Introduction

First of all the title of the blog. Obviously a nod of appreciation to the daddy of all sports related blogs and the one that's likely to be going long after most of us have gone to the wall.
The title of the blog does nevertheless bear significant relevance to its content, as it's a football profit and loss blog with the selections (all system based) exclusively dependent on the defensive qualities of both teams rather than the more common and rather obvious  'Manchester United have scored 7 in the last 2 games and must be good value ?!!? to win again today. That approach may work - I've no idea, I've never tried it- but if it does it's going to bring out the obvious selections that the bookies have got well covered. On the other hand  Brian Clough (who managed my club Derby for the best 6 years of their lives) used to say that a good goalkeeper was worth a goal start.What's good enough for him will do for me. Goalies are the last line of defence and there was a time when all goalkeepers used to wear green. With me so far?
Anyway I didn't get into football betting seriously until about three years ago. And of course it started with outright win results, never the draw because who wants to watch a match and see a draw, not me - not then anyway. But of course as Cassini has alluded to in the past, fewer people  back the draw so therefore the bookies offer better odds for it.
Couldn't make a profit from outright wins so back to the drawing board and started looking at the over under 2.5 goals market. Only 2 possible outcomes and liquidity isn't too much of a problem in most of the leagues I look at, which incidentally are the English Premier League, Championship, Leagues one and two and the French, German, Italian and Spanish versions of the Premier League. That's plenty for me. Anyway, as I was saying , only 2 possible outcomes, should be fairly easy to get an edge so get one and hey presto! Well it wasn't that easy of course. If it was we'd all be doing it and then of course the edge would disappear. So I made another trip back to the drawing board, the first of many as it turned out over the last three  seasons.Which of course you need to. Sit on your backside for too long and any edge will disappear whist you're scratching it.
To cut a long story short I very gradually developed a system to select matches suitable for an over or under 2.5 goals bet. These produced sideline bets, since both teams had to pass the system requirements before a bet was indicated. For example any match which I backed on the over 2.5 goals market was almost always also a candidate for the Both Teams To Score market.Likewise you don't have to be Einstein to deduce that a match in which you think 2 or less goals will be scored is also more likely to be a draw than one where the goalies are frequently retrieving the ball from the back of the net (there are 6 possible scorelines with 2 goals or less - 2 of them are draws). The odds on offer for the draw, never less than 2-1, means that if you are backing in the under 2.5 goals market it makes sense to back the draw as well and I had considerable success with this last season. One further benefit from my final version of the system was that it threw up the occasional match where one team was currently considerably defensively superior to the other and these I did back in the home or away market.
So my intention is to publish all my bets in advance on the blog this season. I categorically don't have a separate subscription based website I'm trying to get people interested in and I  absolutely have nothing to sell. The reason I'm publishing them is that I want a permanent record of them all in one place and, if I'm honest and things go according to plan, so people can look back and say well perhaps he has got something.
The only thing I can say is that I am as confident as you can be with something like this. I will be betting every selection on here (to small stakes as sometimes there can be a lot of bets on the same day) and if things go as they have done for the last two seasons I will make a profit - but if they don't, I won't. There won't be any selections until at least one league has had two sets of matches as I need that many before the system kicks in and in any case early season form is  unreliable.I am also having a week's holiday towards the end of August, during which I won't be touching a computer with a bargepole. I am undecided about dipping my toe in the water before I go away but I will post in plenty of time so people know my intentions.