 This is Covering the Spread, part of the Fandall podcast network. Our week of 15,000 sports wraps up this week on Covering the Spread because we have covered NBA, NHL, UFC, PGA, NASCAR, NFL, all in the same week. So why not finish things off with one more sport? Because we're gonna talk some English Premier League this weekend by bringing on Austin Cass, breaking down his soccer betting process, breaking down the futures market and some matches he likes for this weekend. This is Covering the Spread right here on the Fandall podcast network and NumberFire.com. My name is Jim Sannis. I am a senior writer and analyst for NumberFire.com. Joy here is mentioned by Austin Cass. Check him out on Twitter at Austin Cass. Find his work covering the EPL, but also doing NBA props and stuff like that. Over on NumberFire.com. Austin, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me. How are you? I'm doing great. Last time we had Iwan was in the thick of the World Cup. So slightly different stakes, but it sounds like things in the EPL are pretty fun right now. So it seems like it's a nice time to check back in with this world. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really good time to jump back in. And we'll be doing that today. Like I said, talking about the futures market, we'll talk about some matches. And if you are transitioning to betting some EPL with time opening up here at the NFL, we'll talk about the process Austin goes through as well in case you want to formulate your own process, but don't know where to start with that. We'll break all that down in just one second. But first, a reminder to make sure you are subscribed to covering this spread. Wherever you get your podcasts, our first look at Super Bowl 57 is up. That was up on Monday, breaking down the markets there. Well, my number said we talked about some USC with Austin Swain yesterday. There is a time stamp for that in the episode description. You want to skip past yesterday's NBA discussion and get to that. And then also I broke down what my models are saying about the clash in NASCAR this weekend. Time stamp for that is also there. So you want to skip ahead to those, look for the Thursday show, find those there. And then also while you're there, hit subscribe. And if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. Get a piece of $10 million in bonus bets with Fandals kick of destiny. All you have to do is bet $5 on Super Bowl 57. And if Rob Gronkowski kicks a field goal live during the game, you'll get a piece of $10 million in bonus bets. It doesn't matter if you're new to Fandals or already have an account. Cronkick, you win. It's as simple as that. So don't miss out on the kick of destiny on Fandals America's number one sportsbook to just place any $5 bet on the Super Bowl to get a piece of the kick of destiny. Again, $10 million in bonus bets. 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Now before I take a look at the matches this weekend Austin let's take a look at the futures market because right now Arsenal is I don't want to say I'm not doing that Arsenal is I can't it just sounds too weird. Arsenal is minus 150 to win a fandal sportsbook man city is at plus 120 so a educate me are there ties can you tie in this market or no no you can't okay sad this is either one of those two is going to win the league and that's the one to bet okay so is there any value for you in that market right now with that being the caveat there yeah it's a really intriguing market I like futures markets in general and all sports but for this one I really like man city at plus 120 Arsenal been a really big surprise this season they weren't even a favorite to get in the top four so Liverpool was the team that was supposed to challenge man city so it took a while for the betting market to actually make Arsenal the title favorites even though through 19 matches they've won 16 drawn twice and only lost one time and then their one defeat they actually played really well so this just flipped about three weeks to go to where Arsenal are now the favorites and they're five points clear at the top of the table and they have a game in hand which means they just played one fewer game than man city but Arsenal and city have yet to face each other so they'll play each other twice which could be a six-point swing if somebody wins both of those and the first of those matches comes up on February 15th so I think if you have a strong feeling about this market which I do in man city then the time to bet is before that game on the 15th so by fb refs expected goals models city have been the better team despite the five-point gap city has 4.1 more expected goals and they've given up 4.1 fewer and that's with Arsenal playing what I would say is at their absolute peak so far and while city have been a little bit underwhelming uh city's xg per 90 is 1.29 and it was 1.86 last year so there's a lot of room for them to play better than what they've been playing and I think they're probably going to get back closer to that level and if city are able to get a win in that February 15th game I think this market's going to flip back to city be in the favored team so I want to bet them before that match so you mentioned that man city's expected goals this year is down from last year so you're expecting them to improve from where they've been thus far but expected goals is already like an advanced metric that can hit regression in another way you're expecting that number to regress so when you're looking at that trying to analyze okay I think this team could improve in this advanced metric what are you using to decide that is it's kind of like knowledge of the players intuition you know what what goes into deciding that for you some of it is that um but most of it is looking at what they've done in previous years it's not always perfect but man city has a lot of the same players arguably some better players with Erling Holland now than they've had in previous years so I don't know what the reason is that they've been playing poorly their coach Pep Guardiola seems to think they're just really content they've won the league four times in the last five years and there's really only been a few games this year where they've looked like man city usually looks like and one of those was the second half of the game against Tottenham where if they've lost they would have been in a really big hole in the league and it seemed like they kind of flipped the switch so maybe I'm guilty of underrating Arsenal a little bit and just thinking that man city are going to be able to turn it on but I do think that's what's going to happen uh with Holland having scored like 60 000 goals how is their xg not higher that's my main question yeah I mean sports are so crazy especially in soccer it's like a low event sport with just a ton of variance and yeah you know Holland's probably going to win the player of the year in the league and break the record for goals and they're going to score less points and less goals than they did last year like it just doesn't make any sense really yeah well it's interesting yes Austin's in on man city they're plus 120 as he mentioned over a fan dual sports book right now and I think the key thing is you mentioned the inflection point with that first match between them coming up here uh February 15th is that so if you want to get in a man city if you agree with the analysis around they're going to improve you want to buy in that's the time you want to make sure you do so before then to get in before that match occurs now back when we had you on during the World Cup Austin we talked about your process for betting this and you kind of alluded to aspects of your process when talking about the futures market but for people who didn't listen then maybe want to get into betting soccer betting the epl what does your process look like for betting soccer what data are you looking at before you place the bet um I really like fb refs expect a goals model which are referenced earlier there's a bunch of them out there they're all pretty good but they're all just like a little bit different and I found theirs to be the most accurate um but if I'm going to bet like a team-centric bet on a on a soccer match it's probably going to be a live bet I think the pre-match lines are super sharp as they are like in all sports so my favorite way to bet soccer would be if I like let's say Tottenham before a game but I don't love their pre-match odds maybe just wait till 20 minutes into the game and see what's going on that can obviously backfire if they score early and that window is going to be gone but if it's still zero zero sometimes you can get them at the number you maybe thought they should have been at before the game so that's what I like to do and I also like the correct score market so I'll give an example from this weekend um there's just a lot more bank for your buck in that market Arsenal are minus 250 to win at Everton so that's a huge number to swallow but they're plus 550 to win 1-0 and plus 500 to win 2-0 so I'd much rather take a shot on one of those than swallow that 250 number now when you're talking about the expected goals number from FB ref um how are you applying that are you just comparing like team A versus team B looking at their expected goals seeing which one is higher you know what how do you implement that number in making a bet yeah so you know obviously the betting markets have their own models that probably include expected goals sure um I really weigh heavily a team's recent form their last five games how they've how they've played and what their expected goals allowed and then scored and then same thing for the other side so sometimes I think there's a team that's maybe in a poor run of form then that isn't fully accounted for in the market but like I said the pre-match lines are usually really good for soccer yeah and it's a market everyone is betting into internationally there's a lot of money in it so it makes sense that be a very efficient market and I understand why you go that way and I think the advantage of taking a live betting approach I don't tend to do it myself personally because I don't have a model for it so it's hard for me to like I want to know that I have value before I bet something but I think the advantage there is you mentioned okay you like Tottenham let's say they score early and erase the bet like yes you are missing out on a bet but you're not making a bad bet and I think that like I'd rather miss out on a good bet than make a bad bet that's just kind of my personal preference I would much rather I want again I said this before but I want my null hypothesis going in to be that I'm not going to make a bet and then convince me that I should and when you're taking a live betting approach yes you're going to miss out on some but if you can get a better value later on I think that is a worthwhile trade-off you will make fewer bets but that's never a bad thing if the bets you actually make are better so I think that that's kind of and like honestly like if you're watching the game and Tottenham looks like trash just don't bet it you know I think that that's the other advantage is you can kind of I think make you can of it's easier to avoid bad bets if you are trying to avoid the super efficient market yeah yeah I agree with you and one of the unique things about betting soccer live is that when there is a goal like that one thing obviously is going to swing the odds so big and that doesn't really happen in basketball or football even like a pick six or something it's not going to swing it crazy but in soccer a team can go from like plus 120 to like minus 600 right depending on when that goal is in the game and it yeah it can be really crazy yeah absolutely so I like that approach for sure now you mentioned the exact score markets that's one right you can take if you want to avoid the hyper efficient markets do you do player props or like other stuff with these matches or is it primarily live betting the you know the exact score markets and stuff like that it's I'm a huge fan of the props for soccer and they offer just so many options but my well some of the more popular ones are you can bet on players to take a shot how many shots will get on goal or sorry players a score goal and shots on target and shots a shot on target technically is a shot that's either a goal or that gets saved by the goalie okay the shot that hits the post is technically not a shot on target but my go-to bets are on a player to score or assist and then a player to be shown a card either a yellow or red card it fits it fits a match where one of the sides is a big underdog I like targeting defensive midfielders to get carded because that physician can sometimes get put in like compromised spots if they're just under siege the whole game and either make one bad foul to get a card or you can get a card from just an accumulation of fouls so that's that's something I like to do a lot and then the goal or assist you know if I really like a player X to you know to score a goal I'm not going to get as good of odds with this goal or assist that I would as him to score a goal but goals can just be super random so if I feel good about a team creating a lot of chances right and one of their focal points I'll just take him to to get a goal or an assist okay I think that makes a lot of sense yeah if you want to find that one it's under the assist market at least on fan dual and then I believe you can also get it under the goals uh the goals tab so you couple different routes for finding it but sometimes it's just under the popular tab to like the first tab that puts you on yeah so you got a couple routes to finding that if you are looking for those when you are looking at the matches for this week speaking of which let's do exactly that now there is a match here on Friday we're talking pretty close to that so we'll ignore that one for right now but pretty good offerings on both uh Saturday and Sunday seven matches Saturday we'll talk about Sunday here in a second but when you look at the Saturday matches Austin any bets you like in those matches um my favorite bet comes from the Brighton Bournemouth match which takes place at 10 Eastern tomorrow morning I like Bournemouth to get shut out which is priced at minus one 10 now that's not what you it's not a hard sell on getting somebody to watch a game but Bournemouth are dead last in the league and expected goals generated it's just 15.2 in 20 matches which is really bad uh Brighton have permitted the sixth fewest XG which is 23.9 in 19 matches so Bournemouth have scored one goal over their last five games primarily games and that came in it's Nottingham Forest which is one of the teams near the bottom of the table uh Bournemouth should have a really really hard time creating clear chances against Brighton and with that like kind of circling back to what I said earlier I don't mind Brighton to win 2-0 which is plus 5-50 or 3-0 which is plus 8-50 so I just think Brighton's a much better team and Bournemouth's going to have a really hard time scoring a goal yeah minus one 10 the number on that one for Bournemouth to get shut out the Brighton versus Bournemouth match on Saturday as Austin mentioned for that one uh what makes them so like what what inspires the pessimism for you on them and Bournemouth well they're they're just really bad they're probably going to get relegated oh and Brighton are just a machine right now they're trying to compare them to like an American team like the Rays for baseball they just keep selling players but somehow it just like doesn't matter and they're still good every year and they just have just like a simply line of talent yeah and they're fantastic defensively so it's just a really bad attacking team playing at a really good offensive team and yeah it doesn't have to be super difficult right and if you want to like Austin said if you want to really fade Bournemouth you can go with the correct score market two two nil as he mentioned is plus five fifty three nil plus eight fifty right now for that match over at fangirl sportsbook anything else you like on saturday or should move to sunday nothing much for saturday but there are a bunch of games going out once and it's yeah a little bit like the one to seven window for nfl so if you're trying to get into the sport it's a great time to to hop in on saturday afternoons do we need scott hansen to you know warm the the pipes again to get back in action here that would be great uh i i would love that i think that'd be great okay would you have two matches on sunday as well anything you like in those two games um i like erling holland to score for man city he's minus 120 to score and he's kind of gotten to the level of like mesi and rinaldo and imbappe where anytime he's close to even money like we have to be interested just check it out so he's got 25 goals in 19 league games and he'll be on penalties it's really crazy and yeah him being on penalties is a huge thing for anytime goal markets obviously so anytime city gets the penalty he's going to take it and he's probably going to score it uh tautnam have really struggled offensively of late they've allowed at least 1.0 xg and seven of their last eight league matches 15 goals overall in that time including four to this man city team the last time they played and they've completed at least twice in the six of the last eight games so i'm expecting city to be able to create a few really good chances and holland to be uh on the end of one of those yeah holland as you mentioned minus 120 right now fandal sportsbook that's for the tautnam versus man city game if you just go to the popular tab anytime goal scorer holland is minus 120 right there all right that's all we got here for today breaking down the epl but austin we're gonna bring you back because we gotta talk more epl uh down the line i need to figure out the sport so i'm gonna lean on you gonna force you to talk about it gonna force you to make me better with this uh we'll talk plenty about it and hopefully get some good bets out there as well but austin i appreciate the time for today uh good luck to you uh whether it be dfs betting whatever it may be for this weekend and i'll talk to you again soon sounds good thank you very much all right check out austin cas on twitter at austin cas and find his work over at number fire at i j i m s a n a s once again we've got usc and nascar and nfl already in the feed over on the covering the spread podcast be next week coming up a lot of super bowl 57 discussion along with some college basketball and it's going to be a blast make sure you are subscribed on your podcast platform of choice hey fantastic weekend everybody we'll talk to you once again next week this has been covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network