Much has been made of Liverpool’s dramatic slump in form this season compared to last term after the departure of Luis Suarez and injury to Daniel Sturridge. But how has this affected punters betting on the Reds this campaign?

When it comes to spread betting on football, Liverpool were one of the most popular sides to bet on for punters last season as their games heralded goals galore.

Liverpool’s fast start to matches last season often saw them blast their opponents away in the first quarter of matches and this meant for a particular interest in spread betters playing the Time of First Liverpool Goal market.

This market is based on the spread betting companies putting out a spread or prediction on the time they think Liverpool will score their first goal in each game.

Spread betters would sell on the prediction if they felt the goal would come earlier than the prediction, or buy if they felt it would come later than predicted, or if they felt Liverpool would not score at all (when the market makes up at 90).

So, for example, if Spreadex predicted Liverpool’s first goal in a match to come between the 46th and 49th minutes of a match and you sold at £1 a point at 46, you would make £30 profit if Liverpool scored in the 16th minute (46 – 16). However if Liverpool scored their first goal late on in the match in the 86th minute, that bet would lose £40 (46 – 86).

Last season, if punters had placed a £1 sell of Time of First Liverpool Goal on every Reds Premier League match throughout the season, it would have resulted in profits of £518.

For everyone who put a £1 buy of Time of First Liverpool Goal on every Reds Premier League match, it would have resulted in losses of £632.

The profit and loss from each bet per match last season is shown below (click image to enlarge).



However, moving on to this season and it has been the opposite story. For anyone placing a £1 sell of Time of First Liverpool Goal for each of the 10 Premier League matches so far, those bets would have resulted in losses of £152.

While anyone placing a £1 buy of Time of First Liverpool Goal for each of the 10 Premier League matches so far would have made profits of £122, as shown below (click image to enlarge).

When it comes to Total Goals, last term Liverpool matches averaged just under four goals per game in the Premier League(3.97 to be precise), while this season Liverpool matches average 2.6 goals per game.

For Total Goal Minutes (minutes of all the goals scored in a match, aggregated) Liverpool Premier League matches averaged a shade under 181 (180.9), while this term Total Goal Minutes in the 10 Liverpool Premier League matches played so far have averaged 104.5.

So while Brendan Rodgers mulls over changing his tactics to cope with the absence of Suarez and Sturridge, so too spread betters are having to mull over their tactics when it comes to spread betting on last season’s most exciting side.