I consider myself to have an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of football. I could tell you instantaneously who contested the 1975 FA Cup Final, who Nottingham Forest beat to win their two European Cups and the name of Stranraer’s home ground. I also understand that set against what you could be knowledgeable about it isn’t anything to be proud of. Quite the opposite. When I took early retirement almost four years ago though it did make me think here is something I could utilise to earn a second income to supplement my pension with.

Getting started with football betting was easy. There are literally hundreds of possibilities on line most of which will offer you some free bets to entice you to join them. Long gone are the days of relying on the physical presence of an open betting shop where your bet was made in cash and required a pen and paper to achieve.

Once you are a member of these sites the opportunities to gamble are endless. This is both in terms of the kinds of bets you can make. For example half time, full time, correct score, number of bookings and so on. But also the array of leagues sourced that it’s seemingly a 24 x 7 business. Teams from countries all over the world down to lower league levels there. The vast majority of these teams you will never have heard of let alone be able to assess their relative abilities.

For the more well known leagues there are numerous resources on line that pour over statistics to help with your punt. Ultimately though they fall foul of the same problem as everyone else. There are just too many intangibles to be able to cover all the basis. Star players who are playing through injuries or those struggling with difficult situations at home are never going to be encompassed by such analysis.

Then there are the in game intangibles. The nadir for me came in the Wolves v Leeds match in March 2022. I had placed quite a large bet at decent odds on Leeds as they were desperate for a win in their battle against relegation. By half time their star striker was off injured (first intangible) and they were two nil down. Not unreasonably I then cashed out at a fraction of the value I had originally wagered. The second half had barely started when Wolves star striker was ridiculously sent off (second intangible) and Leeds battled back to win the game in the last minute.

To be honest that didn’t hurt as much as it would have done at the beginning of my gambling journey. By that point I’d realised that even if I had won eventually the returns would dwindle back to nothing through new unsuccessful bets. There was also the increasing realisation that spending two hours glued to a screen hoping East Fife will score at Forfar to save your accumulator isn’t the best way to spend your time.

So in summary my unsurprising discovery was that ultimately it is true that the house always wins. There has been a lot of discussion lately about the dangers of such gambling, with some saying it’s worse than alcohol or drugs. It’s certainly easy to see how it can get out of control with the use of mobile phones to make the bets and sports 24 x 7 nature round the world. However with many of the top Premier League teams having official betting partners it doesn’t feel that it is something that is disappearing any time soon. What do other people think?