There are lots of variables and factors that can effect a football match and we at smartbettingstats have been looking at the effect of the weather on total goals and corners. The data is from the top four divisions in England (Premier League, Championship, League One & League Two), this season and last season (2021/22 & 2022/2023) with 2951 matches in total looked at.
As the temperature in the UK recently have been very cold lets look at the effects of the temperature (Celsius) and the effect on goals. Looking at fig 1.0 you can see the colder it gets the less goals there is. The data was split in to quartiles so an equal sample of matches are in each of the four ranges for temperature below. The effects don't look that drastic in terms of if its colder, but there is definitely an impact. Fig 1.1 shows how the odds change for each quartile in Celsius, the markets definitely react to the temperature changes and matching them up with the odds, when temperatures are 17.6-33.1 the odds are incorrect.
Fig 1.0 Fig 1.1
Next we looked at the effect the wind speed has on total goals per match for the same sample of matches in the top four English leagues. You can see in Fig 1.2 that any matches with wind speed over 20 mph have a significant less amount of goals in them, which is logical thinking what the wind can do to the ball and players, even the noise of the crowd and the effect of the wind on this could be a factor. If we look at the odds and how they change in each wind speed range then we can see as the wind speed increases then so do the odds of over 2.5 goals. We would say looking at the below together, there looks to be some opportunity focussing on over 2.5 goals in matches with wind speed of 0-4 mph.
Fig 1.2 Fig 1.3
Then we took the same condition variables and analysed the effects on corners which found interesting results. The charts are below for temperature effects on corners Fig 1.4 and wind speed effects in mph on total corners also Fig1.5. The cold effects the number of corners also as it did with goals, but looking at wind speed the corners actually increase with the wind increasing which some of you couldn't be blamed for thinking games with calmer less windier conditions would have more corners than matches with stronger wind conditions. The odds don't look to react either as you can see in Fig 1.6 they don't fluctuate enough, so we would advise looking at over corners more in depth when wind speed increases.
Fig 1.4 Fig 1.5
Fig 1.6
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Ted (Senior Analyst) - smartbettingstats