Ask the punter: Nicklas Bendtner would be ideal for Hamburg plus how to bet on the transfer market

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As a professional sports bettor I like to deal with facts not rumours. It doesn’t matter much to me whether Wesley Sneijder may or may not play with Manchester United in September when pricing up an Inter game today. However, the summer transfer window is an exception to the rule.

When the most high profile football game of the day is in the Lithuanian second division that’s a good cue to focus your attention elsewhere. The transfer betting markets are exceptionally ripe at the moment as we are constantly bombarded with updates and rumours of the destinations of various superstars. Of course, this market is hard for the bookies to keep up and easy for punters to pounce on stale odds.

You just have to keep your ear to the ground and react quickly to the updates you gather. Not all baseless rumours deserves a bet of course, such a strategy would leave you dead broke in no time, so accurately gauging the believability of the speculation and the credibility of the source is the key to success in this market.

For example, Unibet has “Which club will Niklas Bendtner play for after the transfer window?” with Arsenal @ 2.75 and Bayern Munich at the same price. Bendtner has already said that he definitely wants to leave so the Gunners @ 2.75 doesn’t hold much appeal.

Rumours about the Danish striker going to Bayern has been plentiful lately but you would have to question how much sense the transfer would make. If you listen to the player he wants to leave because he doesn’t want to be a bench player at a big team which appears to rule out the Bavarians.  

If Bendtner ends up in Munich he’ll certainly start behind Mario Gomez and probably behind Ivica Olic, who is just returning to fitness. Furthermore, Bayern has just signed Nils Petersen, another young and promising striker who will certainly be in the mix for a starting position.

Looking at Bendtner’s other options we have Wolfsburg priced at 10.0. Felix Magath’s team lost Edin Dzeko in the winter transfer window and are now looking to ship off Grafite to Dubai. Since Magath has declined the buy-out option of Dieumerci Mbokani, that only leaves them with Patrick Helmes in the striker position, who didn’t exactly set the Bundesliga on fire this spring. Wolfsburg are certainly in the market for another attacker and and have the funds to grab Bendtner.

Another option is Hamburg at 12.0. Ruud Van Nistelrooy has already left which only leaves Mladen Petric and Paolo Guerrero.I’ll eat my hat if Hamburg don’t try to acquire a high profile striker this summer and someone like Bendtner would be perfect.

There is plenty of other lucrative bets out there, but you need to be quick. Unibet had “Kaka to remain at Real Madrid” at 1.45 last week the but has since lowered it to 1.30 (might still be value there). Javier Pastore to Roma is still trading at 15.0 which just has to be wrong given the rumours surrounding a transfer and the clubs new spending power.

Other bets that you may find interesting on Unibet include Andreas Granqvist to Galatasaray @ 2.10, Mikael Antonsson to leave FC Copenhagen @ 1.40, Robin Soder to stay in IFK Goteborg @ 1.33 and Guillermo Molins to leave Malmo FF @ 2.50.

A word of warning though; you can’t wait until the the player has signed and THEN place your bet – all bets placed after the official announcement will be declared void and might result in the bookie pegging you as an angle-shooter.

Bookies are sure to put up more odds as the transfer season heats up so make sure to keep updated.

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Benjamin Lindqvist has been a successful advantage gambler for over five years, moving from beating the toughest no limit texas hold ‘em cash games on the internet to consistently raking in profits from the sports betting markets. You can visit his personal site Football Experts here.

Got a question for our punter? Email him on [email protected]

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