Elche 2, Real Madrid 3 — the shortest price on the book lost as well, and the run of short lays reaches seven from seven. Today we lay Atlético at 1.42: €420 at risk to win €980, break-even exactly 30%.

Elche 2, Real Madrid 3. The position was the shortest price this book has laid and it lost the smallest sum this book has lost, €230 — which is the one mercy of that band and also the whole of its problem. Fifteen positions closed: five wins, ten losses, minus €2,660 on €13,270 of risk, a return of minus twenty per cent. The count that has not moved in three weeks: every lay filed at 1.84 or shorter has lost, now seven from seven, at 1.23, 1.60, 1.65, 1.70, 1.73, 1.82 and 1.84. Before that gets read as a finding, here is the number that matters. Multiply the market’s own probabilities for those seven favourites and the chance of all seven holding was about three per cent — roughly one run in thirty. Unlikely. Not extraordinary. The sort of thing that happens to somebody, somewhere, every month. The five wins came at 1.94, 1.95, 2.22, 2.24 and 2.36, and whether that is a boundary or a line the eye has drawn through fifteen dots, this ledger cannot tell you. Saying so is not modesty. It is what fifteen numbers are worth.

Tonight the book lays Atlético Madrid at the Metropolitano at 1.42: €420 at risk to win €980, a win paying 2.33 times what a loss costs. Break-even is 30.0% exactly — Atlético have to fail to win three times in ten. Strip the margin off the back column — 1.41 Atlético, 5.1 the draw, 10.0 Osasuna, an overround of 100.5% — and the fair line reads 70.5% / 19.5% / 9.9%. The two results that pay us add to 29.5%. We need 30.0%. Five tenths of a point against us, roughly €8 of negative expectation per €1,000. Look at how that 29.5% is built: 19.5 points of it are the draw and only 9.9 are an Osasuna win. Two thirds of this position is the draw. Anyone reading it as a bet on Osasuna has read it wrong, and that misreading is the reason prices like this one exist at all.

The case for the price being short is Atlético’s month rather than their table. Simeone’s side are fourth on ten points from five, but those five contain a 3–0 defeat at Athletic Bilbao and a Champions League loss to Liverpool, and Julián Álvarez is doubtful with muscular overload while Sørloth and Barrios face late fitness tests. The counter is that they answered all of it by beating Real Sociedad 3–0 last time out, and that Osasuna arrive eleventh on seven points, beaten 5–2 by Alavés, and missing Oroz, Moi Gómez, Herrando and Rosier — four out, against Atlético’s three doubts. A 1–0 at the Metropolitano is the likeliest single scoreline in this fixture and it is precisely the result that takes our €420. We are half a point short, which is where this book usually is. Fifteen positions and minus twenty per cent is a real number and not yet a verdict, and that distinction is worth more when the sign is negative than when it is not.