Trickier Than It Seems – A Guide To Football Goalscorer Betting

This weekend sees the fourth round of the FA Cup taking place in England with 32 teams competing across 16 games for a place in the fifth round of the tournament.

The big Premier League teams, such as Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea, have all managed to get relatively soft home draws against lower league opponents in Round 4, while managing to avoid each other in the process,

On weeks like this when there are a number of mismatches in the match winner markets, a lot of punters will look for value elsewhere, some may even head off to bet365 Games and play a few spins of a slot or a few hands of blackjack.

But if you want to stick to football betting then one of the most popular football bets you can make on any game and at any time of the season that can guarantee a good value return, is a goalscorer bet.

So in this article, we are going to take a look at the most popular goalscorer bets you can make and then we’ll learn a little more about why these bets can be trickier than you could imagine to land on a regular basis.

What Is Goalscorer Betting?

As the name suggests, Goalscorer betting is betting on a football match where you aim to pick a player that will score a goal during the game.

However, the more you refine your selection, by defining whether the player will score the first or last goal of the game, or score at a more general any time in the game, then the longer the odds on your selection will be.

There are three main popular Goalscorer Bets

• First Goalscorer – A bet on your chosen player being the first goalscorer in the game. (Not just the first goalscorer for their team).
• Last Goalscorer – A bet on your chosen footballer scoring the last goal of the game.
• Anytime Goalscorer – A lower odds bet which is a bet on your chosen player scoring a goal at any point in the game.

As you can imagine, by defining whether a player scores the first or last goal in a game, you are ruling out them being paid out if they score any other goal in the match, and as such, the prices on these two markets do tend to be very similar and are generally longer odds than anytime goalscorer bets.

In the screenshot above you can see that Burnley striker Wouter Weghorst is 4/1 to score the First goal of the game, or 4/1 to score the last goal of the game. However, to back them to score either the first, or the last, or any other goal in the game at any time, is a much lower odds 13/10 shot.

That same pattern is followed through on the other players listed I the screenshot and indeed, if you expanded the market out to include every possible player you can bet on, you would find the same pattern in the odds repeated across all players.

Which Is The Best Of The Three Markets To Back?

That very much depends on what you mean by the ‘best’. If you want longer odds, then the First or Last Goalscorer markets are your best bet.

However, if you want to have more chance of earning a pay out from your selection, then the flexibility afforded by the anytime bet makes that a better value option, even if the payout is proportionally smaller due to the shorter odds on this bet.

• Each Way First Goalscorer Bets & Multiple Selections Of Goalscorer Bets

You can back the First Goalscorer each way, which pays out at 1/5 of the odds and that essentially means that you cover this market with half your stake on the First Goalscorer bet and half of the stake on them scoring at any time in the game.

That bet is a nice compromise if you think that the Anytime Goalscorer market doesn’t offer particularly good value.

Remember too, you can back a player in all three main goalscorer markets, as they can score the first AND last goal in a game and of course, that means they would score at any time too.

For example, if I backed Wouter Weghorst on all three markets and he scored the opening goal of the game and Burnley went on to win 1-0, then all three bets would win as he not only scored the first goal but also the last and he did score at any time.

The same would be true if Burnley won 2-0 and Weghorst scored both, or Burnley won 2-1 and he scored the first and last goals of the game.

Are There Any Good Goalscorer Betting Hints And Tips I Should Follow?

You may feel that this is a pretty easy bet to land regularly, but in actual fact that is not the case. Even if you decide to back players who regularly score goals, such as Harry Kane, Mo Salah, Jamie Vardy and similar, these players are not guaranteed to score every time and there’s no guarantee they will score the first or last goal of a game.

Similarly, if you back them as anytime goalscorers, then their odds are usually very short (often odds-on) which means any profit you make will be small compared to your bet.

There are some key strategies I follow for these type of bets and they include:

• Ideally make the bets in the last hour before kick off when you know the line up for the team. You don’t really want a player to be sat on the bench if you have backed them to score, especially in that first goalscorer market.
• Check the fixture. Some players have good goalscoring records against certain opponents but not others. Jamie Vardy, for example, has always done well against the big six teams in the Premier League.
• Check a player’s form. An in form player is likely to be more confident and likely to take chances that come their way.
• Check for Set Piece Takers and Penalty Takers. This is a great way to get some added value, especially if your teams penalty taker or free kick expert is not a regular scorer. Defenders that take penalties or free kicks can offer some good value bets in the anytime goalscorer market.

There are other goalscorer-linked betting markets, such as the different types of scorecast bets, that you can place, which we will look at in another article.

Goalscorer betting is great fun and a good way to enjoy extra action on a game. We hope you found these tips useful!