You know you’ve got what it takes but you need a betting guide to start getting them football wagers right? We’ve asked the professionals for help and we’ve managed to come up with a 101 tutorial on how to bet online on football and win. So there’s no need to look any further for expert betting advice: we’ll get you started in a few minutes if you give this post a good read!

We’ll assume you already know how to bet on sports online and that you already analysing home and away behaviour, form and morale, unavailable players, the match conditions and so on, so we’ll get right down to the interesting bit…

Learn as much as you can about the stake of the football match and the motivation level of the two parties involved in the given fixture. There are thousands of football leagues and cups around the world that you can bet on, so why not profit from the information you might come across? Bookies haven’t got enough manpower to monitor all the low profile football competitions on the planet, so there will be many chances of finding value hidden in some bizarre odds.

Sometimes, you might even find such opportunities in fixtures involving English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, French Ligue 1, Belgian Pro League, Dutch Eredivisie, Scottish Premiership or even Russian Premier League teams, although it will happen on very rare occasions.

You know, when the English clubs from the top tier have that congested fixture list? That’s exactly when you need to pay attention to what’s going on. As a matter of fact, you’ll notice that some odds move drastically one hour before the kick-off of some English cup games (such as the FA Cup or the Carabao Cup) right after the official line-ups are released. You’ll see the favourites using the youths many times in such games, and we all know what’s going to happen in those games…

Dan Mullan/Getty Images Sport

Then again, there are other situations where you can understand the club’s objective regardless of the line-up they’ll be using. Remember how West Ham were knocked out from the Europa League qualifying stages by Romanian outfits Astra Giurgiu, twice? They didn’t defeat the former Lira 1 champions even when they were using their best eleven. You could have found incredibly high odds for betting on the underdogs in all their encounters and make a generous profit, couldn’t you? But, of course, you had to know how the club approaches these games and pay attention to everything the manager and the players say.

Don’t expect to ever learn how to bet on football and always win, because that’s purely impossible, but try to understand that you are very likely to bag a profit in the long run if you bet where the value is and that means that you don’t have to wager on the favourites most of the times.

Another crucial scenario you have to look for in order to win football bets is to seek two legged ties between teams of totally different calibre. In many cases, after the strong favourite has won the first leg by a 3-4 goal difference, the manager will most likely rest the players or ask them not to get injured and even accept a tiny defeat in the second game. Spot these value bets!

Many punters like to bet on football tips they collect from various tipsters on the internet. It’s not necessarily a bad idea to browse around for ideas, but following tips for unknown football leagues blindly is something you should never do! How can you improve your fortunes if your wagers are placed without knowing why you’re staking money on this or that?

Alex Livesey/Getty Images Sport

Specialise in niche football leagues and know the divisions you follow inside out. Staying up to date with some lower tiers will often provide good opportunities to bet on. You might wonder how is that going to help you master the Europa League or Champions League matches. Well, it might not, but that’s exactly the key point here. You should always be looking at the unpopular markets, because that’s where the value lies.

A working football betting strategy will always be based on a custom model, one that helps you judge things the same way throughout time. It doesn’t really matter if you start developing your own method or you adopt a current one and then tweak it to your liking, as long as you do your homework and use the data on hand to evaluate the past results and constantly optimise the betting system.

The other crucial factor besides football match analysis in sports betting success is money management. Don’t waste your football betting time with Martingale, Fibonacci, D’Alembert, Easy Money and the other progressive systems. Just bet like the pros: always wager using a flat stake that shouldn’t exceed more than 3% of your bankroll. After the season ends feel free to readjust the stake value.

Recap: Online football betting has its advantages, so make it count. Use the money management plan suggested in the above betting guide, develop a match analysis model and do your homework. Slacking is not allowed! Never place a bet unless you have a good reason to do it and do not chase losses, however bad it might get. Surely, things will turn around quicker than you’d expect!

Football games, horse racing, ice hockey etc. it doesn’t really matter: Sports betting should be done for entertainment. Please bet responsibly. If you find yourself in trouble or know someone who’s got a gambling problem please contact GamCare.org.uk.