Looking back at the North-East derby and Kevin Nolan

Sunderland suffered their worst derby defeat to Newcastle in 54 years this past Sunday.

There are fewer more fiercely contested derbies in Britain. Perhaps a few of the midlands clubs, the steel city derby, Portsmouth and Southampton on the south coast, the Old Firm of course and bizarrely, Crystal Palace and Brighton!

I think the Liverpools v Man Utds have lost a bit of their impact as they’re consistently overhyped and, it seems, played every other day!

The stats show that its always been a very competitive derby too, perhaps backing up the theory that form counts for nothing in such a game.

As it stands, Newcastle have won 52, Sunderland have won 44 and there have been 46 draws.

I’ll cheer up Sunderland fans at this point by mentioning their 9-1 away win in December of 1908.

What I wanted to cover today though was in fact another market that represents great value for those of you who know your premiership players.

Player Goal Minutes

I’m talking here about Kevin Nolan in particular. He grabbed a hat-trick on Sunday and not for the first time in recent memory either. Last September he hit three against Ipswich at Portman road in a season that saw him score 18 goals. He’d also already grabbed 4 this season.

So whats the player goal minutes market and how does it apply to Kevin Nolan?

Well, quite simply, it is the times (in minutes) of all the goals he score in the match, added together.

For example, Nolan’s quote was 14-17. If, like me,  you’re a fan of him and you’d bought at 17, you’d have had a fantastic game. Nolan scores in the 26^th, 34^th and 75^th minute, making a total of 135. Giving you a return of a whopping 118 points!

Okay, okay, I hear what you’re thinking. He also might not have scored at all. Correct. In this eventuality the total would have been 0 and you would have lost 17 points.

But lets make some simple calculations here. Risking 17 points to win 118 is the equivalent of about 7/1. The directly comparable market in boring fixed odds land would be “Anytime Goalscorer”

Where, guess what. Nolan was only 15/8.

Would this represent value? There’s an easy way to work it out, but we’ll come to that in a later blog.

Champions League

Looking to this week’s Champions league games, is there anything worth looking at. The answer is “of course!”

High flying Chelsea are at home to Spartak Moscow on Wednesday night. So far this season, Chelsea have averaged a whopping 2.6 goals per game. The eye is obviously drawn to Drogba, but perhaps a better bet is Florent Malouda, who has actually outscored Drogba so far this season. Admittedly he has started 4 more matches, but that’s still a decent return..

He’s quoted at 18-21 by the spread firms.

Are they right or wrong?