A prediction is only worth reading if you know how it was made.
Bet Football previews are written by people, not generated from a feed, and the process below is the same for a title decider as it is for a Tuesday night fixture nobody has asked for.
We pull fixtures, line-ups, injury news, head to head records and recent form for every match we cover, along with the current prices in the relevant markets.
Form is read over the last five league outings, with cup ties and internationals weighted separately so that a rotated midweek Carabao Cup side does not flatten a team's league rhythm.
Standings, expected goals trends and home and away splits come into a preview whenever they bear on the question being asked, and stay out of it when they do not.
A side rotating ahead of a European tie matters far more than a two point drop in possession share, so we lead with the thing that is actually shaping the result rather than the thing that is easiest to measure.
Every preview starts with a question the writer wants to answer, and the honest ones are usually simple.
Can a struggling manager survive another defeat? Is the in-form striker fit enough to start? Will the bottom side put ten behind the ball again?
The data sits next to that question rather than in front of it, which is the whole difference between analysis and a statistics dump with a tip stapled to the end.
We commit to a score. One scoreline, in bold, at the foot of the article, with no hedging and no second option offered as insurance.
The betting tip is kept separate from the scoreline and carries the market and the price as it stood at the time of writing.
Where the numbers and the eye test disagree, the piece says which one it is following and why, because that disagreement is usually the most interesting thing on the page.
Newly promoted sides in the opening weeks of a season, where there is no comparable form at that level to read.
Cup competitions and pre-season, where rotation is heavy and the starting eleven is guesswork until it is announced.
Teams that have just changed manager, where recent form describes a way of playing that no longer applies to them.
Anything decided by a red card in the twelfth minute.
Every published preview goes into the predictions feed and is marked with the outcome once the match has been played, including the calls that missed.
A record that surfaces only the winners is worthless, and there is no version of this worth publishing that hides the misses.
We do not have access to information the bookmakers lack, we will not beat the closing line with any consistency and no amount of preparation makes a football match predictable.
This is a structured way of reading a fixture, published so that you can check the reasoning rather than take a scoreline on trust.
Predictions and tips are editorial opinion, not advice, and they carry no guarantee. Bet only what you can afford to lose, and see our responsible gambling page if it has stopped being enjoyable.