York the real threat?

[Snake]

York, Luton, Stevenage, Rushden all seem real threats to me - or am I just imagining things?

Well, they're all still in the &quotin our own hands&quot group of teams - everyone else is looking for favours to be champions.

If I was pricing up a book for the championship, I'd make it roughly:

Oxford: 8-3
Stevenage: 4-1
York &amp Luton: 5-1
Rushden: 8-1
Kettering &amp Wimbledon: 35-1
400-1 bar

(LOL - after doing the above I looked at Betfair, and they have oxford at 6-5 on to be champions, so obviously the markets are more optimistic than me!)

All the odds from the major bookmakers in one click...

http://www.oddschecker.com/football/non ... win-market

[SmileyMan]

(LOL - after doing the above I looked at Betfair, and they have oxford at 6-5 on to be champions, so obviously the markets are more optimistic than me!)

Or does it just mean there are more Oxford fans than those of our rivals? Surely odds reflect the bookies' exposure to an event happening rather than its chance of happening - although the two are often connected it's not always the case.

To some extent markets are skewed by blind fandom, but you can still use the &quotwisdom of crowds&quot theory. More important is the factor of people who locked in large amounts of money when we were quite far ahead, and might now be trying to hedge that off, which will tend to shorten odds for our rivals.

For context, converting Befair's current market odds (to back) into percentage chance of winning, gives:

Oxford: 55%
Stevenage: 17%
York: 13%
Luton: 11%
R&ampD: 5%
Wimbledon: 3%
Mansfield: 1%
Kettering: 0.8%
0.1% for everyone else

Over 50% chance is great, but seems a little high to me. If I was looking to boost the 12th Man Fund, I'd bet it on Stevenage at 5/1, on the assumption that as the other teams drop out one by one, they'll pick up more of the slack than we do, and there'll be an opportunity to hedge that bet off and lock in a tasty profit.