Monday Night Football turned into a two-act play full of drama

Watching the first half-hour of Arsenal v Leicester on Monday night who would have guessed what would happen in the last hour? Hardly anyone, I suggest. There was no warning of what was to come.

In those first 30 minutes Leicester played well and Arsenal played badly. Leicester had five attempts on goal to Arsenal’s four, and City's were from better positions. In the 31st minute Leicester scored. Hector Bellerin deflected a cross into his own goal.

For the next 60 minutes or so Arsenal played well and Leicester played badly. Arsenal had 15 attempts to Leicester’s three. They scored three times and won 3-1. And played some beautiful football.

Arsenal manager Unai Emery said: “The first 30 minutes we didn’t play good but then for 60 minutes the team played with quality.” He was right. But after half an hour I doubt he knew why his team had been playing badly, or that they would suddenly start to play well.

The turnaround was much bigger than normal for a team who have just fallen behind.

Some researchers claim that you can make money during matches by betting on what fans are saying on Twitter. I am sceptical, and not only because most published research is wrong.

What were fans saying after 30 minutes on Monday? What, for that matter, were they saying last Saturday at half-time during Chelsea v Manchester United? Chelsea led 1-0. There was no hint in the first half of how well United would play in the second half. They scored twice then led until the sixth minute of added time.

During matches people react to what they have seen. In-running bets depend on what happens next. And there may be little correspondence between the play in different parts of a match.

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I attach more weight to something said 15 years ago by a trader at IG Index, a company who won money on the bets they took. In a book called 'Sports Spread Betting' Richard Johnson was quoted as saying: “When I was trading football, if it was an all action ten minutes with a goal and corners and bookings, everyone would come on and buy expecting it to continue. But really what happens in an isolated few minutes can have little to do with the rest of the game, which might be much more uneventful.”

Or at least different. And not only for the ascendancy of one team over the other. Consider the betting subjects Johnson mentioned: goals, corners and bookings.

I looked at goals scored in the first and second halves of Premier and Football League matches in the last 20 seasons, 1998-99 to 2017-18. In matches with no first-half goals the average number scored in the second half was 1.4. In matches with six or more first-half goals the average number scored in the second half was 1.5.

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Hardly any more. If markets were ever wrong it is much more likely that they overreacted than underreacted.

I also looked at corners and bookings in the first and second halves of Premier League games in the last 12 seasons, 2006-07 to 2017-18.

When no corners were taken in the first half the average number taken in the second half was 6.2. When ten or more corners were taken in the first half the average number taken in the second half was 6.4. Again, hardly any more.

In most bookings markets ten points are awarded for each yellow card and 25 for each red. In matches with no bookings points in the first half the average number in the second half was 22. In matches with 60 or more bookings points in the first half the average number in the second half was 21. One fewer.

After Arsenal had come from behind to beat Leicester, Emery said: “The team was only missing for the first 30 minutes.” Nobody knows when something like that will start or stop. What happens in one part of a match may tell you almost nothing about what will happen in the next.

Jacks from all trades become masters of one

Maurizio Sarri, manager of Chelsea, was once a banker. He is not the first to move from finance into football.

Hugo Meisl, manager of Austria in the 1920s and 1930s, started work as a bank clerk.

Between the two world wars Austria had one of the best teams in Europe. They were dubbed the Wunderteam. Austria played an elegant short-passing game. They were unbeaten in 14 matches between 1931 and 1932, lost to hosts Italy in a 1934 World Cup semi-final and to Italy again two years later in the final of the Berlin Olympics.

Meisl was one of the three most influential European coaches between the wars. The others were Vittorio Pozzo, coach of Italy, and Herbert Chapman, manager of Arsenal. And they were all good friends.

Pozzo had worked for the Pirelli tyre company. Chapman studied to become a mining engineer. You do not need to have been a horse to become a jockey, as Arrigo Sacchi used to say. He won the European Cup in 1989 and 1990 as coach of Milan then reached the 1994 World Cup final with Italy. He started out as a shoe salesman.

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