Strange result of the Newcastle match, this could be the reason

It was a bizarre result for Newcastle United in their second match in Australia, with the PL side conceding eight goals.

As soon as the Premier League ended at the weekend, Newcastle United (and Tottenham) headed to Australia for a couple of days’ tour, including two exhibition matches on the continent. Manager Eddie Howie took his entire squad on the tour and sent his A-team for the first game against Tottenham. The Magpies won on penalty kicks to the delight of the 78,000 spectators in attendance.

Three days later, the All-Star team of the Australian Championship awaited one of the Premier League’s big guns, but what happened in that game is hard to describe. Newcastle United were beaten 8-0 by a team that had never played in this fixture before.

But let’s look at what happened here.

You would have expected Eddie Howie not to beat his boys to death at the end of a long season, before a European Championship. So, three days after the Spurs game, it was inevitable that he would shake up his squad and field players who hadn’t played in the league this season.

However, the club’s website did not give any details, but it is clear that the opening odds were overstated and the betting was still on the betting books.

Then, an hour before the match, it turned out that Newcaslte were throwing a youth team into the fray. This can be taken literally as there were no players over 20 on the pitch (except for goalkeeper Gillespie, number 3) and in total there were 5 PL appearances to add to the names of the players who took to the field.

Here is Newcastle’s squad for Friday, with this season’s Premier League appearances in brackets. ⬇️

Mark Gillespie (0/0) >(Aidan Harris 0/0),
Harrison Ashby 0/0
Ciaran Thompson 0/0 >(Ellis Stanton 46) 0/0,
Alex Murphy 2/0
Dylan Charlton 0/0
Travis Hernes 0/0
Joe White 4/0
Jay Turner-Cooke 0/0 > (Lucas De Bolle 46) 0/0
Ben Parkinson 1/0
Amadou Diallo 1/0
Garang Kuol 0/0

So, the Magpies went into the game with a wooden stick. Which had a chance of winning, but only a slim one, as teenage, inexperienced youngsters were supposed to beat an adult team with the best of the A-League in front of 60,000 Australian spectators. As the accompanying diagram shows, not only did they fail to win, but they did not even manage a respectable place…

There is huge money to be made from pre-season matches

While the Newcastle fans are abuzz on social media, we bettors are trying to draw conclusions.

We have an English club that can be called a star team, but is obviously on a much higher shelf professionally than the Australian league side. The bookmakers didn’t know what to expect, so they shot in the three-way odds based on the real or paper balance of power.

The opening odds were 8.00 vs 1.30 for the two teams to win.

However, it was later revealed that the numbers had been miscalculated, so those who were resourceful and following the action were able to get odds of nearly 5.00 before kick-off.

Of course, Newcastle’s youngsters could have done better, as eight goals is, as we say, a lot to ask for.

However, it seemed that the staff were not interested in the result, as they had some of Trippier’s players on the bench, but they were not substituted after half time at 0-3. By the last 20 minutes, the England bulls had completely disintegrated and were physically unable to cope with the scuffle, and were well and truly sprinkled by the Australians.

Many bettors don’t like pre-season matches because the lack of stakes can lead to strange results. You can’t argue with that, but this unpredictability affects not only us bettors, but also the bookmakers.

These meetings are the real competition between bettors and bookmakers. The flow of information provides a level playing field, unlike, say, an in-season betting match, where it is difficult to ‘outpace’ a bookmaker.

We’re not saying that betting on pre-season and exhibition matches is easy, but we do say that with the right knowledge and ingenuity you can often find a lot of bets on the bookmakers.