Beware the ‘dead cat bounce’
In the finance world, a ‘dead cat bounce’ refers to a steadily declining stock that shows a brief recovery before continuing its poor performance. It supposedly comes from the concept that even a dead cat will bounce if dropped from a high enough height. Sick, I agree, but it’s a great metaphor for Chelsea’s season.
What a horrible situation Chelsea have found themselves in when a 1-0 home win over Norwich feels like a big result. Even worse, Costa manages to score a goal and absolutely no one is interested from a fantasy point of view. Why? Well Chelsea have the unenviable task of playing Spurs, Leicester and Man Utd over the next seven games – that’s going to hurt, mark my words.
How bad are things this week? Well our six game predictor puts Chelsea down as the team with the lowest chance of success - just 12%. How much have things changed from last season? All of those readers out there who like having a bet should definitely think about betting on Spurs and the draw at odds of 1.4 (follow the link below), our predictor says that they’re 88% favourites and these bookmakers give odds of 71.4% - if you follow value betting then that’s money for nothing. It’s not all bad for Chelsea of course, interspersed amongst these tough games are Bournemouth, Sunderland and Watford so you could cherry pick.
Personally I think that Chelsea are going to be continuing their steady decline all the way through to the transfer window and unless they spend heavily and wisely then they will be ripe for a relegation dogfight. Sounds crazy? Well Villa, Bournemouth & Sunderland might save their blushes but I haven’t seen anything from Chelsea this season to get excited about. The bookmakers still have faith in them though making them an average 432-1 to be playing in the Championship. That means they believe that Leicester, Southampton, Everton, West Ham & Crystal Palace are more likely to drop in their opinion. I admit it’s hard to visualise the Premier League without them, it’s not impossible and quite frankly SkyBet’s odds of 2000-1 (click here) are too high for even me to ignore – my £10 bet is on and I’ll happily collect £20,000 in May! if I’m right
So, let’s have a look at the predictor for this week:
Predictor
As we’ve already mentioned, Tottenham are top of the stack with a 70% chance of success – this is a very rarely seen figure and one that you should definitely be taking advantage of. Then comes Crystal Palace who managed to lose at home to Sunderland this week - maybe the other North East team will manage a similar feat? I doubt it personally. Whilst Palace have managed to get only 7 points at home from a possible 18 over the last six weeks, Newcastle have managed just 4 from their travels over the same period. Whilst the predictor is based on past performance, I always like to see at least a positive home GD when choosing my players so they’re a bit too risky for me.
The other two teams that look good value to me are City and West Ham with obviously the former the pick of the two. West Ham were made to look less than ordinary by Spurs this week but please remember that there’s a massive difference between Spurs and West Brom. I think they should manage to win this comfortably.
How’s about the Poisson?
Poisson
Well the goals unsurprisingly appear to be in the City/Southampton, Leicester/United & Spurs/Chelsea matches but all of those teams should be ignored from a defensive point of view. They look like both teams will be scoring from these forecasts to me. For your defence, you should be looking to Watford, West Ham and Palace which is something that I never thought I’d say. It’s worth noting that although Chelsea are given just a 12% chance by the predictor, it is West Brom who are given just a 9% chance of success by the Poisson. That’s low and certainly low enough for me to focus on West Ham’s defence this week.
See you next time.
