A-League 2013/2014 Season Review

A-League - Football - Australia

So A League is over for another year and so is my first season writing about it for TheProfits.com.au. It’s been a fun year and I’ve learnt a lot along the way.

It was great to see Brisbane take out both the Premiership and the Championship as they have been the best team all season, no one can begrudge them of the trophies they now hold.

While the season started off a little shaky, I think I got my ratings to a pretty accurate level from about Christmas onwards. This was evident by my rated prices being a lot closer to the market prices each week, a lot of the time there would be multiple games a week where the rated price was the same as the market.

Off my selections each week, the first half of the season was a loss, and the second half of the season was a win, with the overall record basically breakeven. This is definitely a positive sign looking ahead to next season. This is the first time that I’ve seriously used power ratings for a whole season to assess prices, week to week, and kept an ongoing record of it.

From the 96 selections I had for the entire season, ended up with 39 getting home, so a strike rate of 40%, not too bad in a home/draw/away market, obviously would of preferred better, but it’s something to build on.

The best selection for the season had to be in Round 21 when I had Newcastle as value when on the road to Western Sydney. $7.50 was the best price available at the time I did the write up, but I got tweets from followers telling me they got on at $8.00+. I was pretty happy when they got up as the long priced underdogs.

One of my major downfalls for the season I think was that I had teams rated too far apart early in the season, as the season went along the gaps between teams tightened to a more accurate rating. Now I have these ratings, next season should hopefully be good right from the get go.

I’m looking forward into delving into different markets next season to go along with the standard Head 2 Head market. Over/Under, +.5 Goals and Draw No Bet are all on my radar. I tried to get into the Over/Under market a little bit this year, but I didn’t have any way of assessing the estimated value, I’ll be working on this over the break.

I think there were 2 teams that improved a fair bit this season on last season. Obviously Brisbane had the biggest turn around, they went from
“just a finals team” to clearly the best team in the league, they were head and shoulders above everyone else. The other team that I think had significant improvement was Newcastle, while they didn’t make the finals, they showed some brilliance at times throughout the season and they may be able to do things next year.

The biggest flop off the year had to be Perth, while there weren’t a great team before, they really fell off towards the end of the season, they’ll need to turn it around in the off season if they want to be any better next year. Melbourne Heart weren’t a lot better, although they did at times show something, which gives them a little hope going forward. Both teams only managed to get 1 win on the road each for the season, they need to turn that around if they want to have a competitive 2014/15 season.

If you have any questions about the season, things that you might be interested in seeing next season or anything else you’d like me to write about just drop me a tweet.

Once again I had a great time writing for TheProfits.com.au each week, best of luck with all your punting.

@AL_TheProfits

 

Author

AL

I’ve always been a massive soccer fan, starting with Manchester United in my early days (still love the Red Devils). While I followed the old NSL a little, I really got into Australian soccer once the A-League had been up and going for a couple of years. I’m amazed how it gets bigger and better every year and I’m excited to see where it will go in the future. I also have a keen interest in gambling and trying to use statistics to find an edge that others can’t. As soon as TheProfits asked if I would be interested in writing A-League for them I jumped at the opportunity. I hope that I can pass on some of my knowledge on both soccer and gambling to others, and I always appreciate any feedback or advice, I know that I’ve always got plenty to learn too. And most importantly, I hope I can help others win some cash and send those bookies broke.

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