Everyone has a say on ‘form’ - but do you actually know what it means?
What exactly is understood by the term form when applied to teams in a football match?
FORM: The Favourite Word That No One Can Define
The Illusion of Form – and What to Use Instead
So the answer?
The reader will have to excuse our growing ignorance of the concept of form, but we dare to propose that the true meaning of the word is completely unclear – and misunderstood by many.
Soccerwidow has now been analysing and researching football and statistics for over 15 years and, in summary, the term form is both misleading and mysterious. Everyone talks about it, yet no one can quite put their finger on what it is.
This article therefore questions the concept of form, and we wish to encourage you to join the discussion in an effort to define and explain what is really meant by it.
The Value Calculator: A Case Study in Ignoring ‘Form’ (Mostly) ⤴️
One of Soccerwidow’s first products was the Value Calculator, and we used to receive regular enquiries asking whether we considered form in our match analyses and value bet recommendations.
At the time – in 2012 – we also published match reviews here on the website, as well as on the Betfair blogs in both, Germany and the UK.
Our approach to analysing matches and picking bets for the Value Calculator was as follows:
- Step 1: Historical results
We would take the historical results of the last 25 games of each team – that is, 25 home games if the team was playing at home, and away games if playing away – and combine these with the head-to-head results of both teams at that venue over at least the last 10 years, in order to compute initial odds.
- Step 2: Probability calculation
The probabilities of each betting option were then calculated – and form played no role at this stage.
- Step 3: Value bet selection
Once the probabilities of each event had been determined, we calculated what the corresponding odds should be, and compared them with the market odds. Only bets where the market odds and our own calculations diverged were selected.
- Step 4: Short-list
Usually, there were four or five potential ‘value’ bet candidates – but sometimes there were none (meaning that our odds calculations corresponded closely with the market), and only very rarely were there more than five.
- Step 5: Incorporating form
For making the final selections (the actual picks), incorporating an element of form became necessary.
We would look at the last six matches in more detail and consider against which teams those results were achieved – whether relatively weaker or stronger opponents.
We might also read a few current articles about the teams in general, such as injury news, suspensions, and so on, before finalising the short-list of bets that were deemed to hold value.
This approach seemed to work admirably, as the picks consistently returned a positive ROI – but whether our strategy considered form sufficiently remains an open question.
- Total Net Profit: 252.81 units
- Total Turnover (stakes risked): 2,166.77 units
- Average Yield: 11.67% (profit divided by turnover)
- Return on Investment (ROI) over the 7-month span: 505.63%, meaning the starting bank quintupled.
- Average Monthly ROI: 29.91%
So, while that monthly figure of nearly 30% is eye-catching, the overall yield across all bets is actually less than half that – just under 12% – reminding us once again that yield is not the metric to focus on.
FORM: The Favourite Word That No One Can Define ⤴️
The word form is tossed around by commentators, pundits, and punters as if it had a precise meaning. Yet when you look closely, its definition slips through your fingers.
Depending on who you ask, form can mean very different things:
-
A Harvard Sports Analysis blog once tried to formalise form.
‘Form‘ as a weighted sum of “points above expectation” (PAE) – the difference between actual and expected results (based on bookmakers’ odds) in recent matches, with greater weight given to more recent games.
That’s quantifiable – but pretty complex, and therefroe not widely used by casual punters.
(Source: Harvard Sports Analysis, 2015) -
Everyday usage:
If one speaks of ‘form‘, it usually refers to a team’s recent performance – typically over the last few games – and how well or poorly they’ve played, whether they are climbing up the league table or dropping down.
Applied to players, it means how closely they are performing relative to their perceived potential – for example, the goal machine who sometimes misses for weeks, but is said to be “in form” when scoring freely.
There is clearly no clear definition.
What none of the attempts to define ‘form‘ is taking into consideration is whether it was just a stroke of good or bad luck for the teams.
Or have you never had a few consecutive weeks (or even months) in your life when everything just went right – or wrong – for no obvious reason at all?
Going to the shop and just finding great bargains, speaking with the boss and getting an unexpected pay rise, meeting someone new and getting the feeling that you’ve known each other for eternity.
But how long will that lucky (or unlucky) strike last?
The Illusion of Form – and What to Use Instead ⤴️
So, is there a clear, universally accepted definition of form?
Not really. There’s overlap, yes, but no consensus. It’s more of a emotional shorthand than a technical one.
Everyone talks about form as if it were a solid, universal thing – but when you scrape away the surface, you find mush.
So what’s a punter supposed to do with that?
Voices from Soccerwidow’s Core Team
Forget ‘form‘. Treat it as a myth, or at best a mood word. If you rely on it, you’re feeding the bookmaker exactly what they price for – punter bias. The only sane move is to ignore ‘form‘ completely in your calculations and stick to hard data. If you want to win, stop paying for smoke.
Most punters won’t ditch it. Form is part of the fun: checking the tables, following streaks, believing in momentum. If you take betting as entertainment, there’s no harm in using form – it gives you a story to tell yourself. But don’t expect profits.
You can’t just ignore it, though. If a striker’s scoring every week, or a team looks like they’ve got their act together, you’d be daft not to notice. The trick is not to make it your only reason for betting. Use it alongside other stuff – odds, injuries, tactics. Think of form as a clue, not proof.
Form must be defined in terms of measurable deviation from expectation – like using PAE (points above expectation) or expected goals metrics. Without that, it’s a fog with no predictive value. Only when form is broken down into causality – tactical change, returning personnel, improved underlying metrics – does it become useful.
The rational approach is to reframe ‘form‘ as variance around expectation. When you see a streak, ask:
- Is this down to genuine structural change (tactics, line-ups, fitness)?
- Or is it simply a short-term fluctuation that will regress to the mean?
Unless you can link the ‘form‘ to an identifiable cause, assume it has little predictive value. The gambler’s task is to separate signal from noise.
It’s amazing how loudly people speak about ‘form’,
considering no one can actually explain it.
For me, form is just a narrative: something to keep fans engaged, something to argue about in the pub, to follow on the tables. All in all – just big business, built to entertain.
If you want a far grimmer example of how superficial indicators hide structural failures, see
Low‑Tier Match‑Fixing: The Shadow Wage System in Plain Sight.
So the answer? ⤴️
👉 Don’t trust form as a standalone input.
- If you’re betting for entertainment, use it as colour.
- If you’re betting seriously, only touch it when you can pin it to something causal (injury returns, tactical change, fixture strength).
Otherwise, you’re just buying into the same illusion as everyone else.
Feel free to share your view on what form means to you.
Thank you in advance for your valued opinions and contributions.
About the Author
Bad afternoon , since today , betting exchanges have been banned in my country , we can not use betfair.com , betdaq.com anymore . I thought it never would happen :(.
We can bet only in traditional bookies with local domain.
bye bye
I want to say, that this site is a great resource for betting ideas and statistical analysis! Really great work you have done here!
But one question keeps me wondering! So, you say that you take into consideration last 25 matches and some results are dated really long time ago! But to me this does not make any sense and I explain why – well teams that are playing today dont have a memory or any connection to games that they have played years ago! I see this as flipping coin, if you take random coin and it turns on one side 10 times in a row, the 11th time will still be a 50/50! So why do you take those games that have been some years ago in consideration, its the same as with coins? How is it different? If both teams have played lets say 50% of their last matches as draws, taking in consideration all the other aspects you mentioned as stadium recent games, would you really pick draw next game with odds lets say 2,5??? =) From stats its a value no? But in reality I think its different, because teams don’t have that kind of memory to take their last 25 games into playing their 26th game! Every game is random and it makes more sense to consider form only, because it indicates of problems or advantages of that team at that moment! This is how I see it, but maybe I am missing something and I am totally wrong!
Thanks!
Thanks for your question, Torres. Unfortunately, there is no quick answer, but you will find much food for thought in this blog.
You are partly right, team members may not have memories of particular matches, especially if they were played long ago, but the format of a club does not change as fast as players. Therefore, although football results are a kind of random events, but they are not coin tosses. A coin certainly doesn’t have a memory. However, if your throw the coin often enough you’ll find the expected 50/50 distribution. And if teams play often enough then you’ll find the dominating team will win the expected percentage of matches, for example.
Good afternoon , i will consider the course but i must wait some months because i don’t know what is the future of betfair.com in my country ; is your tutorial -Basic Betting Course Under/Over- valid for 1X2 and Correct score or not?
Hello again Panos,
Yes, we have previously read the PDF file you linked to, but “there are many ways to skin a cat”, and in our opinion, rating the strength of goals scored according to the strength of the opposing team is not as relevant.
So, to answer point 1 of your questions, no, we do not use this style of table positions system in our analysis. You can also consider Poisson distribution and a whole host of other statistical methods and instruments, but the key is what works for you and what is easiest to manage/maintain.
Yes, some of our spreadsheets contain macros just to save time – effectively, they are just formulas which produce a certain cell display depending upon the content of the figures entered into other parts of the tables. We recommend you concentrate on getting a reliable system in place before worrying about cosmetics such as macros at this stage. It’s easy to trust macros and their results too much and they will certainly cloud your judgment if you do not have 100% understanding of the mechanics of your own system before you begin using them.
Consider buying the Soccerwidow course: Betting on Under / Over ‘X’ Goals
This teaches you how to calculate accurate percentages, odds, probabilities and ultimately value. In your position, we think it is the best investment you can make to relieve you of the uncertainty you currently face. We are sure that the investment would be recouped fairly quickly as soon as you have mastered the course and have learned how to make regular profits with your betting. Additionally, we are here to offer full support with anything you do not understand within the course.
Hope this helps Panos, and thanks as always for your interest in our blog.
Soccerwidow’s Bloke
Hi Soccerwidow , i have some questions for today.
1º In your bets , do you take into consideration this ?? (surely you have read it)
http://www.football-data.co.uk/ratings.pdf About goal superiority rating system.
1º-Sub-question; Do you use Table positions (as in the pdf mentioned) in your betting system to rate the teams?
2º (Offtopic question) , Some days ago you have said to me that you just use Excel to make the calculations , my question , Do you use Macros in your excel spreadsheets? , i know it’s a silly question , i have a small idea how to use excel (at least at very basic level) i have data base from 5 key leagues from last 10 years and i can try some strategies , i can do +, -, X, /, % , use =if( =And( =or( and use some filtres , nothing more , but i don’t know if necessary to use macros… because sometimes i have a feeling that i need to automatize some things.
pd: i always read your betfair blog (i use google translator) , you have given me some ideas to how to betting , (about form in football etc) but i dont have a real idea to how to get your percentages yet (for 1×2 , o/u 1,5 2,5 etc) ,i’m trying , some times close but not exactly like your percentages; and about soccer-rating.com i have several questions but these are questions for another day.
Greetings.
Thank You 🙂
to me seems like the bookmakers are up to take some money again 😀
I will be laying Sheffield Utd. :-))
😀 Good luck!
An interesting case study would be the meeting Sheffield Utd vs. Scunthorpe from todays League One :D.
I say it would be interesting, because Sheffield somehow never managed to beat Scunthorpe, both teams relegated but Scunthorpe seems to be in free fall this season, while Sheffield will probably go back to the Championship.
Let’s wait and see what happens :-))
This is a particular difficult match to predict – both team relegated, stats for this season only against new teams, history h2h only for three games. Honestly, I would stay away from betting on this match if I were you 😉
I am inclined to give more credit to the H2H history, where a relevant one there is.
A football club i think is a living entity and although player and trainers come and go, some teams have their absolute fear-nightmare opponents with which they cant win. It doesnt even matter if they play or not in the same league anymore, the psychological factor keeps one team failing to win because of the mutual history.
Hi Gustav,
if there is a h2h history I’m giving it up to 50% credit in my computations of probabilities, but only if there is a record of a minimum of 8 comparable matches in the last 10 years. These match predictions are actually the most successful of all my picks. Teams with no history are very difficult to predict with any accuracy and the results are very volatile.
Hi Panos,
1) Yes, right. Our system only considers the statistics in respect of the home team’s recent games and those of the away team. We don’t cross-over into taking both home and away form for each team into consideration.
2) We only look at a very select few European games where it is easy to find the respective club’s recent results/performances. If it’s a Premier League match, we only use the last 25 league games (excluding all cups). If it’s a domestic cup game, then the last 25 games including all domestic cup results.
3) Last 6 home league games for the home team and vice versa
4) Manually – an awful job, but once done, easy to keep updated
Re off topic Q’s = We’re just football (soccer) and nothing else, although the statistical principles we preach are transferrable to any other sport or event. We use mainly betting exchanges, Betfair & Betdaq, but also some traditional bookmakers and only ever the well-known names where liquidity and equity are never an issue. We make a living from betting, writing external articles and running Soccerwidow. Panos, your English is very good and don’t worry about it!
Thanks for your time and interest in Soccerwidow.