Premier League Player Props: How to Find Value Every Matchweek

A player prop is any bet on an individual player's numbers rather than the match result. In the Premier League you'll typically find:

• Goals: anytime, first or last goalscorer, 2 or more. See anytime goalscorer bets for the rules.
• Assists and goal or assist.
• Shots and shots on target, usually as 1+ and 2+ lines. Rules and maths in shots on target betting.
• Headers and shots from outside the box at some bookmakers.
• Cards, fouls and tackles at many bookmakers too, although I don't cover those here.

JOPP prices seven of these markets for every player: goals, assists, goal or assist, shots, shots on target, headers and outside the box.

It's the most watched and most bet league in the world, and that shapes the prices in a few ways.

• Big names get backed. Public money piles onto the famous strikers, so their prices tend to be shortest relative to fair. The value, when it exists, is more often in a less fashionable player.
• Deep markets. Almost every player in every match has prices, so there's plenty to compare, and bookmakers can't watch every line with the same care.
• Rotation is real. Clubs in Europe play Tuesday to Thursday and rotate at the weekend. Expected minutes, which drive every player market, can swing a lot.
• Team news is late. Official line-ups usually come out about an hour before kick-off. Prices before that are partly a bet on who starts.

None of this guarantees an edge. It just tells you where to look.

Step 1: Start with the fixtures and the schedule#

Look at the full matchweek first. Who played in Europe midweek? Who has a cup game or a big European night coming? Which matches are expected to be open, and which look cagey? A team that's likely to dominate the ball is good news for its attackers' shot numbers. A low-scoring, tight game is bad news for goalscorer bets on both sides.

Step 2: Get a fair odd for each player market#

For each player you're interested in, you want a fair price before you look at the bookmakers. The ingredients are the same across markets:

• Rate: expected goals, shots or shots on target per 90 minutes, over a decent sample.
• Expected minutes: the most underrated input. A player subbed off around the hour has a lot less time to do anything.
• Opponent and venue: some defences give up far more shots than others; home and away matter.
• Penalties: the designated taker gets a bump in goals and shots on target.

From that you get a probability, and from the probability a fair odd (1 divided by the probability). I explain the maths, including a worked example, in what is expected value in betting.

Step 3: Compare with the bookmakers#

Now line the fair odd up against what's on offer. Use more than one bookmaker if you can. Prices on the same player can differ a fair bit between Bet365 and the Kambi-powered books (Unibet, 888sport and others), and the best price is the only one that matters for EV.

EV% = (bookmaker odd / fair odd - 1) x 100. Positive means the bookmaker is paying more than the fair price.

Step 4: Shortlist, then wait for team news#

Build a shortlist rather than betting straight away. Here's what one might look like. These are invented players and prices, purely to show the format.

Example (hypothetical) shortlist

Winger C doesn't make the cut: the best price is below fair. The other three are candidates, but only if they start. When the line-ups come out, recheck. If a player's on the bench, his expected minutes collapse and so does any edge. If a teammate is missing, someone else may get more shots or take the penalties.

A very big EV% the evening before a match is often the market telling you something about team news. Treat it as a question, not an answer.

Step 5: Check the rules for your bookmaker#

Two rules change what a player price is worth:

• Non-starters. Some bookmakers (Bet365, for example) void player bets if the player doesn't start. Others only void if he doesn't play at all, so a late sub appearance counts as a real bet.
• What counts. Own goals don't count for goalscorer markets, blocked shots and woodwork don't count as shots on target, and statistics are settled on data from a provider such as Opta.

Check your bookmaker's rules for the exact market. Comparing a "void if no start" price with a "stands if he plays" price without adjusting is a common way to see value that isn't there.

Step 6: Stake small and write it down#

Keep stakes flat and small. Record the price you took, the fair odd at the time and the result. Over a season that tells you whether your prices were good, which a single weekend never will. JOPP's My Bets view does this automatically, including ROI and a profit curve.

It's tempting to put three or four of your shortlist into a bet builder. Be careful: legs from the same match are correlated, and every leg adds bookmaker margin. Sometimes a builder is fair, more often it isn't. I go through how to judge it in bet builder tips.

Each matchweek post will list the Premier League player prices that stood out against the model's fair odds at the time of writing, with the EV%, the bookmaker, and the caveats. Prices move and team news changes things, so the live numbers in the dashboard are always more current than any article.

What it won't be: "locks", "bankers" or sure things. There's no such thing in player props. A list of positive EV prices is a list of bets that should pay off on average over many bets, and plenty of them will lose.