 This is covering the spread part of the fan dual podcast network The UEFA Champions League has the second legs of its quarterfinal matches coming up this week And who better to break those down than dr. Ed Fang We're gonna add on today to break down both the UCL and talk some more NFL draft to get you ready for it Should be a fun couple of weeks in a sports This is covering the spread right here on the fan dual podcast network and number fire calm My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for number fire joined here as mentioned by dr Ed Fang you can find his work over at the power rank calm and check out Ed on Twitter at the power ranking Ed I didn't even know you had a UCL model So this is kind of a fun thing for me as I've been trying to get an EPL talking to Austin cast about that So expanding my soccer horizons today. How are you doing? I'm doing great. You mentioned that no one better to talk to about Champions League than me That is not true My first Champions League bet ever in my life. I believe this morning But I do have expected goals adjusted for opponents and I do think it's interesting I do believe it you know lends some insight into to what's going on and Excited to talk about I am too because it is it sounds fairly complex it also sounds like a may overlap with some other sports potentially in the ways you Utilize that we'll talk about Ed's model digging to what it is and what it says about the next couple of days in Just one second a first day reminder to make sure you are subscribed to covering the spread wherever you get your podcast We are here every weekday breaking down MLB PGA we've got PGH Mara Brandon-Gadoula and be a playoffs tomorrow to it Brandon as well I'll all that here in this same podcast feed So search for we're covering the spread wherever you get your podcast hit subscribe And if you like what you hear leave us a five-star rating as well Let's dig into this UCL betting model I because you mentioned you have expected goals here and adjust for opponent But my question is how because these teams are coming from different leagues And obviously you have matchups in the Champions League here at some point to compare But that sounds tough to me So break down the nuts and bolts here of how you're able to make those adjustments when they're playing in Very different leagues as a baseline The model is really really simple. It's expected goals. I get them straight from fbrf.com so this is stats bomb and I adjust for strength of schedule not with my algorithm because I haven't had a chance to Implement that yet, but with just least squares So you can search Ken Massey thesis online and you can go download his undergrad thesis Which is probably 30 years old But you can read about all about how to do that and implement it in Python So there's nothing new innovative anyone can go out and do this right now and It it it's nice because the results kind of makes sense and oh, okay. Sorry. So here's the key thing, right? so you have the big five leagues and they all play each other and you can get pretty good Estimates for how they do within the league right because you have a pretty good big data set and everything is is pretty well connected and you have Relatively a large number of matches to connect everything you I use the Champions League data I also use Europa League data, and it's pretty similar to college football, right? where you have you know a couple games out of conference that is used to connect everything up and You make schedule adjustments from there, and that's essentially what is going on with Champions League now I did try to do this like a decade eight years ago something whatever whatever Whenever there was a World Cup, and then there was a champion, you know, there was a Champions League after this I tried to do this with goals, and it was a bunch of hot garbage essentially there was a small sample size of Champions League games, and I think that year the Spanish teams have done really well in Champions League And it's you know, it's not surprising to get pretty big fluctuation in goals In six matches or or eight or nine or ten whatever it is in Champions League for that particular year so the results really made no sense and it didn't make any kind of sense to To use the predictions from that the solution back then for goals would have been to be like, okay Well, let's wait this year the most but let's include your Data from the past year and wait that less maybe a year after and hopefully with a couple seasons of goal Couple seasons of data you would get some reasonable results for the certain the current year well You let enough time pass and people at the ref come up with XG expected goals and this is a metric So XG is simply the sum of the probabilities of every shot, right? so it's like an expected number of goals that you're supposed to get in every game and It measures the difference between, you know, getting a bunch of really good opportunities as Opposed to you know some teams that just try to bomb it from outside the box Which are low probability scoring opportunities So now that we have this metric everything makes a lot more sense with one season's worth of data I don't know if they make complete sense and we can get into that a little bit more but they're close enough to the markets that I feel pretty good about it and Actually made a bet on it. So we can talk about that I didn't want to ask because the college football part is what I was getting at before where there may be some overlap between Different sports you model. Do you feel like having that background in college football? Makes you more confident in building this model knowing you've done something somewhat civil similar with a good amount of success elsewhere. I Mean a little bit, you know every sports gonna be different and you know What is enough data in college might not be enough data in soccer? It looks like it is in soccer So I'm happy about that and You know, like I said, it's not perfect, right? So right now If I just look at the rankings you have a lot of English teams at the top, right? You have man CD at the top. No surprise at all arsenal second. No surprise at all new castles actually third it's kind of interesting and then You know, you have like man United at 11th and Brighton at 7th. So there's a lot of English teams up there There's not a lot of German teams up there You know, there's Bayern Munich at 4th And then Leipzig is all the way down at 20th and my team Dortmund is at 26th And it was a lot different the year before last year where Bayern was at the top and then Leipzig was six and Dortmund was 11th So, you know, I mean has the Bundesliga dropped off that much? Maybe, you know I mean Bayern Munich law lost their best goal scorer and Robert Lewandowski and and The player that I thought was the hair apparent there Jermaine Musiala Did not look good against Man City in the last Champions League match Not not the dominant player that he was at the World Cup Obviously, it's really hard to be a dominant player in the Champions League. So it's not necessarily a knock on him. Maybe it was a bad game You know Dortmund is that was actually leading as or as close to leading the Bundesliga They're definitely not as good as last year when you lose Erling Holland Who who's now at Man City the best goal scorer in the world that that's obviously tough And I think Dortmund's defense has gotten worse But I don't know if everyone in the Bundesliga is falling off that much So you could definitely see some kind of small sample You know, there's probably still some bias with just the limited amount of games That are connecting up the different leagues and I'm trying to figure out You know, what's going on there? probably want to have complete answers Without doing some more work, but I guess the point is I'm not completely confident about everything that's going on But we'll just we'll just use it. We'll use use it with caution and we'll go from there So you mentioned Erling Holland and talked about Man City being number one They are also the favorites right now over at Fandall Sportsbook minus 1 15 to win the Champions League and Ed Obviously, you just built this model. So you don't like a futures model to know what the actual like odds of them winning Oh, what do you look at these odds and compare them to what your number say? Are there any teams of Santa is being potentially undervalued? Maybe even man City despite being the favorite at minus 1 15 Right, I mean I would bet against Man City at your peril They have the best goal scorer in the world. They have the best manager in the world Pep Guardiola. Well, in my opinion, he's the best manager in the world I think he's someone that comes from kind of the Spanish background But understands that soccer is more than just about possessing the ball like you actually have to attack So that's my opinion it's probably not It probably goes about beyond my opinion that Erling Holland is the best goal scorer in the world Just have to look at his track record. He's been lighting it up all year Real Madrid is really Really a pretty talented team You wouldn't be surprised at all if they won the Champions League final again this year just like they did against Man City last year Pep is actually never won the Champions League with Man City So that's gonna be a narrative that you hear a lot and then Napoli is a really interesting team as well they're actually down against Milan right now, but they But there's a really really talented team and people like Rhino Hanlon of ESPN someone who I trust in the soccer opinion has has tweeted about this team being a one that can win the Champions League So Yeah, I don't really have any opinion on these futures. I think you know, Real Madrid, Napoli certainly could win But Man City should be the favorite. Yeah, again, Man City minus 115 right now at Fandall Sports Book As a favorite there and they are top Ed's Rankings as well, but I'm sure whether there is value right there We do have a couple of games coming up two on Tuesday two on Wednesday These are the second legs of the quarter finals Ed When you look at those right now any number stand out to you based on what your model is saying Yeah, so, you know my model was showing value on Napoli But that has actually moved a lot and the reason is because they're a top goal scorer Victor Oh Simhen Came back from an injury. He played 20 minutes in a Serie A match over the weekend And so now those odds are pretty much exactly consistent with what my number say Napoli was minus 135 this morning. So it's actually moved up. I have them at about a 56% chance to win that I believe they're down a goal on aggregate to Milan. So they do have some work to do they cannot just win one nothing but But yeah anyways So that that's a that's still a competitive series, right? And then the other one that's really interesting is Ben Fika man that numbers move to so My numbers like Ben Fika and in fact they the Ben Fika is on the road Gotta remember in soccer the top team is at home Ben Fika is when I look at it basically With with they're being on the road They're exactly even with Inter so I have about 38% chance for each team to pull away with the win That certainly suggests value on Ben Fika. I bet it at plus 250 this morning Like I said my first Champions League Bet ever so Ben Fika plays in the portrait Portuguese League and when I first ran these numbers I only put the top five leagues which does not include Portugal And the Champions League and Europa League data and Ben Fika was really really really high And I was like, okay. Well, they're still playing so I might as well throw in all of the Portuguese data as well and You know, they're they're destroying the Portuguese League, right? Like their their XG diff is like 1.8 goals or something like it's something insane like that and But you know what the algorithm does is it choose on all that data and like, you know Puts all the Portuguese teams in the right spot and Ben Fika actually comes down when you get more data But they're still pretty good They are and they moved up the fifth. I think they were a little bit lower I think I had them third when you only had the Champions League results I think they moved down to eighth when I did that still a really good team. I think they moved up Oh, that's the other thing, you know when on the first leg, they actually had more XG than Inter did and It was close, but Inter actually got a PK in Inter got a PK and it was not one it was not a play in which they were really attacking and someone had to stick their hand out It was kind of like a fluke-ish one and every PK is point seven five XG So it was a you know, it was a type of play that wasn't really earned So then figure really did I'll play them at home. Unfortunately. They are down to nothing on aggregate They got a real hill to climb but I do think there is value in betting them to at least win because there's certainly scenarios in which they're up to one and Inter's just gonna park the bus and Not really attack because they just want to go through. So I do like Ben Figo plus 240 I have it at 38% that they wouldn't that match And yeah, there you go and the implied odds there 29% on Plus 240 so pretty big gap between what you have and what the market has and I feel like we could see situations like this And make a lot of sense where you may get a big gap because the XG for inter was swayed By that penalty and penalties are a skill drawing penalties are typically a skill but like you said if it wasn't on an attack maybe the Point seven five there is less meaningful than it would be if it was a PK Drawn where they were about to get a goal basically Right and and when I do this better like I think there is there there should be some of value every time a team draws A PK but it's not point seven five. It should be something less right and There is a number and it exists and hopefully I'll be able to estimate it once you mess around with things but but right now it's just just the full data in there and Suggest value on Ben Figo. We'll have to reach out Ted Knutson of staff bomb. See if you can get us some weighted PK expected goals metrics. I'm sure he's already working on it knowing him But no, maybe that's the next step. He has it all right because like, you know, the XG is just sums of shots Right and those are on certain things. So you could actually just estimate it if you had a list of PK's and all the leagues. I'm sure that exists somewhere. So yeah All right So we are on Ben Fica plus 240 against Inter that match is on Wednesday in the UCL Second legs of their quarter finals Did want to talk somewhere and I felt draft this week here as well Ed We talked about this last week and one thing you were talking about was the value of taking The learnings of one market with the way things move and applying each one to another market now One of those could be the number one overall pick. Bryce young is now minus 750 at faddle He is even shorter than that elsewhere. He was actually off the board briefly at faddle today He's 750 there now or minus 750 So it seems like the the market is gaining more confidence. The price young will go one overall But we can also apply that learning to other picks as you discussed Other ripple effect is a bet you brought up last week Was the number of quarterbacks taken inside the first round you wanted over four and a half It was plus 144 at the time It shortened to even money the next day bounce back to minus or bounce back to plus 148 and is now back down To plus 106 so we've seen a lot of movement both there and with the number one overall pick, which means Maybe the value there is gone But there could be value elsewhere as a result of the market's confidence in these picks So when you look at the board right now Ed and try to glean what you can From market movement elsewhere Are there any better stand-up to use being values as a result of maybe increased knowledge in these respective markets Yeah, I feel like it's been tough. I mean, there's a couple of things I I mentioned in my newsletter on saturday that you know, ben robinson came on my podcast and Like speech on robinson to go higher than his numbers say a lot of sharp market shop Yeah sharp mockers that I look at have robinson pretty high. He's running back out of texas and But no one and at least not any sportsbooks. I have you know, have a trap position on him yet So that's something i'm still looking at. Um Yeah, fan duel doesn't have those up. I hope I hope the team does get those up pretty soon But one thing that I had been looking at is, you know, fan duel is starting to put up odds for the number seven pick The number eight pick and those are pretty interesting. Um, bgm robinson is actually the favorite to to go eight to Atlanta Um, and that's that's exactly where ben robinson has him going Um Atlanta has a lot of other needs, right? They could clearly you can see from that that they could use an edge rusher as the As the next three guys are edge rushers but uh, the one I want to focus on is actually the number seven pick because, uh So, you know fan duel has This is las vegas. Las vegas could take a quarterback, but they have a lot of other needs and one of those needs is in the secondary uh This preliminary market agrees with that. Uh christian gonzalez is, uh A cornerback and so is devan witherspoon and if you actually sum up those implied probabilities, you get about 50 percent um So to me it makes sense that log this vegas would go with a cornerback here over at dk You can actually bet las vegas plus 175 to draft a cornerback with their first pick Uh, I like that a lot. I think it makes sense Obviously it could blow up in your face and they go get will levis or or maybe anthony richeson falls to them um They do have needs on the offensive line as well. That's why you see peter schronsky there but, uh, I think it makes sense that they get a cornerback. I like I like, uh, las vegas draft a cornerback plus 175 And I think that's that's the other way to use markets to your advantage is we're talking about how okay We can apply learnings from the first overall pick to the second overall pick and stuff like that But also you can take implied probabilities of a cornerback being drafted at one book and apply that to Betting that specific market at another book. So it's kind of just again Leaning on the market again with caution as always. It's not as liquid of a market as other spots But like leaning on the market to tell you what you want to know For sure and and I will say that like this market is new at fan duel I I'm pretty sure it was not up on friday. So this is new So I don't think this has been bet into that much. So these odds are probably not as sharp as I mean, certainly not as sharp as a market like the number one pick that's been around for forever But you know, someone smart a fan duel put this up and it hasn't moved yet So I think it was pretty likely that, you know, they probably did their homework and and saw a lot of the sharp mockers are Ah giving a cornerback to las vegas with that seven pick and um Yeah, you can use that at other books Yeah, again, just like using The signals the market is giving you and interpreting those and deciding. Okay Is this the best way to bet this can I find some better markets elsewhere and stuff like that? Just kind of asking yourself those questions before placing your bets. That is dr. Ed fang Ed we're gonna wrap things up on your end for today But do want to thank you for tuning in and more nfl draft stuff coming up next week We're gonna have a full breakdown of the nfl draft talk about your favorite bets available on the board the week of the draft to get everybody ready But ed what is going on for you right now over at the power rank? Yeah, I'm writing my uh five nuggets newsletter every saturday. It's curated the list of bets from people that I trust and and analytics That I do and what other people do and some humor as well So you can check that out at the power rank dot com And there is some ucl stuff in there as well at least there was this past couple of weeks So find that over the power rank dot com if you want to see ads full ucl info over there at the power rank some more in-depth explanations of How he uses this stuff as well over on the power rank find that there Check out ed on twitter as well at the power rank and find ed's work power rank dot com ed We'll talk to you next week for some nfl draft stuff appreciate it Sounds good Jim. Thanks Alrighty again. Check out ed on twitter at the power rank if you want the five nuggets saturday You can go to the power rank dot com to sign up for that We'll dig into what went down to the show here last week recap Uh recommendations here on the show for transparency in just one second But first the nba playoffs are here. You can turn crossovers into cash with fan duel Just visit fan duel right now and place a five dollar bet and you'll get an instant 150 bucks in bonus bets win or lose There's no better place to bet all the playoff action than america's number one sports book Just go to fan duel and sign up to get a hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets when you bet your first five dollars Fan duel official sports betting parter of the nba must be 21 plus in president select states Fan duel is offering online sports wagering in kansas under an agreement with kansas star casino llc Bonus issued is none with trouble bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt Restrictions apply so you terms at sportsbook dot fan duel dot com gambling problem call 1 800 gambler or visit fan duel dot com slash rg in massachusetts hope is here gambling helpline ma.org or call 800 3 2 7 50 50 for 24 7 support in it new york 1 8 7 7 a hopin wire text hopin y In arizona 1 800 next step or text next step to 5 3 3 4 2 in connecticut 1 8 8 7 8 9 7 7 7 7 or visit cc pg.org slash chat in indiana 1 800 9 with it in y oming in kansas 1 800 5 2 2 4700 or in kansas ks gambling help dot com Louisiana is 1 in 7 7 7 7 7 0 stop in a maryland md gambling help dot org or in west virginia Go to 1 800 gambler dot net Let's go back show that go back through the show here last week talking about the week-long recommendations We gave out here on the show let's start things off with golf the rbc heritage We had brandon gedula on to break down that you could find brandon on twitter at gedula 13 Matt fits patrick was the winner beating out uh jordan spieth and a playoff a wild playoff for that one Not on the uh outright board there for if it's patrick for brandon He had zander schoff lay plus 2 500 tony finnell plus 2 700 and tom kim 37 to 1 as the three outright's brandon liked there The non-outrights for max homo plus 360 top 10 He had uh andrew putnam plus 450 top 20 and brandon todd Plus 450 top 20 as well none of those wound up hitting uh homo miss the cuts didn't play very well there putting them in todd uh both in the 50s so uh Not getting anything there on the rbc heritage front from brandon's end but uh a team event this week It is the ziric we're going to break that down with brandon tomorrow here in the show And i'll talk about some mba playoff games talking about the three game slave for tomorrow break down all three of those with brandon To get his thoughts on his favorite bets on those epl show was with austin cast you can find austin on twitter at austin cast the First that mentioned was alexander isak to score or assist at minus 115 for astin villa versus new castle In that one astin villa wound up winning three nil uh isak Playing for a new castle And new castles they get blank there so no scores for assist there for isak was pretty involved throughout the match But couldn't quite emerge for the sunday games or sorry for the other saturday game One of them was julian alvarez to score now austin said before they're during the show before recommending this wait till lines are out because alvarez may not start He was thinking erling holland might get a rest day with man city playing in the uh in the ucl holland did start uh so alvarez not in the starting lineup so That bet would not have been a recommendation if you did hold off until line is for announced an hour before draw before the match so Hopefully you did had the patients there hold off an alvarez to score He did not score a minus 115 because he was not in the starting lineup. So hopefully again Utilize the context austin gives With those bets the sunday bet austin did like knottingham forest to win or draw that was plus 115 in that one They were not able to keep that game as close. So, uh, no win there for knottingham forest I believe they lost two nil in that one Finally wrapping up here with a nascar on my end I had a couple bets for the truck race those are ross chastain to win at h1 And steward freeze some top five at plus 220 this race got a little nutty because there was some rain And they actually ran rain tires or wet weather tires for the first time and Chastain rough starts he didn't run well in qualifying qualified very poorly wasn't great in practice and Was a lap down at one point. I believe didn't work his way back up to 12th, but that's obviously not a win Um, steward freason had some issues during the race. I believe during the rain So he didn't finish well either. So no wins there things went better in xfinity and cup the xfinity side I had brandon jones top five at plus 160 jones wasn't super great the entire day But did wind up finishing exactly fifths that did cash at plus 160 there And then in the cup series eric almarola top 10 plus 230 almarola qualified I believe third for that race ran up front the entire time Finished eighth. Uh, so a cash there he closed at minus 130 to finish inside the top 10 So that's why I do tend to do a lot of stuff before practice You'll see numbers move you want to get the best number almarola's value was gone Before the race began. So happy to get that one at plus 230 close at minus 130 and get the win as well So nascar did go okay this week on the show side of things had kyle arson To win podium in top 10 over in the betting guide over on number of fires. So again, we'll check those out as well Do you want some additional recommendations for nascar post practice? We're just some good data But happy to get the almarola bet and the brandon jones bet from these show recommendations on Friday That's all we got here for today On covering the spread big. Thank you once again to dr. Ed fang for swinging by talking ucl Talking cement. I felt draft will talk to it again next week to break down the draft in full Also tomorrow talking nba playoffs with brandon gandula his insights on all three games on the slate So that should be a fun one Do not forget to subscribe to covering the spread wherever you get your podcasts to get these right as they are posted Just search for covering the spread hit subscribe And if you like what you hear leave us a five star rating again These shows are up over on the fendal youtube page as well If you have any questions for me. I am on twitter at jim sonnis j i m s a n n e s you can also follow the fendal podcast network at fendal podcast I want to thank you all for tuning in for today. Good luck to you with your bets for the ucl We'll talk to you once again tomorrow to talk. It's an nba playoffs This has been covering the spread right here on the fendal podcast network