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torquayrover wrote: He said hes not intrested :P

and PB said a deal wasn't done with Rovers

Richinns wrote:
7 - 10 days?

YOU ARE HAVING A BUBBLE!

Say goodbye to Branno, Bevs, Stanley, Robinson, Tomlin, Oastler then.

Can you imagine what players will be left available after 10 days??? - I can - the ones nobody else wanted.

The loss of players is my worry too.

Agree. We are already a month behind and now its gonna be another week or so?!! I think i'll get my bible out and go and visit the nearest church.

Talk about drama queens. It's only the teams that have to make dramatic changes that are doing anything in the transfer market at the moment. We have the nucleus of a good balanced squad, and when the new manager comes in next week he'll have plenty of time to get the players he wants.

Carlo Ancelotti has said he's taking a year off, so by the time we make a decision, he could be in the running

Nicky Forster now into a very warm 1/3.

Hargreaves out to 5's.

Significant money for Forster indeed.

jocktheknife wrote:Nicky Forster now into a very warm 1/3.

Hargreaves out to 5's.

Significant money for Forster indeed.

Not necessarily - these markets have very little liquidity (i.e. not many people are interested) and the bookies probably don't even make any money out of them; they're more of a PR exercise, in that you'll see a new piece with "William Hill suspend betting" or "SkyBet have manager x at 20-1!".

Try it - walk into the Hills in Plainmoor and try and put a hundred quid on somebody. They'll have to get on the phone and ask permission to take it, and then they'll *probably* (and this depends on the price you're asking for) say you can have £50 at that price, and the other 50 at a lower price. I'd be very surprised if any one chain had taken more that £2000 worth of bets on the Torquay manager, which is really peanuts.

Yeah agree - we'll see.

Just looking for a crumb or two of comfort from another rather depressing day.

By the same token Happytorq, although the bookies won't make much money on markets such as the new gulls boss, they won't want to lose any either so for Forster to be as short as 1/3 then that really makes me take notice. Nobody in their right mind is going to have a speculative punt at 1/3, people will maybe have a few quid on a manager at a better price i.e 5/1 and upwards. 1/3 shots are generally at that price because either the form is there in the case of horse racing or that somebody knows something behind the scenes. I,m not saying Forster is a dead cert but if the bookies are really quoting 1/3 then that pretty much convinces me that he may well be the new man.

Apparently someone has had two "big bets" and his price shortened to 1/8 at one stage.

Andygull - you have a point - bookies won't want to lose money. But what I'm saying is that it won't take a lot of money to move the price to something as low as 1/3. Once the price gets that low they're essentially saying "we don't want any more bets on him so we're making it less appealing. Here, look at these other people!". People *will* maybe have a few quid on a different manager at 5/1 or whatever, and that's exactly what bookies want you to do. They want to create a balanced book so that no matter who eventually becomes manager, they'll profit from it. It's called the overround - basically telling you how much profit a bookmaker will make if you assume that every participant has been backed equally (equally in this case meaning that no matter who 'wins', the bookie will pay out the same amount). I'll give you an example.

tennis (cos there are only two outcomes and its easier)

assuming all things are equal, each player will have a 50/50 chance of winning. so that means the price for each should be EVENS. The problem with that is that there's no profit....if I have a £5 on player A, and you have a £5 bet on player B, bookies will have to give back £10 no matter what. So in this case, you're more likely to see each of the players being 4/5 - so that assuming the same 2 £5 bets, the bookie only pays out £9, giving him a £1 profit. The overround on this is 111.11% (basically this percentage is an idea of how much stake would be taken to pay out 100). Using these overround figures is a pretty good way of telling how 'greedy' bookies are being with their prices. I don't remember off hand, but football matches used to run at about 119% when I was in the business. for reference, specialty markets like Managers (and, eugh, Big Brother) often ran at more than 180% - which should tell you how much they don't really want to take bets on them..

I think most horse races run at about 140% - this sounds bad but bookmakers have less control over the odds of horse races, especially in the shops.

sorry for the long-winded and probably entirely unnecessary explanation.

jocktheknife wrote:Apparently someone has had two "big bets" and his price shortened to 1/8 at one stage.

Two "big bets" could be as little as £100 each in these markets.

andygull wrote:Nobody in their right mind is going to have a speculative punt at 1/3, people will maybe have a few quid on a manager at a better price i.e 5/1 and upwards. 1/3 shots are generally at that price because either the form is there in the case of horse racing or that somebody knows something behind the scenes.

Believe me, a bookmaker will welcome you with open arms and a big hug if you decide to back every 1/3 shot. it's an easy route to the poorhouse. Take a look at the fooball coupons when the new season starts and see how many of the odds-on shots win. A lot of them will, for sure, but very regularly a short priced team will get done. I'll direct you to Arsenal's home record this last season, for example.

Yeah fair points happy torq and an interesting read too but 1/3 into 1/8? Money talks. Just ask yourself if you had 30 grand, would you put it on at 1/3 to win 10 grand if you hadn't really any clue if Forster was in the running? At 1/8 you would only put money on if you were stupid or a mutli millionaire or if you knew pretty much for cert that Forster had got the job. Thats just my angle on it. I actually had a few quid on Trollope at 6/1 so hope the bookies are wrong about Forster!!

just out of interest i ran the overround on the prices on the first page - 134%. And that's without Forster!

If I had £30,000 I wouldn't put in on any 1/3 shot. Put it this way - I'd happily lay you 1/3, even now.

Er - I just looked up the prices for victor chandler - their overround is 286.21% Which is...incredible.

jocktheknife wrote:Apparently someone has had two "big bets" and his price shortened to 1/8 at one stage.

Hopefully a member of the board trying to swell the club coffers...

Thanks a lot for that Happy, a very interesting read indeed.