No, I haven’t profited this week. But I haven’t had a big loss either. So I’ll take that. If you’re not going to win, then do the next big thing and lose small. Here’s the breakdown for week 19:

It was an interesting mix of trades this week, and looking at the breakdown I didn’t realise just how many trades I undertook. My first trade of the week was the Liverpool vs Southampton match in the FA Cup. I placed the match result trade a long time before kick-off, and it was to lay Liverpool as again I didn’t believe Liverpool would be fielding a strong team. Then as kick-off got closer I learnt that the Southampton team wasn’t a strong line-up either and they had a few squad players playing rather than first teamers. So, I decided to trade out before a ball was even kicked. It was only a small loss so I wasn’t too concerned. Instead, I decided to look towards the correct score market. I backed 1-0, 2-1, and 2-0, and I laid the AOH correct score too. It got to 2-0 and I was looking at a very nice green as there wasn’t much time to go before the final whistle. I decided to lay my liabilities so that I would have a very small profit should my 2-0 trade go against me. It was all going well and the profit amount was looking good, but unfortunately another goal was scored and that nice juicy green I was looking at turned into a small green by full-time. Hey-ho, that’s trading, and you can’t dwell on these things.

The next trades were on the Saturday afternoon, 3pm kick-offs – Newcastle vs Wolves, Spurs vs Palace, Forest vs Liverpool, and Everton vs West Ham. These were all fire and forget trades identified by my stats. I was quite surprised by how many trades were identified to trade, as typically there’s usually only a couple at best. I decided to keep an eye on these trades throughout the afternoon. At one point I could have traded out for £55 profit, which would have been nice. But also, if I left the trades and they came in, I could have been looking at a whole lot more. This was about trusting my stats as mentioned in my previous blog post. What you may have noticed is that I had a correct score trade (0-1, 1-1, and 0-2) on the Forest vs Liverpool game, but I also had a bet on the match result for the same game. I didn’t mind seeing both those trades out, as at 0-0 my ‘lay Liverpool’ bet would come in for £20 profit (£50 profit from laying the Liverpool win, minus £30 stakes on the correct score trades), but if Liverpool did score, my 1-0 correct score trade would have come in for £53 profit (£83 profit from the 1-0 scoreline, minus my £29.50 loss from laying Liverpool to win). Luckily the more profitable of these outcomes came to fruition. Unfortunately the other three games did not produce any profitable outcomes.

Moving onto Sunday I traded the correct score on the Man City vs Man United game. I opted for 1-0, 2-0 and AOH. The match kicked off, and with the early goal for Man United, two of those correct scores were immediately wiped out. My only hope was for the AOH correct scoreline to come good, but it was all too little too late and the game ended 3-1. All was not lost though, because as I mentioned a few weeks ago I was still doing my ‘bet on Man City to win every game from now until the end of the season’ trading strategy. But, because the starting odds were terrible, 1.26, I decided not to bother before kick-off. I decided to stay away and only get involved if United scored first. Well, United did score first so I decided to wait a little to see how City would respond. City had their chances but United stayed resolute. It was only after City scored an equaliser that I decided to get involved. A bit of a weird mentality you might say, but my thinking was that the longer it went on, the more I believed United might have kept them out. When City scored their first, I thought it wouldn’t be long before they would score a second as United’s confidence would have been hit. Yes, I probably missed out on a whole load of profit, but the stake I was putting on (£100) might have effected my confidence levels in City’s ability to get the win.

The remaining trade was for the Arsenal game , and it was only a small profit due to the AOH correct scoreline only being small odds and me reducing my liability on the other scorelines. All in all my weeks trading seemed like a lot of work for a small loss. But the rewards could have been so much more. Here’s my weekly P&L breakdown in tabular and graphical formats:

I’ve still got a lot of work to do in trying to turn this sorry season around. But I think I might have something that I’ve been looking into, and hopefully I’ll have something to show you soon. This could be something or it could be nothing. I’ll do my testing and get back to you. I’m probably not going to trade until the weekend. So, good luck if you are trading this week, and may the Lord be with you. Always!