If you want to move beyond gut feeling in football betting, a goals model is the natural next step, and the Poisson distribution is the classic starting point. It is a statistical formula that estimates the probability of a team scoring zero, one, two or more goals, based on how strong its attack is and how weak the opponent's defence is.

You do not need to be a mathematician to use it. A spreadsheet, a season's worth of goals data, and a little patience are enough to build a model that produces its own match odds. Those odds will not be perfect, but comparing them with bookmaker prices is one of the most honest ways to find value.