Most of the time, football matches don’t feature a huge number of goals. For those who don’t like the sport, it can be seen as why it is a bit boring, but in reality even a 0-0 game can be a thriller. If you want to bet on how many will be scored, don’t limit your field by betting on exact numbers, instead consider the Over 4.5 Goals or Under 4.5 Goals market, if you think it will be a thriller. This increases the odds you’re offered whilst keeping options open for how the match develops. In essence, you’re betting on there being more than five goals or four goals or less.
Over 4.5 Goals: Five Goal Thrillers Are Winning Bets
Goals are currency in football, adding excitement to proceedings whenever they’re scored. The fact that there is an entire defensive unit as well as a goalkeeper trying to stop the opposition from scoring means that high-scoring games don’t happen all that often. As a result, a bet on the Over 4.5 Goals market, which requires five or more goals to be scored in order for your wager to be a winning one, won’t come in all that often. That means that the odds will often be much more favourable than other bets, but equally it’s unlikely to be a winning bet very often.
In order to get a sense of what we’re talking about, here is a look at ten seasons of Premier League action to see how rare it is for a game to feature five goals or more:
| Season | Games with Over 4.5 Goals | Percentage with Over 4.5 Goals |
|---|---|---|
| 2012-2013 | 57 | 15% |
| 2013-2014 | 63 | 16.58% |
| 2014-2015 | 43 | 11.32% |
| 2015-2016 | 49 | 12.89% |
| 2016-2017 | 50 | 13.16% |
| 2017-2018 | 58 | 15.26% |
| 2018-2019 | 55 | 14.47% |
| 2019-2020 | 44 | 11.58% |
| 2020-2021 | 55 | 14.47% |
| 2021-2022 | 64 | 16.84% |
With 380 matches played each Premier League season, that means that 3,800 are played across a ten-year period. Of those, 538 would’ve seen a bet on the Over 4.5 Goals market be winning bets. That means that if you’d have placed a wager on Over 4.5 Goals, you’d only have won your bet on 14.15% of the time.
Examples
In case you’re still not overly sure what it is that we’re talking about, here is a look at some example scores that would be winning bets on the Over 4.5 Goals market:
- 3-2
- 4-1
- 5-3
- 4-2
- 6-0
Do remember that bookmakers only pay out on the score at the end of the 90 minutes, rather than the end of the match itself. In other words, if the match that you’re betting on ends up going to extra-time or a penalty shootout, the goals scored after the full-time whistle won’t count. So a game that finishes 2-2 at the end of normal time and then 4-3 after extra-time would be a winning bet, in spite of the fact that seven goals were scored in total. It also doesn’t matter who scores the goals or how they’re scored, with the only important factor being the total number of goals scored by both teams.
Under 4.5 Goals: Keeping the Total Score to Four or Below
If you’re the sort of person that thinks that a match will contain some goals but not a wealth of them, Under 4.5 Goals might be the market you want to opt for. Of course, the fact that Over 4.5 Goals isn’t all that common means that the odds that you’ll get on this market won’t be the biggest in the world, which is worth bearing in mind before you place your bet. As if to prove the point, here is how often it happened across the course of the ten seasons that we’re looking at:
| Season | Games with Under 4.5 Goals | Percentage with Under 4.5 Goals |
|---|---|---|
| 2012-2013 | 323 | 85% |
| 2013-2014 | 317 | 83.42% |
| 2014-2015 | 337 | 88.68% |
| 2015-2016 | 331 | 87.11% |
| 2016-2017 | 330 | 86.84% |
| 2017-2018 | 322 | 84.74% |
| 2018-2019 | 325 | 85.53% |
| 2019-2020 | 336 | 88.42% |
| 2020-2021 | 325 | 85.53% |
| 2021-2022 | 316 | 83.16% |
Looking at those same ten seasons, then, we know that there were 3,800 matches played in the Premier League. Of those, 3,262 ended up with Under 4.5 Goals being a winning bet. In other words, 85.84% of games played over the course of ten years would’ve seen a bet on Under 4.5 Goals being a winning one. That means that the odds on that being the likely outcome wouldn’t be great, but there is more of a chance of that being because you’re likely to win your wager on it.
Examples
Unlike the Over 4.5 Goals market, there is a finite number of possible scores that would be winning ones as far as that bet is concerned. Here is a look at them:
- 0-0
- 1-0
- 0-1
- 1-1
- 2-0
- 0-2
- 2-1
- 1-2
- 3-0
- 0-3
- 2-2
- 4-0
- 0-4
- 3-1
- 1-3
If a team wins 4-0 then it is fair to say that they are significantly better than the opposition. Either that or things went their way and they got all of the luck. Regardless, it is a scoreline that suggestions domination from one of the parties, yet an Under 4.5 Goals bet would still be a winning one.
Regardless of whether you’re betting on the Over or Under 4.5 Goals market, the idea of it only being goals scored during the 90 minutes of the match still applies. Similarly, you don’t need to worry about who scores the goals or how they are scored, just the total number managed by the two teams combined. Provided it is four goals or fewer, you’re golden.