You cannot manage what you don't measure.

A mentor of mine from years ago when I was involved in managing a sales team of direct sales representatives used this line all the time. In a commercial setting it is, of course, absolutely necessary to measure your progress against target, your expenditure, turnover and profit / loss. Why should sports trading be any different?

I keep being asked what the SG strike rate is and what the return is and whether it's a long term viable strategy or a lot of misses punctuated by the odd big hit. And I didn't really know. Because I wasn't measuring it....although I suspected it to be profitable.

About the only benefit of these blasted international breaks with their associated appalling in-play coupons is the it has given me the time to come up with a spreadsheet to measure the success of the SG so I can metaphorically look people straight in the eyes and say 'Yes, it's profitable'.

At the moment I have only completed the Monthly sheet, detailing the trades and featuring a Summary section. The next task, as I while away the evenings until proper trading can resume, is to write a YTD summary sheet to collate all the monthly trades in one place so some useful analysis can be undertaken.

This is the main record portion of a monthly sheet:

You can see this allows me to record the basic match details, date, combatants and result as well as whether the match was over or under 2.5 goals. It then allows me to enter stakes and returns on 3 markets, the correct score, the goals markets and the match odds market. I rarely use all three in a match and very rarely go outside of these core markets. I have decided to record just the main stakes but to record all profit. The profit (or loss!) figure is therefore potentially exaggerated in relation to staking as I'll often scalp the CS or one of the goals markets. I decided to record it that way not because I wanted to show an unrealistically high ROI (although that is the truth of it in some matches) but because I wanted a simple and graphical way to see how the trade panned out as I traded it.

There are then three columns to record some useful facts - did the game at any point hit 1-1 (the magic score and the cornerstone of the trade), did I get a back on the 2-2 scoreline, and was it a 'Set and go' trade - i.e. a punt with no in-play trading at all. There will only be the odd one or two of these but it's something I'll sometimes do with the late night American matches.

Finally the last three columns show the overall picture for that game, and automatically show Green for a profitable trade and Red for a losing trade. I toyed with the idea of a 'Comments' field but decided that with my appalling discipline record that was probably a step too far!

The data from the above sheet is then collated in a Monthly Summary section which is shown below:

This is largely self explanatory, but the impact of the game hitting 1-1 really stands out for me as the outstanding conclusion from the detail of the matches.

All the trades you see entered so far are real trades made this week - nothing is made up or 'manipulated' and now I've finally written this (it's only taken me 4 years to wake up to the importance of jt!) I can't wait to see just how good or bad this SG really is!

So, so close....

...to a chunky win.

Dripping low liability lays into a market is an old favourite of mine and I thought, for a few sweaty seconds, that it had paid off big time tonight! A match featuring an old 1-1 favourite of mine, Univerida Catolica in Chile, was 0-0 at half time. I drip laid into the U3.5 goals market until I had a £13 liability and a £750 win should it come in.

I honestly thought the whole punt (it's not really a 'trade', is it?) had gone west even when Espaniola took a one goal lead in the 70th minute - the U3.5 didn't budge off 1.01 so there was no way out. As Uni Cat away from home are perennial favourites for a 1-1 result I was comfortable laying 1-0 to cover my £13 liability on the lay. Sure enough the equaliser came on the 88th minute. So I was in a scratch position.

I don't know if it's my imagination but I'm convinced Betfair markets take a lot longer to reform than they used to after a suspension. Whether or not, no sooner had the Geek's Toy bar turned green again than it went red again. Initially I thought the game had finished. But no - Uni Cat had taken a 1-2 lead! Suddenly I was offered a green of over £50 - so I pressed the green button. And ended up chasing the bloody price down until I was left with just over a pound on unders and over £500 on overs when it suspended again. There followed a period of confusion (in my mind, at least!) until it became clear that the match had, indeed, ended.

So a scratch turned into about a £15 profit! An excellent result really as it had looked like a total loss for quite a long period of time! I know I've written before that I don't NEED the money I make from trading. But £500 is £500 and tax free to boot! Even if I had been unable to come up with a suitable project to use the money I'm sure Mrs Gun would have had some ideas (assuming she somehow found out about it!) - and it would have been damned handy just before Christmas. But it wasn't to be!

The key point is that to 'nearly' be right can still produce a result. Even if it does sometimes lead to a disappointment.

A two goal lead is never enough until the final whistle blows

Three games in the Europa League that I'm aware of yesterday evening in which two goal leads evaporated! PSV v Happoel at one point was 1-3 and ended 3-3 (what odds that score at the off I wonder...?). AZ 0-2 up at Austria Vienna at half time pegged back to 2-2. And finally our own Birmingham City snatching a 2-2 after Brugges took a two goal first half lead.

Sure there were other games where 2 goal leads stood or were extended, Fulham and Braga for example. As both were firm odds on favourites I would expect that at 2-0 or 3-1 both could have been laid at very low odds. Would there have been any point? As it turned out no, but, as always with trading you must consider both the maths and the implications of further goals.

Turning to the maths first... and this is simple... if you lay at just under evens you need to win more times than you lose to make a profit. If you lay at 1.2 you need just a 21% strike rate to be ahead, and if you lay at 1.05 that strike rate drops to just 6%. But that's gambling talk - and this is a trading blog :-) so let's consider what a goal or two, or indeed no goal imply for the trade.

I got home from work last night and the first of the in-play early kick off Europa games to catch my eye was the PSV match - with, incredibly, PSV 1-3 down at home. Happoel were available to lay at 1.44. Bearing in mind that 50 minutes had passed this in itself suggested a PSV fightback was very much on the cards so I was happy to take them on and oppose them. A 59th minute goal from PSV enabled me to take a handsome profit at Happoel's odds flew out to 2.46.

As has been said on here and elsewhere apart from goals and red cards time decay is the major reason for odds changes in football matches. But with over half an hour left I knew the Happoel price would stay in that region for a good fifteen to twenty minutes as long as there were no goals or cards. As it transpired Happoel did get a red card just after 70 minutes which probably slowed the steaming of their odds as full time approached. Sure enough the equaliser did eventually arrive, but I was long gone by then.

The point I'm labouring to make is that when you enter a trade like this you need a plan. Decide what to do if the losing side score and stick to it. You can 1) green up once the market settles (as I chose to do in this match) 2) reduce your liability on the leaders to nil or what you consider to be an acceptable loss to leave a nice green on the draw or the current losing team or 3) let the whole thing run in expectation of an equaliser. The other thing to decide BEFORE entering the trade at all is how long you stay in / how much loss you take before getting out of the trade if there is no goal.

It's probably fairly safe to assume that if you enter a trade like this and a two goal  lead becomes a three goal lead that your trade is dead and buried!

These opportunities present themselves on a daily basis. If it's an area of trading that you wish to explore why not try with low stakes and watch how the market behaves and what you can learn from that. I promise you it's a fun and exciting trade and potentially a very profitable one with a relatively small downside.