Assessing Football Team Form, Part 3

One of the best strategies you can use to analyse an upcoming football match and make accurate predictions is team form assessment.  In my previous two instalments (Assessing Football Team Form Part 1 and Part 2), I discussed a variety of factors which can all have an impact on team form.  These include the players, the managers, the play style of the team, travel, game history, and whether the upcoming match will be a home or away game for each team.  As you can see, that is a lot to juggle, and it is not even an extensive list.  To that end, it is helpful to have a checklist to run down. 

Here are the questions you should always ask before betting on a match:

• Which team is the home team?  What is their home performance like?  Which team is the away team?  What is their away performance like?  How do the two compare?

• What are the play styles of both teams?  Are they largely offensive or defensive?  What impact will that have on the likely score for both sides?

• What teams have they recently played?  How did they perform against those teams?  How many goals have they scored on average?  How many have they conceded on average?  Did any teams they recently played against have similar play styles to each other? 

• Have the teams met in the past?  Under what conditions?  What was the outcome?  What changes have happened since with the roster, management, rules, etc.?  How will those changes impact the teams now?  Could they be enough to turn the tables, or can you expect a repeat of past performance?

• What are the styles and strategies of the managers?

• Have the managers met in the past?  What happened?  What changes have they made since?

• Have any of the players recently been travelling?  Has the entire team been travelling?  Is anyone particularly fatigued or injured?  If so, which players in which positions?  Are any key players sitting this match out?

• Is the team playing cohesively, or are there issues on or off the field that could impact performance adversely?  Are there problems with management?

When it comes to analysing team form, context truly is everything.  It is not enough to ask a question like “what happened the last time these teams met head to head” without then asking about all the factors that have changed since that game.  All of the data that you can analyse is relevant to some degree, but the specific relevance may be greater or lesser than it appears on first glance.  So conduct your analysis in-depth, and remember that situations are always changing.