Sharp Side Soccer Q&A – Reader Questions
Collected 27 October 2026. 13 questions from the Google Form and 9 comments on the “Upcoming Q&A” Substack post.
Part 1: Google Form responses
Question 1
Do you have a set target of bets per week? At the moment it’s very random when you post and sometimes very little. For example this weekend you have a Barca bet but no sense of when or if you will post anything else. From a paying customer perspective good to have a bit more certainty. What’s total P/L over last couple months?
Neil: Yes, we understand it’s random, but there will be days, even on a full Saturday card, where there are very few options, and then on a random Monday we have five bets. This is the nature of the business, unfortunately. P/L for the Sharp Side Soccer era and my own era are both available here
Will: It’s impossible to predict when value selections will become available. We are constantly discussing ideas and markets, but can only fire when odds are in range. Some are time sensitive (late bets, no write up) and others are less so, giving us time to do comprehensive write-ups.
Since beginning of the partnership: +13.5 units (7.8% ROI)
Question 2
How do you use the data available to you to narrow down a bet? With so many games and markets available be interesting to know how you do this. One that caught my eye was the Sabah over 1.5+ bet as i personally would never have found that
Neil: We obviously use all the tools available to us to help with decision making. Some metrics carry more weight than others, and to be honest a lot of what we do comes down to the human factor: watching games back, getting a feel for teams, etc.
Question 3
If the market goes against you on a bet you have placed, does there ever become a point where you decide to press your bet or even reduce or eliminate your position altogether?
Neil: Personally, I let it ride nine times out of ten.
Will: If odds move against me, my instinct is to try and figure out why. Next step is to decide whether we want to add more at better odds (eg. Club Brugge +1.75 and then +2.00 vs Inter).
Question 4
Hi guys, I’m restricted to using Betfair exchange only, any advice you can give me for this? Also do you think it’s viable long term? I’ve noticed most of the markets are liquid enough
Neil: Yes, we use Betfair Exchange ourselves, along with other brokers and crypto books such as Bet105, which is essentially a Pinnacle clone with the exact same limits. It’s hard, but if you want to take this seriously there are ways. Feel free to reach out if you’re having problems and we can help.
Will: Betfair Exchange is a very good option when betting the way we do (ie. betting day-of-game Asian Handicaps/Total Goals).
Question 5
Can we get a short write up even a sentence for ‘late’ bets? Appreciate if it was 2:58 but they’re usually hour before kick off.
Will: Fair point, we will try our best moving forward.
Question 6
Would it be fair to say the bankroll hasn’t improved in 4/5 years? All the gains towards +400 pts seem to be early?
Neil: Yes, this has been a topic of discussion for a while, and it’s part of the reason I’ve been eager to work with Will. The flat period does include the biggest drawdown I’ve experienced in 13/14 years, and I was perhaps guilty of losing my passion. Not to make excuses, but I went through a difficult spell: my wife was battling cancer and my father passed away during this time. I’m back in a good place now, fully motivated and enjoying the partnership. All I can say is that we’re putting in a lot of work and trying our best to make this work.
Question 7
What size bank would you recommend in points, please?
Neil: A 100-unit bank.
Question 8
How much does your service cost in Canadian dollars and why can’t I see your past results on Substack even after games are done
Neil: Past results are linked above, our membership costs $39.99 USD + VAT.
Question 9
Are you able to deeply analyze the bets once you widen your range of competitions? Previously it was only Big5 leagues (and European Cups, which is obvious) but now there are more leagues and also 2nd tiers. I am afraid it is not possible to have deep knowledge about them if you follow 10+ leagues. You have stated yourself last week through X that currently with AI, an “eyetest” becomes very important. I doubt you have an eyetest for La Liga 2 for example.
Neil: I do agree that narrowing your focus can help, but at the same time, sometimes you have information you’re confident the market doesn’t, or you’re trusting your model’s output.
Will: This is a good point and is definitely the conventional line of thinking. Personally, I would classify my expertise more as markets as opposed to deep analysis of football. It may sound convoluted, but when you’ve been watching betting markets 365 days/year for 26 years, the pattern recognition abilities and instinctive feel for what is a good entry point/bet become almost a sixth sense. Personally, I would say this is a bigger edge for me.
Question 10
Would it be a good idea to subscribe to your service if i’m starting from 0?
Neil: Yes. I think reading our thought process can help you understand why we’re betting a certain way.
Question 11
When handicapping a match, do you take in consideration that a team has underperformed their expected goals or expected point metrics (or other metrics) and that a team may be due for some positive regression. For example Bournemouth sits 15th in the premier table, but is 5th in the expected points table. Is this something is typically quantified within the market?
Neil: The xG regression angle isn’t one you’ll find any value in. All of those metrics and more are priced into the market. Anyone trying to find value betting on a team that’s “due” goals won’t find it in the market.
Question 12
Every time I build a bankroll I end up losing all or most of it over time. I feel I’m picking too many selections to bet on and not staking properly. For example on a Saturday with so much to pick from I will pick out sometimes 20 or more games I really fancy a bet on and keep all stakes to one unit. For example only today I’ve had 5 winning bets and 15 losing bets. I’m well down for the day. Even after well researching the bets. Am I making too many selections or is my staking the problem?
Neil: Flat 1-unit staking is fine, so it’s not your staking. If you’re losing over time, the selections don’t have an edge, and betting 20 a day just gets you to the bottom of the bankroll quicker.
Will: Agree with Neil, focus on whether you actually have an edge or not.
Question 13
How many possible bets per day do you work on? How do you filter them and decide what to bet on? How do you decide when to bet 1u or 2u? Thank you
Neil: Whether it’s 1u, 2u or 4u comes from our perceived edge. I look ahead a day or two, perhaps further if we have UCL/UEL midweek. I scan games and markets, and if a price appeals, I do my deep dive to decide whether or not it’s a bet.
Part 2: Substack comments
Question 1
Hi guys
A question about how the service appears to have changed (to me anyway)
At the start of the season there were tips from the likes of Swiss Super League, Belgian Pro League, Czech First League etc, but a high % of bets now come from Premier League/La Liga/Champions League
What was noticeable this week for example, was that bets were provided for 6/9 Champions League matches on Wednesday, but 0/36 matches for Europa/Conference League on Thursday
Has there been a deliberate move to cater for the more casual punter/football fan by providing bets for big matches, rather than purely taking the value where it arises?
Thanks!
Will: We will always be focused purely on finding value bets, regardless of competition. The ebbs and flows of betting markets and competitions are impossible to predict, as well as the human mind. Sometimes I will be ‘feeling’ a competition/team/market, other times not. We went 0-5 on MD1 Europa League and I felt like we weren’t feeling the competition particularly strongly the following week. The market was also displaying some unusual tendencies (big favourites being heavily backed and winning), that didn’t play into our strengths as handicappers. Perhaps it’s a cognitive bias, perhaps not.
Question 2
I was wondering how far in advance you look at the fixtures, and how close do both your lines have to be to agree on a bet?
Neil: For me, it’s one to two days in advance.
Will: Personally, I focus on games 1 day ahead or day-of-game. There isn’t enough liquidity to justify getting involved beforehand.
Question 3
Do u use any specific data sources, would you say that edge can be gained only from free sources on the internet? How would you give an example of a defined edge without exposing your own?
Neil: There is no free data online that can give you an edge. One thing that may help is a service like Wyscout, where you can go back and watch games. Watching games gives you a feel for things like a team’s cohesion, which the data won’t show you.
Will: Everyone has access to and over-relies on data these days. Personally, I think focusing on other ways of edge formulation is the way to go. Immersing yourself in a select handful of teams you know intimately or spotting evolutions/trends in the game early (ie. Serie A increase in goal expectancy) are two examples that immediately jump to mind.
Question 4
Yo. I tried to use bet105 with a vpn but the functionality of that site was poor
Any tips to sort this
Neil: A lot of our UK and Europe-based users are using Bet105 now without issues, so I’m not sure what the particular problem is. If you want to reach out to me on Twitter or Telegram, I can have a look for you. ("@ NeilMac555 on both platforms)
Question 5
When did you both start to become gamblers full time, for your income
Neil: I haven’t always bet full time. When I started all this, I was still punting while working in Paddy Power. Once things started to grow for me online, I took the leap and stepped away from the office job to pursue this along with betting full time so I have never solely relied on betting as a full time income.
Will: I started betting when I was 17 and became self-sufficient through gambling at 18. This was in 2001, when things were easier. 25 years later, I still find myself having to get better in order to stay ahead of the game. (Full story here)
Question 6
Thank you for good work! What is service P/L?
Neil: P/L is linked above
Will: Since beginning of the partnership: +13.5 units (7.8% ROI), +98.07% ROC, average odds 2.1, average stake 1u.
Question 7
Do you wait for limits to get to a certain place before releasing picks?
When are you personally betting the picks in relation to the release on substack?
Thanks
Neil: Yes, we do wait. As I said recently on Twitter, we could release bets earlier and buff out the P/L, but we’re trying to run a sustainable service here.
Question 8
The CLV you track, does that include removing the bookmakers margin? Also win & btts difficult to get on as not much liquidity at the sharps
Neil: This is a huge challenge, as we can’t capture closing Pinnacle lines, only a snapshot on main markets with Steamwatch. The good news is that SBC, the gold standard, will be covering all of this in their review of the service in the coming months.
Will: Regarding Win & BTTS bets, you should try BF Exchange, where if you post up, liquidity is actually quite decent, or bet105.
Question 9
The bets are all in markets where edges are presumably small, but big volume is available. If you had sufficient outs in smaller markets with bigger potential edges (e.g player specific stuff) would you focus more on those, or is your expertise now more suited to Asian Handicaps and totals?
Neil: It’s getting hard to find edges in the Asian markets, so my inclination would be yes, to look at some of the other markets, such as what we’ve been doing recently with the Over 2.5 and BTTS stuff.
Will: Good question. There are dozens of services out there that will focus exclusively on beating up soft lines at soft books. As you know, your accounts will get limited quickly - there’s no longevity to these services. Personally, it’s been so long since I’ve had access to any soft book accounts that it would probably take me a while to tune back into the mindset of beating soft lines.
Having said that, I take great pride in being one of the very few credible services that is attempting to play the game on ‘hard mode’ and provide sustainable, long-term value to our subscribers.