Knowing The Players
News from the teams’ headquarters is by all means important information. However, if you are barely acquainted with the rivals in the match you are willing to bet on, names of disqualified, injured or players that lost their physical form will be of little help to you. It is essential to know in addition to everything else what position the unlucky player plays on, who can substitute him, and how it will affect the overall team state. More detailed news can be of assistance here; however, it is a lot easier to find information on European Cup players than on how things are going for an English 3rd division club. In such a case it is better to undervalue the importance of losing a particular player, since the team usually puts itself together and works its fingers to the bones often compensating the loss with increased dedication. Even a loss of the main goalkeeper, which is hard to compensate for even with increased reliability of defensive play, does not always influence the number of goals against: a lot of good goalkeepers sit on the bench waiting for a chance to shine.
Knowing The Stakes
The information about the meaning a particular match has for each of the teams cannot be left out of the evaluation, even though one should not overestimate its importance: if one of the teams has nothing to pursue, whereas the other one fights for something and needs points badly, things are not necessarily going to work out the way the second one needs them to: having eliminated purely sports-related factors (it often occurs that players not pressured by responsibility they have to gain points by any means possible tend to play in a more relaxed manner, enjoying the process so to say, and eventually defeat the psychologically constrained opponent that has the necessity to achieve a certain result), there are plenty of indirect factors to evaluate: the first team may be stimulated by the opponent’s competitors (which, by the way, is lawful), the relationship between these two clubs or with their competitors can be of such a nature that, for instance, one team will battle for the win even in a match that does not have any impact on its standings, especially if it is a derby, or the other way around, it can concede out of sympathy or friendly attitude. However, there can arise a situation when an outcome fully satisfies both teams (for example, one needs only one point to become champions and the other needs the same point not to get eliminated from the tournament), so, with a great probability the match will end exactly like that. Friendlies are a separate topic: matches between national teams can be more or less successfully predicted, knowing at least what lineups they have chosen, but predicting results of club teams during play-offs is a lost cause.
To be continued in Part 4.
