the profit you would make should your sell bet win. ‘Liability’ refers to the loss you would incur if your sell bet lost)
Practical:
1. Buy £10 at Ladbrokes at 2.2
2. Sell £10.58 Backer’s stake at Smarkets at odds of 2.1
3. If Ladbrokes wins you win £10 x 2.2-1= £12.00 and lose your liability of £11.64. Your profit = £0.36
If Smarkets wins, you win £10.58 less commission = £10.36, and lose your Ladbrokes stake of £10.00. Your profit = £0.36
Arbitrage generally brings in low, but consistent returns, so you’re unlikely to be doubling or tripling your stake with it, but it does produce a guaranteed profit. For this reason, it’s popular with professional traders.
Tips, Strategies, and Pitfalls
There are two main types of arbitrage commonly practised using exchanges and bookmakers: odds arbitrage and bonus arbitrage. The former is the most commonly-practiced one, and takes place everywhere there are two markets with price-differentials to exploit. The latter involves utilizing the myriad of bonus offers available at bookmakers to place bets and then placing opposite bets at an exchange at prices that ensure a profit. In general with bonus arbitrage, you want to buy from the bookmakers at longer odds and sell on the exchange at shorter odds.
Since bonus arbitrage is less common and has a very specific objective, we’ll consider that first. It’s a relatively straightforward process; however, bookmakers often have rules in place with the ‘bonus’ they offer their customers. Users are not allowed to withdraw their bonus straight away – otherwise most people would simply withdraw the money and run, losing bookmakers a lot of cash. Therefore, they state that you have to ‘roll over’ your bonus, meaning you have to run through it at least once (and sometimes more) before you can withdraw anything. Because arbitrage allows people to make small profits, it can take some time before you finish your bonus. However if you are willing to be patient, it’s a way to make a good amount of money, risk-free.
For example: One of the easiest ways to make up to £200 through bonus arbitrage is by using Bet365.com. You deposit however much you want with them and they will match it with the same amount, up to a maximum of £200. In order to withdraw the bonus, you’ll have to play through the bonus and your deposit three times. So if you deposit £200, they’ll match you so that you have £400 in your account. However, you will have to bet bet £1,200 in order to withdraw it.
You can cancel the bonus at any time. You’ll get back your initial deposit with any profits or losses you’ve experienced factored in. If you’ve lost your entire initial deposit (£200 in this case), you will be left with just a bonus balance. You have 90 days to complete the requirements to withdraw the bonus.
In order to arb using the bonus money, you can set up an account on an exchange and lay any bet you place on Bet365. In doing so, you will end up with whatever the initial bonus was minus the small discrepancy in prices between Bet365 and the exchange.
There is a downside to this, however: should you successfully make a profit, you might be flagged as a consistent winner by the bookmaker, in which case they could shut your account. You’re also prohibited from taking advantage of their bonuses more than once, for obvious reasons. Eventually you’ll run out of bonus offers; so while it’s an easy way to make a few hundred pounds, you should not rely on it as a sustainable source of income.
The other type of arbitrage is known as “odds arbitrage”. Like bonus arbitrage, it guarantees the arbitrageur profits on each market they bet on. It’s definitely possible to make a lot of money, but it can be time-consuming and involves monitoring prices on bookmaker and exchange sites in detail.
Fortunately, there are a number of sites out there that can help you do this. For example, places like RebelBetting and OddsMonkey will list arbitrage opportunities for you, and there are forums out there dedicated to it (ArbForum, Arbsafe) where you can discuss arbs and get tips and tricks from others. The upside to doing this type of arbitrage as opposed to bonus arbitrage is that if done correctly and consistently, you stand to make a tidy income. The main thing to remember about arbitrage is that you have to move quickly as prices shift all the time, so the opportunities for it disappear within a very short space of time.
Arbitrage is a completely legal and fairly easy way to make a decent amount of money, as long as you are willing to put in the work. Good luck, and happy arbing.
Beliefs in Probability: The “Hot Hand” and “Gambler’s” Fallacies
September 19, 2012
This is the first in a series of posts examining common mistakes we all make in our everyday lives to do with probability, as well as examining how these mistakes impact the bets and trades we make.
Everyone believes things which aren’t true. We all have our own biases. When it comes to probability this is doubly true: almost everyone makes natural mistakes in their mental estimations of how likely an event is to occur. Whether it’s deciding if England will beat France in the World Cup this time (clue: we’ll probably lose on penalties, again) or how likely a roulette wheel is to give red or black, we all make false assumptions that affect how we think things will turn out. The only way we can avoid making mistakes, and more importantly avoid losing our stakes, is to be aware when we’re using the assumptions that lead to those mistakes and take them into account. Two of the most common forms of this are known as The Gambler’s Fallacy and The Hot Hand Fallacy, and it’s these which I’ll be examining here.
The Gambler’s Fallacy
Both the Gambler’s and Hot Hand fallacies depend on the belief that events which are unrelated in terms of real probability are linked to previous, similar events in a perceived sequence. The Gambler’s Fallacy is the perception that, because one outcome of a binary event has happened multiple times in sequence, its inverse must be more likely to occur when in fact the previous events in the sequence have no bearing on what happens next.
An often-used example of the Gambler’s Fallacy is that of the roulette wheel which lands on nothing but black for a number of rounds, therefore all the players put their money on red for the next spin (as it’s red’s “turn” to come up, in their perception). In fact, because each spin of a roulette wheel is independent of the last, it’s no more or less likely to land there than the previous one. This is a good example both because it illustrates the fallacy’s potential real-world consequences and because it actually happened. Another, slightly less relevant example -though actually the first used to illustrate it back in the 18th century- is that of childbirth: a mother who’s had multiple daughters one after another believes it’s now time for her to have a son, in spite of the pregnancies being independent events, statistically-speaking.
Both these examples are good illustrations of the fallacy, but it’s also backed up by research. Nor is this fallacy limited to specific situations like childbirth and roulette, it permeates all our decision-making when presented with sequential information about events. Interestingly, Barron and Leider’s study (linked to in the previous sentence) confirms the hypothesis that the Gambler’s Fallacy appears in nearly all decisions based on sequential data, whether or not those data are presented one at a time or all together; if it’s a sequence we’re programmed to view it as a related set in terms of probability.
The Hot Hand Fallacy
Where the Gambler’s Fallacy causes us to believe that an event has a lower chance of occurring because it’s happened many times previously, the Hot Hand Fallacy is the inverse. With the Hot Hand, we believe that an event is more likely to occur because it’s happened previously, not less. Both fallacies are often viewed as two sides of the same coin, and indeed this would seem to have basis in both logic and psychological science.
The Hot Hand Fallacy produces the belief in “hot streaks” or runs of luck (specifically in sports, but also in other areas) on unrelated events happening close together. It’s essentially the idea that lady luck has favourites. A good example, and in fact the subject on which the seminal study disproving the idea of “hot hands” was written back in the ’80s, is that of basketball. Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, and Amos Tversky set out to prove or disprove the idea -prevalent at the time, and still very much around- that certain basketball players had “hot hands” or were “streak shooters”, able to get baskets unerringly for periods of time. This was important because it appeared to affect the selection of players on a team as well as the choice of plays within a game. If these decisions, which could lead to significant real-world consequences for teams, players, and fans, were based on fallacious assumptions it meant that people -fans and athletes- were losing games and money needlessly.
In the end, the three psychologists analysed many hours of footage from different teams and seasons throughout the NBA’s then recent past. They concluded that, in fact, every free shot was independent of those that had gone before: “streaky” players had no greater overall chance of getting baskets than their team-mates. This, they argued, was an example of a natural psychological misapplication of the law of large numbers (e.g. an equally weighted coin should land on heads or tails 50% of the time over a long period) to small-scale conditions where it did not apply. People tend believe that events are infinitely scalable, and that -as I said before- luck has favourites. This leads to both basketball players being credited as having magic hands for throws when they’re merely benefiting from an uneven distribution of chance events, and to “star traders” on the stock exchange being credited for benefiting from another kind of randomness. Either example may be individually very good at what they do, but it’s impossible to predict the outcome of chance events based on previous performance.
And Finally…
Linking events together in the manner of either fallacy described above isn’t always a bad thing or unwarranted. It can be very useful, and we likely evolved this automatic mental function because events that happen one after the other are often likely to be related. Back in our species’ hunter-gatherer days, it was a very good survival trait to be able to link the fact that you’d seen lion tracks around the nearest watering hole with your friend Ogg disappearing the next day. Our brains are truly excellent at pattern matching and finding causal links between events because it was -and still is- a useful survival skill.
However, it does cause us to misattribute the cause of entirely unrelated events like a player in the NBA making five free shots in a row, or the roulette wheel landing on red after it’s stopped on black the last few times. These cognitive biases and fallacies can have very painful consequences for us and, in the case of trading on an exchange or betting on events, our bank balances. Being able to notice when we’re making assumptions like those that form the basis for both the Gambler’s and Hot Hand fallacies is a vital skill, and I’d hazard a guess that bookies the world over would be a lot poorer if everyone could do so.
Premier League Weekend Preview (15th – 17th September 2012)
September 12, 2012
The international break is now over – we preview the key Premier League matches set to kick off this weekend:
Stoke vs. Man City (15th September 2012)
Stoke are winless in their first 3 games. However, they showed their home form hasn’t deteriorated by picking up a draw against Arsenal and keeping a clean sheet in the process. Their away form is worrisome as they have conceded 3 goals in 3 games against opposition they should be beating if they want to return to the upper echelons of the Premier League.
Man City have had an unrecognisable start to their campaign, conceding goals they wouldn’t have last season. They have not kept Read the rest of this entry »
Europe World Cup Qualification 2014 Brazil – Preview (07/09/2012)
September 6, 2012
Moldova vs. England (7th September 2012)
With only a few weeks to prepare England for Euro 2012, it is fair to say that Roy Hodgson’s team put on a solid display at the tournament. Now the hard work starts and Hodgson has two years to mould a team capable of challenging for the World Cup in Brazil 2014.
This journey started with a 2-1 win in a friendly against the runners-up of Euro 2012, Italy. New young players were introduced along with some of the experienced players from the Euro 2012 squad. The performance was vastly different to the defensive performances given in the Euros. England attacked with fluidity and guile to outwit the Italians.
Ashley Cole, Andy Carroll and Wayne Rooney are out of this match due to injury, but the squad for the upcoming qualifiers still possess enough quality players to replace these three.
Moldova are not expected to qualify with Montenegro, Ukraine and Poland also in this group. However they should be able contest matches against most teams in the group at their home ground.
Wales vs. Belgium (7th September 2012)
Wales have the players capable of helping them challenge for qualification. They have quality in Gareth Bale, Aaron Ramsey, Joe Allen and Craig Bellamy, but if they get injured, as is the case with Bellamy, they don’t have much talent waiting in the wings to replace them. They lost their last friendly against Bosnia-Herzegovina 2-0, which was a disappointing result for a team looking to progress and challenge in their qualification group. They need to get back to the form they had under the late Gary Speed.
Belgium are the dark horses of the competition. With the young talent they possess, they should be challenging for the World Cup with the usual favourites. Boasting players such as Kompany, Hazard, Vermaelan, Dembele, Lukaku, Fellaini, Miralles and many more, it’s not hard to understand why there is so much buzz around this Belgium squad.
They confirmed their potential with a 4-2 victory over Netherlands in their last friendly. Not qualifying for the World Cup would be a major disappointment.
Netherlands vs. Turkey (7th September 2012)
A meeting between arguably the two strongest teams in the group – will likely determine who finished on top.
Netherlands had an appalling Euro 2012, losing all three group games to Denmark, Portugal and Germany respectively. Cast among the favourites for the competition, they should have performed far better than they did. As mentioned above, they also lost their last friendly against Belgium 4-2. So a vast improvement is needed from the side ranked 8th in the World.
Turkey are also coming off the back of a disappointing loss in their last friendly against Austria, where they lost 2-0. Although not to the same standard as Netherlands, Turkey have some talented players in their squad, including the likes of Arda Turan, Mehmet Topal, Emre and Nuri Sahin. They will be a threat and nothing is guaranteed in this match for the Dutch.
The 7th September 2012 signals the start of a long road for teams across the Globe trying to qualify for the prestigious competition that is the World Cup. May the games begin.
Premier League Preview – The Weekend’s Key Games (01/09/2012)
August 31, 2012
Swansea vs. Sunderland – (1st September 2012)
Swansea have shown great form in their first 2 games of the season, demolishing QPR 5-0 and beating West Ham 3-0. Michu, who arrived from Rayo Vallecano for £2m after scoring 17 goals last season, has been a revelation. If Sunderland are to win this game, they will have to find a way to restrict him.
In turn, Swansea will have to keep an eye on Sunderland’s new purchases. They have added the quality of Adam Johnson and Steven Fletcher to their squad, which will make them a potent threat in the league this season. The goal threat that Read the rest of this entry »
