Whether you intend to place a wager, enter a competition or simply attempt to predict football outcomes for fun there are many aspects worth considering before making your final choices. Many people make the mistake of simply allowing a teams reputation to rule their selections. For example Manchester United are the current reigning Premiership and European champions, if they were playing Middlesbrough at the Riverside many people would go on Manchester United's reputation and select them to win the fixture. In reality with United only picking up one win in the last 4 seasons away to Middlesbrough in the Premiership this may not be such a good pick.

So how can you improve your premiership predictions?

Firstly take advice from professionals. And by this I don't mean these tipsters that are offering their special insider knowledge for a fee all over the internet. I mean bookmakers. Bookmakers don't like losing money so will reflect this in the odds they offer for the winner of fixtures. Many bookies display their odds in decimals, but don't worry about figuring this out just know that the lower the number the more likely the bookmakers believe the particular outcome will happen. Don't take this to be gospel however, bookmakers can be wrong sometimes.

The second step is research form. This doesn't necessarily mean going back over months and months of data to find out if a team will win or not but seeing the results of the last six home games, last six away games and the last six home and away game record combined will give you an idea of whether a team is playing well or suffering a loss of form.

Thirdly we want to check if the team we have in mind are struggling with any injuries or suspensions to key players. The team we fancy may be on a hot streak at the moment but if the next game they play they will be without their star defender through suspension and their top goal scorer picked up a knock in training we need to know about this. There are no one man teams in the premiership but missing key players upsets the balance of teams and can cause unexpected results. We want to expect these unexpected results.

Finally it is well worth looking at previous results between the two teams playing each other. Bogey teams exist and can continue inexplicably through various incarnations of a team. A quick look at the head to head record between two teams can quickly reveal any recurring results and are well worth bearing in mind when making selections.

There are absolutely no guarantees with football predictions, particularly premiership predictions as the premier league is widely respected as one of the most competitive in the world. However if you follow the tips above you will improve your chances at making the correct selection where others wont.

Aaron Martin

Aaron contributes to football predictions competition website YCPFA. YCPFA is a simple game requiring you to predict the outcome of six selected premiership fixtures.

http://www.ycpfa.co.uk