30.10.2017

FIN U21 squad vs Georgia



The biggest new thing is though new manager Juha Malinen who has done excellent job at RoPS..


29.10.2017

Veikkausliiga 2017 review

In the table close to the bottom I have collected a number of rankings from different sources. There is some media, there are almost random betting tipsters, and a few professionals. I only left mine there to be recognized, as the point is not to critisize anyone for bad job, but rather highlight the features of predicting Veikkausliiga. The trend is to buy players just before the season start, or in the middle of it, and it makes compiling total season rankings somewhat frustrating, and constant updating is the key. During the season there are some very busy weeks, or even months, when the trend of a team may be hard to define as they do lose matches purely because of exhaustion.





SJK and Inter were almost everyone's favourites to be in the top-3, neither was even close performance-wise even if SJK did win a lot of undeserved points here and there. SJK sacked 3 managers during the year, also the 4th pair of caretakers will have to give room to Tommi Kautonen. Perhaps more about him sometime in future, but in short I can not see him changing the course - or staying in job until his contract runs out.


Inter took a calculated risk with Shefki Kuqi as manager and most believed that he would get sacked, as he did. However his successor Piccareta did not do any better, Inter did not win 2 matches in a row all season! Inter is too much a retirement home and a nice club to hang around, they are too old and comfy and keep on remembering the good old days when they once won the title. Not going to be repeated anytime soon.



Both KuPS and Ilves got kind a "cheap" top-3 position. They earned less points than top-3 in latest 3 seasons, but that is actually down to HJK being totally superior all season from the start. SJK and Inter perhaps gave away their top-3 for someone else to take, but under these circumstances both KuPS and Ilves deserve some silverware.

Lahti took 4th place - and EL position - with the last kick of the match vs HIFK and dropped MIFK out of Europe. This is all good, a welcome change from this season's Europa League teams. Lahti were looking for a long time to a 2nd place, but their keeper Vasjutin - league's best? - got injured for the crucial parts of the season and his replacements could not keep up.

MIFK were strong at home, but did not deserve any more than what they got. Last season's transfers were not properly covered - and they also ran out of luck of 2016. Very much routine out there, but they travel poorly.

Well yes, there is VPS. They were the most over-performers of the Expected goals - count until they got kicked out of Europe by Brondby.  They however won 3 of their 4 EL matches, but given the performances in the matches it was something that is likely never going to be repeated. VS Olimpija they had  crossed the half-way line about 5 times, and yet they scored the winner on 2nd half!

It is only justice that they got their hugely long run without a win after it, as no one is - and should not be - that lucky. At VPS they actually thought they had a superior team and way of play... in the end they are where they deserve to be, and they were clearly the worst team in the league by any metrics for the last 15 rounds or so.

RoPS had massive injury problems, they fielded a young squad most of the time and they beat HJK twice away!



Kemi rely on individual skill, organization and coaching is not at a very high level and they come from a small and remote city. Future will never be bright for them, if there even is one. Rumours say that they will financially survive.

HIFK had old-timers in the starting lineup, an old-timer managing the team and they failed in giving any youth needed playing time. Very predictable team without much imagination, and they are slow as snails. If they now relegate in the play-offs vs Honka it is exactly what they deserve. They do rely too heavily on their hard core fans, and are widely ignored by other football fans or families in the area as their image is somewhat dirty. Honka are the favourites in this two-legged fixture.

JJK started the season with one of the worst squads of all times. When everything was about lost they made some important signings, and they were acceptable for the last third of the season. Still not a very good try, and I do not see them back at Veikkausliiga anytime soon.

TPS won the promotion from Ykkönen, and at least the Turku derbies return which is a good thing, but at this point it is impossible to say how competitive they will be 2018. They were a big club once.

Rankings made by local experts, final table and 2014-2017 total points






A lot of players will be retired, but the unpleasant truth is that in most cases they should had retired a few years ago. One of the top managers - RoPS Juha Malinen - will leave the club and take over U21, probably eyeing on the prospect of senior national team some day.  One or two clubs may face bankrupcy or other financial set-backs.

HJK will also dominate the season 2018. At this point the field is wide open behind them, but KuPS are likely to add some more stakes and to be around in the top. In a league which is as low class by European standards even a few top individuals may make the difference.  HJK btw sold league's best scorer Alfredo Morelos to Rangers in the summer. He leads the goal scoring table there too.

*******

The positive news are that HJK's reserves Klubi-04 got promoted to Ykkönen, as there are a dozen or so talented kids who need as high level football as possible. Some of them are 16 years only, great prospects!


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The season will end properly on Nov 4th with a 2nd leg play-off between HIFK and Honka. The new season of 2018 will start in January with the Cup group phase, and there will be news and articles here about it. The groups are here:






25.10.2017

FIN cup 2018


Group phase has been "drawn". Cup to start in January 2018.



Matches to be played mostly indoors, and over the weekends with an earlyish kick-off.


All matches - at least almost - will be available for betting at some of asian bookmakers, IBC, Singbet, Pinnacle, Sbobet and so on, not to forget the eurobookies.

If you do not yet have access to all asian bookies you will easily gain access by Sportmarket!






20.10.2017

Veikkausliiga penultimate round 20.10.2017

Surprisingly many teams still have something to play for, top-4 and relegation is still somewhat open.


Lineups soon, and markets too.












11.10.2017

Sportmarket Newsletter 9.10.2017


SPORTMARKET NEWSLETTER
9 OCTOBER 2017
Hi.

We have plenty of new stuff to present to our valued clients. In fact we feel that we have waited too long since we sent the latest newsletter in English and we will try to inform you about any news quicker in the future.

This also means that some of the new features that we present in this newsletter is already known to most of our active users but sometimes it is easy to miss out on something.

As always we are constantly working to improve our service and we thank you for your patience when we are having issues with the system. Given the complexity of the system we think we have very few issues but we are aware that there has been some more downtime lately when traffic peaks at weekends.


Good Luck!

Team Sportmarket
Maintenance and planned downtime on Tuesday at 10am!
Our dev team will be performing maintenance on Sportmarket Pro from 10.00 (CET) on Tuesday October 10th. The site will be off for up to one hour if everything works out as planned. During this time you cannot access the site at all.

There will be a couple of notable changes when we are back up again:

1. We are reducing the number of themes that you can choose from to only two, in order to be able to make quicker updates in the future not having to consider how things will look on all the various themes. Almost 90% of our users are using the default theme at the moment and that one will be replaced with the one named "Delorean". You can choose that one already now. There will be some further tweaks of the interface in the near future as we have a small list of requests that are not included in this version in order not to delay the release of the new accounting.

2. We will move to what we call "real time accounting" which means that any commission charged for bets on exchanges will be deducted when the bet is graded and not the day after.
New mobile site launched!
A few weeks ago we launched our new mobile site, and we are very proud of how it looks! The new site has much more functionality than the old site and now you can do most things that you can do on the website on your mobile as well.

You will reach it from https://m.sportmarket.com and you should also be redirected if you go to www.sportmarket.com from a mobile device. We suggest that you save the link to your home-page and you will then have our cool icon on the desktop of your mobile device and be able to access it quickly.
New sports and features 
Just in time for the big fight between Mayweather and McGregor we added Boxing to Sportmarket Pro. Just in time as our customers made a fortune on that one. We have also added MMA even though we still have some issues with collecting odds.

As for new bet options we have added Both Teams To Score and Correct Score for soccer. If you cannot see all the bet options you need to add them in Settings and the easiest way to do that is to click on the little wheel in the upper right on the trade page.

Veikkausliiga 12.10.2017


Full round of 6 matches, 4 rounds to go in total. Champion has been deciced a long ago, but there is fierce battle for top-4, and to avoid relegation.

Top match of the latter is HIFK vs Kemi.

A few words of each match with lineup commentaries to be updated 3-4 hours before kick-off.

Lineups:







Betting market charts taken from Sportmarket at 10:00 local time on match day, at which point there is no new info available, not publicly anyway.













1.10.2017

Finland U20 league 2017



TPS won again which they often do, Inter Turku took silver and HIFK were 3rd. I am afraid most clubs do not take this league very seriously, and this table or these results do not reflect much of anything as most of these players who still are in this league at this age will end up at Kakkonen or lower in their career. Naturally there are exceptions, but for example the absence of two best youth teams HJK and KäPa speak volumes. HJK kids play at Klubi04 at Kakkonen, or even in Veikkausliiga already at this age.

FC Espoo were the best team in the spring, later in the summer their focus was to save the Kakkonen club from relegation. JJK manage to fail also here, they will get relegated from Veikkausliiga, Kakkonen and this.. or actually here no one gets relegated, but from January on there will be two geographically formed groups from where the next league will be qualified.

My guess is that U20 league winner is HJK, who won the U17 league this season.... of course depending on the motivation of the organization.