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This is the home page of our Net Gains expert Mike Holden. We'll be featuring his columns on a wide range of football betting topics which will delve into betting strategies and aim to give viewers a real edge in the battle with the bookies.

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Over the course of this season, I will be using this column to explore the possibility that punters can benefit from adopting a more scientific approach towards their betting.

My intention is to follow up on numerous ideas picked up on an extensive literary journey spanning the last 18 months.

Psychology in its simplest form

Related articles:

How the eyes deceive us

The importance of psychology

You know your betting strategy needs a re-think the moment your girlfriend has the audacity to question you about it.

Under normal circumstances, my missus would never entertain the idea of telling this particular grandmother how to suck eggs.

But sometimes a grandmother can be so short-sighted, the old bat needs to be made aware that the object she has just popped into her mouth is actually a rock, not an egg.

It was a conversation that lasted all of 10 seconds, but it�s no exaggeration to say the impact of her words could have an effect for the next 10 years.

"You always lose at this time of the season. Why do you keep doing it? Why don�t you just put all the obvious teams in one big bet?"

Ouch.

The very moment those words came out, I felt so inadequate. I thought I might never be able to walk into a bookies and hold my head up high again.

For the sake of my masculinity, I had to patronise her quickly.

"I think the word you�re looking for is accumulator, sweetheart."

My retort was a pathetic attempt to wrestle back some semblance of pride from an excruciating dialogue but it did little to steady the raw nerve that was now reverberating somewhere in the pit of my stomach.

For the fourth season running, I�ve dashed headlong into the trap of backing long-priced outsiders in the final two weekends of the domestic football season and yet again my bank has taken a real battering.

This year, it was a mistake that cost me almost a quarter of my profits for the entire campaign and to say that an excellent season will now finish on a sour note is a gross understatement.

In the cold light of day, my problem is glaringly obvious.

As this series has highlighted since the very first column back in October, I always look for ways to swim against the tide by unearthing information that encourages me to go against the grain of conventional wisdom.

However, at this time of the year, conventional wisdom is virtually always right � forget the prices in accordance with the relative standard of two competing teams.

The team that needs to win will nearly always win, the operative word in that last sentence being �competing�.

My studies into football betting over the last two years have taken me deep into the world of psychology, economics and business management as I continually strive to attain a better understanding of how and why teams win football matches.

But in this case, you don�t need a degree in Quantum Physics to work out what is going on, you can rip up all of those books and throw them in the bin because the psychology is simple.

The team that most wants to win invariably does because they have prepared better and are trying harder.

However, this hasn�t always been the case.

I remember Harry Redknapp tipping six home teams at odds of 4/1 or above in the Racing Post on the final weekend of the 1999/2000 season and getting four of them right.

I remember the Racing Post making a big deal of similar opportunities over the next few years and regularly bringing home the bacon.

In those days, the case was there to be made for teams that needed the points wilting under the pressure, making themselves ripe for more relaxed opponents to take advantage.

But times have apparently changed.

Now it would appear that the element of surprise in these encounters has been counter-balanced by recent developments in sports science and a greater general awareness of the psychology involved in these situations.

So now we have teams who need to win going to greater lengths in order to ensure that they do, meaning that levels of tension and anxiety are reduced, players are more focused and they remain so for longer.

This, in turn, would only serve to magnify the comparative lack of hunger in the opposite camp.

In years gone by, when long-priced outsiders have beaten promotion contenders on the final day, they have probably been invited into the game by favourites who have grown increasingly edgy as the game wears on.

Perhaps in those days � and I do realise we might be referring to matches only three or four years ago � teams went out highly motivated at the kick-off but eventually lost their mental edge and went to pieces if they hadn�t seized the initiative by that stage.

Perhaps sometimes they went out at the beginning having been prepared completely inappropriately by a primitive manager whose idea of motivation was simply to remind the players over and over again of just how important the game was.

Anyway, those days are long gone � as is the money I�ve lost clinging on to those possible scenarios � and the emergence of sports science from overseas has now filtered down from the Premier League and into the lower divisions.

There are no secrets anymore, everybody knows the importance of psychology and everybody is employing better methods to prepare players mentally for big games than they were only three or four years ago.

So when you see Burnley priced-up at 7/1 to beat Crystal Palace, just remember that the importance of the game to one team over the other and the 45 in the played column of the league table is all that counts.

It doesn�t matter that only six points separates them over the course of the last nine months, it doesn�t matter that the home side�s momentum has been halted by a morale-sapping late defeat the previous weekend.

It only matters that Palace need the points more than Burnley and they won�t get a second chance to snatch those points once the game has passed.

To the more discerning modern internet gambler, the last sentence might sound like the words of a mug punter but, in this instance, I�m afraid the mugs are right and it would be extremely dangerous of anyone to forget this small but significant point

So where does all of this leave me and my efforts to protect a healthy betting bank in the final throes of a regular league season over the next few years?

Well, lumping hundreds of pounds on 2/5 shots is not really my cup of tea, so I might just take the missus up on her advice and treat the final two weekends of next season as a bit of a laugh.

If football fans have a habit of travelling to their last away game of the season in fancy dress, what�s stopping me from treating the end of the campaign in such cavalier manner?

Next year, if I�ve had a good season, I will be waltzing into my local Ladbrokes shop dressed as Jimmy Saville, with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a big fat cigar in the other, attempting the dodgy Tarzan voice and everything.

And then, once I�ve got everyone�s attention by acting like complete nugget, I will place a �500 eight-team accumulator over the counter.

At least that way, I would save myself a few quid and afterwards I wouldn�t feel quite as stupid as I did last weekend.