FI Weekly Mag Issue 013 - 29/07/19

Issue 13 29/07/19

Weekly Magazine Unofficial Weekly Magazine for Football Index Traders

The Return of The Championship After a long summer, club football kicks off this weekend with the return of England’s football leagues, including arguably the most unpredictable in the world.

Despite being the second tier of the football pyramid in England, the Championship is highly regarded as one of the most exciting, unpredictable leagues in world football. Combining a mixture of teams, from those who were only recently were rubbing shoulders with European giants to ‘minnows’ who have risen to their own dizzying heights and everyone in between, it is a fascinating league where, somehow, any team is capable of beating any other.

In elite European Leagues, there is generally a natural order; the top 2, 4 or 6 is fairly predictable season upon season. Yet the Championship - the seventh most popular league in

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Clarke Current Price

£1.31 the world based upon average attendance, behind the top 5 European Leagues and the MLS - is a different beast altogether. It pits attacking flair with stubborn, old-school English defending, where the gap between the top and bottom almost becomes irrelevant when the referee blows the whistle at the start of a game.

Shocks are not hard to come by in this league, starting right from the top. With the influx of money given to Premier League clubs, many expect those who get relegated from the top league to have an unfair advantage, boosted by parachute payments that

Bad Week

make them men against boys in the second tier.

Yet only 59% of relegated teams have ever made a Premier League return, averaging around three seasons in the second tier before doing so. Starkly, only 27% have managed to do so at the first attempt. And that’s not even mentioning the teams who have suffered the ignominy of dropping even further down the pyramid in successive seasons: most recently, Sunderland.

The shocks can work in reverse, too. Recentlyrelegated Huddersfield had finished 19th in 2015-16 and were widely tipped to fall through the trap-door the following year under a little known foreign manager who had not long been in the job.

They ended up winning the play-offs (despite, incredibly, ending the season with a negative goal difference and scoring just one goal in their two play-off games: an own goal). Meanwhile, Southampton enjoyed back-

Gareth Bale: Unwanted by Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid, having endured the wrath of the ferocious Madrid fans, his move to China has fallen through. Will we ever see Bale return to the top, or is it all over for him?

to-back promotions, finishing second in League 1 in 201011 and the same position in the Championship 12 months later; following one season behind in the footsteps of Norwich, who had done the same in the seasons before.

So what does the season ahead of us have in store?

Leeds are 9/2 favourites with the bookies to win the league despite their implosion at the end of last season; something that was perhaps inevitable given manager Marcelo Bielsa’s meticulously demanding approach to the game. They are followed by two recently departed from the Premier League, in Fulham (7/1) and Cardiff (10/1), ahead of a West Brom (12/1) side who are arguably one of the most consistent in this league, and Stoke (also 12/1) who had started last season as favourites but endured a slump.

With the extravagant sums of money filtering down the leagues – combined with the desire to reach ‘the promised land’ – the talent on offer in the Championship is increasing.

It is increasingly becoming a hunting ground for youth

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Gareth Bale: Sitting on £600k per week, ‘The Golfer’ will seemingly have all the time in the world to do just that. And who knows; a lucrative move to another top European club could still be on the cards.

prospects: Champions League finalists have signed (and returned on loan) Leeds’ Jack Clarke, with Hull’s Jarrod Bowen (£1.21) being linked with similar moves. Meanwhile, Premier League ‘wonderkids’ will be encouraged by the performances of the likes of Chelsea’s Tammy Abraham (£2.22) and Mason Mount, who both impressed in the division.

The top European Leagues will garner the majority of the headlines. They’ll cover the back pages and fans will sing their praises. But if you want some real, unpredictable, excitement, you know where you need to be come Friday night when the Championship kicks off. Bring. It. On.

Mount Current Price

£2.39

Dividend Winners 22/07 - 28/07

22/07/19 5 x Media Day Media Buzz (First to Fifth) 1190 Gareth Bale 660 Cristiano Ronaldo 590 Harry Maguire 550 Neymar 470 Paul Pogba

26/07/19 5 x Media Day Media Buzz (First to Fifth) 570 Wilfried Zaha 470 Dani Ceballos 420 Gareth Bale 370 Nicolas Pepe 320 Paulo Dybala

23/07/19 5 x Media Day Media Buzz (First to Fifth) 1190 Gareth Bale 1160 Tammy Abraham Virgil van Dijk 1020 600 Ross Barkley 510 Bruno Fernandes

27/07/19 5 x Media Day Media Buzz (First to Fifth) 1530 Nicolas Pepe 680 Bruno Fernandes Harry Maguire 500 420 Gareth Bale 420 Romelu Lukaku

24/07/19 5 x Media Day Media Buzz (First to Fifth) 850 Harry Maguire 780 Dani Ceballos 740 Gareth Bale 700 Marco Asensio 570 Wilfried Zaha

28/07/19 5 x Media Day Media Buzz (First to Fifth) 930 Nicolas Pepe 780 Gareth Bale 500 Harry Maguire 490 Moussa Dembele 450 Bruno Fernandes

25/07/19 5 x Media Day Media Buzz (First to Fifth) Bruno Fernandes 890 Angel Gomes 740 Dani Ceballos 570 Neymar 510 Harry Maguire 490

This Week The last few days of Media Madness!

Footie: 107,150

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Football Index XI Over the next few issues, Betting2Win will be creating a series of football XIs. Head over to www.betting2win.co.uk for more great content!

The Summer Media Buzz Transfer Madness XI It is that time of year when newspapers need selling and if you believed every story printed, Manchester United would now have a squad of over 80 players including Sean Longstaff, Gareth Bale, Harry Maguire, Mykola Shaparenko and even Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

For a bit of fun, we have put together a fantasy Football Index Media Buzz XL based on the positions with the highest Media Dividends from Index Gain’s Basic Player Screener data.

Please remember that prices change daily, and we recommend conducting your own research when investing in any player on Football Index.

Please note these are not the actual highest 11 dividend players overall, otherwise we would be playing a 0-1-2-8 formation and not the 4-3-3 we settled for.

For those unsure, Media Buzz, in a nutshell, is awarded to players for several reasons, including transfer rumours, injuries and match performance. The more articles a player is mentioned in, the more points they accumulate until midnight.

Playing a formation of 4-3-3, it clearly highlights why forwards tend to be the most expensive on FI, except for Paul Pogba who is in a league of his own!

On Football Index, goalkeepers have little value, although some people are investing in them

in the hope that FI changes the matrix rules in the future to make them more valuable. I’m not so sure this will happen anytime soon!

Goalkeeper Alisson (Buy Price £0.87). His nearest competitor Thibaut Courtois (Buy Price £0.43) returned a measly £0.02 compared to Alisson’s £0.06. These returns clearly asks the question why anybody would invest in goalkeepers.

Defenders Moving on to our back four, three of the defenders, Wan-Bissaka (Buy Price £2.11) and Matthijs de Ligt (Buy Price £2.41) were both recently heavily involved with transfer rumours to Manchester United. De Ligt was at one stage valued at over £3.00 before deciding to join Juventus.

Another defender still linked with a move to Manchester United is Harry Maguire (Buy Price £2.34) who so far has returned £0.34 in MB dividends with no doubt more to come.

Despite not attracting any notable transfer rumours, Virgil van Dijk (£3.03) still managed to return £0.33 in MB dividends.

Midfielders One major surprise was to see Mesut Ozil (£1.14) making the team with a MB return of £0.31. I guess Ozil attracts media attention for some of the wrong reasons!

One that certainly wasn’t a surprise was the king of MB Paul Pogba (£7.06) with an astonishing dividend return of £2.03. Pogba is clearly in a league of his own! The only worry for holders, at this point, is will he still or will he go?

Due to the crazy decision by Arsenal to allow Aron Ramsey (£1.16) to move to Juventus on a free transfer it allowed holders of him to pick up £0.18 in dividends.

Forwards Unsurprisingly, top of the MB tree is Neymar (£7.42) who seems to enjoy being in the media spotlight even for the wrong reasons. Angling for a move away from PSG, and despite returning £0.89, I’m certain there are a lot more dividends to be had with him.

Eden Hazard’s (£4.45) transfer saga from Chelsea to Real Madrid significantly pushed his dividend returns to £0.84. Hazard is a clean-living boy, so I wouldn’t expect him to return anywhere near that figure next year.

Despite some negative press (which has now ended) Ronaldo (Buy Price £2.90) pushed in front of Messi with a MB dividend return of £0.81.

Football Index Guru

Guest Blog

Football Index Guru has been on Football Index since May 2018 and has a 67% ROI. Over the course of the summer, he will feature in a weekly guest blog. You can follow him on Twitter @IndexGuru.

Are IPOs Overpriced?

Last week, Football Index sent FI twitter accounts into overdrive when they announced that ‘Initial Player Offerings’ (IPO’s) would return with no major change to the system that was previously used to introduce players to the market.

How the process works When players are commonly requested to be put on the market, Football Index select a relatively small group of them to be released at a random time within a two hour window.

They start at which can usually be seen as a relatively small price; when the players are released, it is simply a case of first to click the buy button gets the player at the lowest price.

While it is not the most popular system it is the one that FI chose to continue with and while other issues arose it is unlikely to change when the next batch is released.

Last week many of the players who were released shot up rapidly when put on the market and quickly broke into the Top 200 but are they overpriced and at their current price simply because of IPO hype?

Teemu Pukki Pukki was a revelation when he made his move to Norwich last season and was one of the main reasons that they were able to win the Championship and make it into the Premier League. His initial release price of £1 seemed quite high for an unproven striker in the BPL and when released his price rose and settled at £1.17. In comparison Aleksander Mitrovic, who was similarly prolific in the Championship and similarly did well in the Premier League, only reached a peak of £0.99 while playing for Fulham who Norwich could well replicate a similar season to. This price of £1.17 leaves Pukki at a higher price than Callum Wilson who scored a strong 14 goals last season and became an England international and could book himself a place in the Euro 2020 squad next summer.

Takefusa Kubo The young Japanese star has impressed massively in his start at Real Madrid and when released at £1.00 you thought this was a good price for traders to get on and hold if they are interested in his talent. However, his price rapidly rose to over £2.30 which brings him near the price of Vinicius Junior (£3.00) and Rodrygo (£2.60) who are a few years further along the line and have had opportunities to be bedded within the first team squad already. When stuck

behind the likes of Eden Hazard (£4.43), Gareth Bale (£2.18), Isco (£1.63) and Lucas Vazquez (£0.49), as well as the 2 above, there may be limited opportunities for the youngsters at the club to make a large contribution to the Madrid within the next 3 years. If this young player makes his way into the Real Madrid side there is potentially a huge upside here in an exciting team.

How to spot value in an IPO’s price With the examples above there is potentially one player who is undervalued and potentially someone who is overvalued, there are a few key processes which I picked out and will explain further below.

Compare, compare, compare As with Pukki and Kubo I looked at players who were in similar positions or situations and therefore it was possible to see whether their prices were overinflated or realistic and offer some value on the index. Comparisons to players’ prices or to the PB scores that similar players are able to produce can often lead to revealing whether or not this player is worth while investing in.

Statistical Approach Even though these players haven’t been on the index to create PB statistics there are certain things that can indicate good PB potential. Firstly goals and assists per 90 minutes are not only good stats to understand for their heavy scoring in the PB matrix but also provide immediate dividends through IPDs. Other key stats to look at may also be the amount of passes and pass percentage within a game as we know this is important in the current PB Matrix.

Google it It may sound simple but I have left the easiest until last. A simple google search will tell you how old they are, how much they have played for their current and previous sides as well as revealing any potential transfer links that are upcoming.

Please remember: Football Index is a gambling platform.

Do not put in more than you can afford to lose.

Please gamble responsibly.