Any Views....Premiership Top Scorer

[claypole]

I backed Van Persie EW at the start of the season 12/1

Clearly - Arsenal had a terrible start, Aguero and Rooney on fire blah blah blah - and the markets adjusted according.

However, Van Persie didnt hit his 4th today and has 3 lol.  I have just looked a oddschecker and am amazed Ladbrokes are 25/1 - market is all over the place, with big differences of opinions.  I have just pressed up alittle e/w - he surely will play every game.  In addition, I can see Rooney being rested, Aguero taking knocks and not liking the winter that much etc

I have only added £25 e/w to an existing £100 e/w 12s and £32.50 e/w at 16s - however i think this could be e/w bet of the season at 25s and am contemplating oing in again.

Any views (specically Horneris lol)

[paulhouk03]

e/w is top 3 right?

[claypole]

e/w is top 3 right?

Yes mate

[anthonyl]

well RVP is probably more injury prone than Aguero.......

[claypole]

well RVP is probably more injury prone than Aguero.......

yes true - I thought about that in the summer, but he had a good pre season and no football in summer, but fair point

[toddswain]

He didn't score today mate

[claypole]

Wouldn't touch 25/1 with Top 3 ew (considering he's so far behind the big 2 already). Not sure there's ever been a situation in the Prem, 7 games in when the top 2 are already 5gls ahead of the non ew spots and so massively odds on to stay there.

Fwiw I've got a model working out the entire market which I haven't updated for a few weeks. At the time I made RvP about 29 iirc, can't imagine price would've got any shorter there even with Aguero off this weekend and Rooney missing the chance to fill his boots vs Norwich. The market was underrating the top 2 at the time imo and will prob continue to do so - they are both quite far ahead already, both are sure starters (considering also that Tevez will likely not play again), playing for high scoring sides and both prob on pens (very very likely in the case of WR and just about odds on Aguero). Have got big positions on both and after updating model will prob go in again after I get round to updating my prices.

Edit: Lads are Top 4 ew which changes things though still not sure about a bet here.

Thanks - solid input, quality on here is top notch.  I'll stick with the extra £25 Top 4 and not wade in for any more ;-)

[Waz1892]

scan read, but no mention of saurez?

[TheDazzler]

If RVP plays enough minutes you've got a cracking bet. But the reason RVP is that price is cos they reckon he is injury prone and won't make enough minutes. And with very good historical reason.


                               mins played            goals scored
2006/07                      1456                       11
2007/08                      1073                        7
2008/09                      2199                       11
2009/10                      1252                        9
2010/11                      1770                       18

A full season is 3420 minutes. None of the top strikers play anything close to that (bar Darren Bent*) as they are subbed, rested, rotated, injured more than other positions etc. but RVP is probably going to need to hit a personal best in Premier League minutes to have any chance of winning (top 4 might be a different matter).
If he could recreate his form/strike rate over the last 2 seasons AND hit that amount of minutes that he has played in the last 2 seasons (3022 mins) @ the same goalrate per minute which is a goal every ~112 minutes, he'd have 27 goals and you'll probably be collecting a nice pot of cash.
But.
The chances of RVP playing 3000+ minutes of Prem are extremely slim. If he retired from international football, I'd like your chances a lot better. He actually was out for five months in 2009/10 after sustaining an injury in an international friendly!
It would also be great for your bet if Arsenal got knocked out of Europe and both domestic cups as early as possible. Basically as little other football as possible!

Also Arsenal are not the team they were. They are struggling badly this year and are generally ~3/1 just to make the top 4, which I don't think is a great price.
Yes, they will improve but I think 6th place is possible, if not probable (I think both Pool and Spurs are better sides), for them this year. The loss of Fabregas and Nasri is huge and they provided many of the assists for RVPs goals. Arteta and Benayoun are just not of anywhere near the same quality.
The combined stats over the last 2 years (3022mins/27 goals) is based on a much better Arsenal side than we see today and thus we could probably downgrade the goals expected from 27 by a couple (at least). We could also downgrade it maybe one more or so due to the fact that he is already ahead of schedule for mins (606mins) and behind schedule for goals (3) for a strike rate of a goal every ~202 minutes.
There is also the fact that he is older now (28) and presumably more susceptible to injury.
We could also mention that when contract talks were mentioned, he has stated that now isn't the time to talk about it. Nearly every single player that runs his contract down uses this line so his thoughts may already be elsewhere. I won't lend too much to this as it is pure speculation on my part but any decent player at Arsenal has to be wondering whether they should leave at this stage. And I think motivation is much under valued aspect in betting.

So anyway, if RVP far exceeds his best ever minutes total and if he maintains a hugely impressive strike rate from the last 2 years, he may get ~23/24 goals. There is a chance that both Rooney and Aguero exceed that and a very good chance that at least one of them does.
So even in a very, very optimistic scenario, I still think RVP won't win your bet although he would comfortably place.

Based on a simple total of his mins played and goals scored over the past 5 season and dividing that by 5, you get 1550 minutes and 11.2 goals. That's what we might call a historically realistic expectation which we can decide to scale up or down according to other factors such as teams current ability as compared to historical ability (negative rating so scale goals down) or likelihood of minutes played (he's ahead of that schedule so scale goals up) or goals already scored (behind scheduled strikerate so scale goals down) etc, etc. 

And the worst case scenario is he gets injured during this international break and is out for the season. It's possible!



*Darren Bent over the last 2 seasons has played 3386 mins (24 goals) and 3142 (17 goals).  40/1 with Lads. Probably a better bet for me (less likely to win but more likely to place) but meh, haven't really looked at this market much until this post so would have to do a bit more research.

adnmdv, you have a model to work out these markets? Could you expand on that? Does it give expected end season goal tallies? If so, I'd love to hear them.

As for the last poster, Suarez could be interesting alright. I don't really see him as prolific enough to be top scorer and at best price 11/1, I don't think I'd like a bet. But like I say, I haven't really looked at the market in depth.
Bent at first glance caught my eye. Balotelli might be interesting @ 100/1. Obviously that depends on him displacing Dzeko, which is another discussion altogether!

Anyway, I would advise not to do any top up bet until the internationals are over as every game he takes to the field is a game that may be his last for a few months. The market isn't going to change over that period anyway unless Aguero/Rooney get injured.


I'm going to leave you with a quote from Joey Barton. No reason for that, other than the fact that it's awesome!

"Van Gogh was clearly off his barnet but, as Nietzsche says, 'You have to have chaos within to give birth to a shining star'. Having said that, I think I could have done some of van Gogh's paintings myself."

[pleno1]

leon best,

[mondatoo]

leon best,

I think Ba will get more than Best, friendly wager ?

[claypole]

He didn't score today mate

Lol Todd - I was half listening with a shit 3g signal at the Hilton Metropole FML

[kinboshi]

Van Persie won't get close to top scorer, in fact he might not score another PL goal all season.

How do I know this?  He's in my Fantasy Footy team...

[TheDazzler]

adnmdv, you have a model to work out these markets? Could you expand on that? Does it give expected end season goal tallies? If so, I'd love to hear them.

Yea, it's a Monte Carlo model basically based on expected goal totals for each team, expected goals/minutes ratios for the players and therefore expected goal totals per player. It works out the prob of winning and the probability of being in the Top X places. Took AGES to create and the file size is 300mb, to give you an idea of how much work it actually was!

A few weeks ago I had Rooney in for about 20.25 goals and Aguero in for 19.75, with RVP lagging behind at 14.95, as I said though, these aren't updating and Aguero/Rooney would've gone down quite a lot since then. I'll post some updated ones later when I get round to updating the thing.

edit: Got Rooney in for 19.25 now and Aguero in for 18.5ish. Market seems to be in line with the prices I've got generally, not convinced there's any value there at all atm except for some thin EW EV+.

I think those totals must be too low.
Rooney has 9 goals from 7 matches played (actually only played 6 of those) and you have him to score 10 more in the next 31 games? I know his current scoring rate of more than a goal a game is not sustainable but 1 in 3 for the remainder of the season can't be right.
I appreciate that he can be expected to miss a number of games due to injury/rested but in 2009/10 he played 2711 mins (approx to 30 full matches) and scored 26 goals. In the same season Drogba played 2771 mins and scored 29 goals.
Now that was an extraordinary season, Chelsea scored 103 league goals and Man Utd 86. In 2010/11 Man Utd got 78, Chelsea just 69.
But this season looks more like the 09/10 season in that Utd and City have gotten off to an incredible scoring start. I don't think either will match Chelseas 103 as Chelsea scored 7 goals three times and 8 goals once which is just insane.
Man United (and Rooney) are comfortably ahead of expectations for goals scored even compared to 09/10 so I would be very surprised if he didn't get 25+ (barring significant minute depletion thru injury). Standard scoring for United would be ~80 goals and I don't think it would be optimistic to say you are looking at ~85-90 currently.
Man City wouldn't be ahead of Chelseas scoring rate (although Aguero would be currently ahead of Drogbas) but they wouldn't be too far behind. Possibly somewhere around the 80 mark? Again I'd expect Aguero to be around the 25 goal mark come season end.

[redarmi]

For each game I assign players a percentage of their teams goals in order to price anytime and first goalscorer markets.  I currently have Rooney in for 30% of United goals in games he plays and Aguero in for about 26% of Citys goals.  vPersie I put in for about 33% of Arsenals goals.  So far Rooney has 9/7, Aguero 8/7 and vPersie 2/7.  At rate they are scoring at it is perfectly reasonable to expect United to score another 65 goals with Rooney getting 18 of them assuming some injury giving him a total of 27.  City could get about another 50 goals (ten higher than last year in total??) and Aguero would maybe get about 20% of them allowing for injury and resting giving him a total of 18ish and vPersie could get 30%ish of Arsenals remaining goals (assuming 50 in rest of games) giving him 17 in total so not sure I really agree with adnmdv's totals.  Aguero is obviously the difficult one because he could score a lot more goals and so could his team but the presence of Dzeko and Balotelli (and to a lesser degree Silva and Toure) means the goals and games are always going to be shared around a lot more.  Rooney tends to play a lot more and is, vitally, proven through a British winter as is vPersie.  Problem with vPersie is Arsenal look to be on a downward spiral and he is injury prone.

I actually think at 2/1 Rooney is cracking each way value at a quarter the odds first four with paddy power.  15 Goals will get fourth place in almost half of seasons and he is certainly no 1/2 shot to get 15 goals) and the win portion seems fair at worst.