This Week's Top Three European Football Tips

It’s been a cracking season so far for the Fink Tank Football Value System with yet another profitable weekend of FA Cup tips just goneWith this in mind we’ve used the strategy to analyse the value European Football Tips for the midweek set of Champions League and Europa League fixtures.

The crux of the Fink Tank system comes by comparing its predictions to the odds available at the bookmaker’s to pick out the best value tips. Its worked well this season domestically in England but what does it suggest for Europe?

Top Three Euro Football Betting Tips

Using the Fink Tank method we have identified the following games as the top European Football Tips from a value perspective:

  • Chelsea to win the Champions League @ 16.0 Unibet (Look for trade)
  • Man City to win the Europa League @ 4.50 Coral.
  • Marseille to beat Inter @ 2.25 Paddy Power

After Dectech updated their ratings following the first round of games Man U have also massively increased their chances of winning the competition, so a bonus 4th tip would be:
  • Man U to win the Europa League @ 5.0

Europa League Tips: 

First up, let’s take a look at the second tier event, the Europa League and the best value tips.

The Fink Tank gives Man U a 37.5% chance of winning it outright, while the best bookie’s odds imply just a 20% chance, so there’s potentially a good value bet there.

The obvious risk factor is that Man U may not actually be too interested in winning the competition, especially with the title race still in the balance.

A recent Fink Tank column (£) does question this logic though, with the data showing that concerns about the title race may have less impact than expected.

Schalke might be worth an outside each way bet, but 1 point on Man City to win the Europa League looks the best value here.

Champions League Tips: 

Now the blue ribbon event, the Champions League.

The Champions League winner is likely to be one of the two old rials, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Barca are the outright favourites with a 38% chance, but there’s no value in the odds on offer for them or Real Madrid.

Chelsea appear to offer the only reasonable prospect of value with a 9.6% chance compared to the implied chance of 6.25% from the bookies. However given Chelsea’s inconsistency this season, I’d say it makes the whole competition worth avoiding.

Champions League Tips In Upcoming Matches: 

Looking at the upcoming matches, there may be some value bets here instead.

It seems that Chelsea might just offer some value on an individual match basis, but it’s Marseille that interest more here with a 53% chance compared to the 44% chance implied by the bookies.

A result for Chelsea tonight could see their outright odds tumble so a better bet might be to back Chelsea to win outright at 16.0 with the intention of trading out.

1 point on Marseille to beat Inter @ 2.25 also looks a decent proposition.

How we test the Fink Tank:

Dectech provide analysis and ratings for football and are the engine for the popular Fink Tank column in the Times.  Dectech generate ratings which can be used to provide value bets when compared to available odds. We tested their English Premier League ratings in the 2010/2011 season were very pleased with the results, returning over 50 points level stakes profit. 

For our test, we use the predictions from Fink Tank/ Dectech and only bet when the predicted % chance is better than the predicted chance implied by the available bookmaker odds. We take a bet if the ratings give a team a better chance of winning than the available odds imply. E.g. if the ratings give a team 50% and the odds imply it has just a 40% chance then you’d take the bet. It doesn’t guarantee a win, it means that the team is more likely to win than the odds imply (in theory). Click here for a more detailed explanation of how we find the value selections.

Find Value Qualifiers On Our Forum

As the Dectech/ Fink Tank ratings are available for free, you can work out the qualifiers yourself, but we do the leg work for our members every week on our members only forum where we list all the value bets for you.

For more tests of ratings, tipsters and systems like this, consider joining the growing community at the Smart Betting Club.