Underdogs All The Way 2012-13

The final day of the Premier League season saw the culmination of our sporadic feature that asked what happens if you always back the outsiders? The answer, based on five rounds of results picked at random, is quite intriguing. You would have made money, and plenty of it.

Here’s what would have happened with £10 on every underdog on Sunday if you always took the best odds available on the market.

Everton (17/4 Bet365) to beat Chelsea:  -£10
QPR (12/1 Betfred) to beat Liverpool: -£10
Norwich (11/1 Skybet) to beat Man City: +£110
Newcastle (6/1 BetVictor) to beat Arsenal: -£10
Stoke (19/4 Bet365) to beat Southampton: -£10
Fulham (4/1 Coral) to beat Swansea: +£40
Sunderland (14/1 Bet365) to beat Spurs: -£10
West Brom (10/3 Coral) to beat Man Utd: -£10
Reading (5/1 Skybet) to beat West Ham: -£10
Villa 29/10 (BetVictor) to beat Wigan: -£10

Profit this week: +£70
Total profit: +£195.83
Total staked: £490
ROI: 39.9%

Although the sample size has been small, a total return on investment of just under 40% is fairly staggering.

The reason for the success of this approach is that there was one major shock in four of the five weeks we carried out this experiment.

-Swansea beat Arsenal away at 7/1
-Villa beat Liverpool away at 15/2
-QPR beat Chelsea away at 14/1
-Norwich beat Man City away at 11/1

(Average odds: 9/1)

So the big question is how often do these major upsets happen in a season? If it’s almost every week then this outsider betting approach might just work as a long-term strategy.

To try and answer this question I’ll examine how often the biggest teams lost league games at home to unfancied sides at huge odds in 2012-13.

Man Utd: 0 times
Man City: 1 time (Norwich)
Chelsea: 1 time (QPR)
Arsenal: 1 time (Swansea)
Spurs: 2 times (Fulham, Wigan)
Liverpool: 2 times (WBA, Villa)

This suggests that the major surprise scores are actually a lot less common that our random sample suggests. We should therefore take our results with a little pinch of salt.

However, if the occasional major shock is accompanied by frequent minor upsets then underdog-hunting may still be a viable option. Something to consider for 2013-14.