Sports Blog 30/06/2015: Football Review - Premier League Spread Betting Awards 2014/15

The new fixtures may be out for the 2015-16 Premier League season, but who will be the players to keep an eye on when it comes to football spread betting on the new campaign?

We take a look back at some of the top performing players of last season in different categories so spread betters will know who watch when the new season starts from August 8th.

Top 10 Total Player Goal Minutes



Man City hot-shot Sergio Aguero topped the charts when it came to Player Goal Minute bets last season.

But as the table above shows, it’s not necessarily always the players who score the most goals that end up with highest Player Goal Minute totals.

Charlie Austin, with 18, ended up higher than Harry Kane and Diego Costa with 21 and 20 respectively, while Papiss Cisse, with 11 goals, finished higher in the Spreadex Player Goal Minutes table than a whole host of other players with higher goal tallies, including Wayne Rooney, Christian Benteke and Mame Biram Diouf, who didn’t even make the top 10.

A spread bet on a player’s Goal Minutes is a bet on the total number of minutes of any goals scored by a player in a match. For example, Spreadex may quote a striker’s Goal Minutes at 20 – 23. So if you bought at 23 you would need the player to score in the 24th minute or later to turn a profit.

If you sold at 20 you would need the player to draw a blank or for the total minutes of his goals to be lower than 19 to turn a profit.

Top 10 Total Super Mega Player Goal Minutes



Super Mega Player Goal Minutes work on exactly the same basis as Player Goal Minutes, but with the minutes of any second goal in a game doubled and the minutes of any third goal in a match trebled.

Therefore it favours players who have scored a brace or a hat-trick in a match over players who regularly score singles as shown by Kane moving up the order, Benteke appearing in the top 10 and David Silva slipping out.

Aguero was still the number one though, more than helped by his huge 299 Super Mega Goal Minutes make-up following his hat-trick in City’s 6-0 demolition of QPR in May.

Top 10 Total Headed Goal Minutes



If the previous two awards had a similar look to them, the top 10 for Headed Goal Minutes features plenty of new names with Stoke’s former England man Peter Crouch coming out on top.

West Ham’s Diafra Sakho actually scored the highest number of headed goals over the season but the timing of the goals only left him in third place in the table.

When spread betting on Headed Goal Minutes, you are betting on the minutes of all headed goals in a match, aggregated.

Top 10 Penalty Goal Minutes



Arsenal’s Spanish sorcerer Santi Cazorla came out on top in the Penalty Goal Minutes charts after his six successful spot kicks over the season – and his tally would have been even higher if Alexis Sanchez hadn’t taken (and missed) Arsenal’s penalty against QPR in December.

Leighton Baines, usually deadly from 12 yards, lost his 100% penalty record when missing against Manchester United in October and also bizarrely did not take Everton’s spot-kick against West Brom in January despite being on the field – Kevin Mirrallas instead taking. And missing.

Injury also cost him the chance to add to his Penalty Goal Minutes tally with Romelu Lukaku instead assuming duties and moving into the number 10 position in our table. Even more strangely, Ross Barkley took a penalty for Everton in April instead of Baines, Mirrallas and Lukaku. And also duly missed!

When spread betting on Penalty Goal Minutes, you are betting on the minutes of all scored penalties in a match, aggregated.

Top 10 Player Card Minutes



Lee Cattermole did his best to break the Premier League’s record for the most yellow cards for one player in a season (in the end his 14 matched the previous highs recorded by Mark Hughes, Paul Ince, Robbie Savage, Oliver Dacourt and Cheik Tiote) but he was only fifth on our Top 10 Player Card Minutes list.

The Spreadex Player Card Minutes market is based on the minutes of every yellow card handed out to a player during a season with red cards counting double.

So Moussa Sissoko’s nine yellows and two reds were enough to catapult him to the top of the table ahead of a host of players who actually recorded more bookings in total during the campaign.

Champions Chelsea had three players in the top 10, perhaps giving some indication as to Jose Mourinho’s approach towards taking his team to the top.