2016 Football Blogging Awards: Meet the finalists – NevsFootyNaps

We’re now less than a month away from finding out which of our finalists will be named the Football Blogging Award’s Best Gambling Blog, as sponsored by Ladbrokes News. So to give you some insight into the day-to-day lives of each of our nominees, we caught up with them to ask them about all things blogging.

Today is the turn of NevsFootyNaps!

Ladbrokes News: Describe a day in the life of NevsFootyNaps

A day in the life of me is pretty repetitive as I more or less do the same thing every day with the exception of Christmas! I’ll wake up around 5.30am, head downstairs and have a quick coffee before walking both my dogs for an hour or so.

Once I get back I wake the kids and get them ready for school before heading off to work myself. I live about an hour’s walk away from where I work, so that time is spent going through the day’s games, looking at all the info I can find (such as injury news, head to heads, form etc etc), for games that first jump out at me.

Then I’ll get on Oddschecker to see which bookmaker is going to pay me the best odds before placing my bets and posting them to my website for people to see. Once that’s done I begin sharing the page on all three of my social media platforms.

I’ve always got one eye on my Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages in case anyone wants to chat or ask me any questions as I will always reply to everyone. Half of the fun with what I do is interacting with people.

Once matches begin to kick off, I have a few devices set up so I can watch as many games as possible at the same time.

During the games I try to keep my followers up-to-date by tweeting goals in real time for those who can’t watch games live.

When the matches end, it’s time for me to take a quick look at what’s on the agenda for the following day, and the whole cycle starts again!

LN: Proudest blogging moment to date?

There have been a few that spring to mind, but the one that stands out for me was on August 31, 2012.

Back then I was an active participant in #FootieNaps for @Bet_Share and my usual NAPS would be for Evens shots. But this was the day of the European Super Cup, and for some reason the name Radamel Falcao was bouncing around in my head.

At the time he wasn’t particularly well-known in the UK, but I just had a feeling he’d grab a couple of goals, so I backed him to score two or more at odds of 13/1. Unsurprisingly to me he netted a first-half hat-trick against Chelsea that night, meaning my bet was a winner!

LN: What makes you stand out from the competition?

I’d probably say my interaction with people through social media. I will reply to every reasonable tweet whenever I am able to do so.

Many other accounts may retweet a few tweets that celebrate a winning bet from them but they’ll not actually interact with the person that sent the message. It doesn’t matter how big my account eventually gets I will respond to everyone.

LN: Best tip ever?

In truth, I don’t class what I do as tipping, and it isn’t anywhere near my biggest priced winner, but I am most proud of the Falcao bet because I placed it having watched a lot of him playing games for Porto so I knew what he was capable of.

Because the Portuguese league isn’t the most popular of league to watch for people in the UK I’d like to think that many people were made aware of his talent because of me.

LN: If you had a £100 free bet on any Premier League outright market this season, what would you back?

It would be a toss-up between two.

My first choice would be Man City to win the league (6/4 with Ladbrokes) but if I was looking for slightly larger odds I’d lean towards a relegation treble of Sunderland, Hull City and Burnley at 4/1.

LN: Which team always lets you down?

There have been a few but I must say the biggest team to let me down the most often has been German champions Bayern Munich.

A strange choice I know, but with such a fantastic squad of players at their disposal the odds on them to win are often too short to even consider.

As a result they have been placed in many of my accumulators as a -1 or -2 handicap pick which has had a habit of falling one goal short.

LN: Biggest near-miss?

Back in the World Cup in 2014 I enjoyed some success on the correct score markets.

On June 15 I backed three correct scores from the Switzerland (19/2) France (15/2) and Argentina (11/1) games and the Argentina score was 2-1 when I needed a 3-1 score line to win a huge trixie.

It was obviously still profitable from the double but had there been one more goal a big win would have turned to an enormous one.

LN: Do you have any luck on other sports?

I do have a reasonable amount of luck in the NFL as long as I stay away from the team I support. For my sins I am a San Diego Chargers fan but they haven’t been doing great recently. Usually I’d go for the team total points or team total touchdowns market and it is rare that I’d end up out of profit come close of play on a Sunday evening.

LN: What advice would you give to new punters?

Where to start?!

Firstly, I’d say don’t take betting too seriously. It’s a fun thing to do and it certainly adds a bit of spice to games provided it’s done right.

True, it can be very profitable but a lot of betting is about luck and if you have lady luck sitting on your shoulder you’ll be OK.  You can look at every statistic, every bit of team news, all the head to head history and lots of professional advice from various TV channels and sometimes it still won’t be enough.

Only bet what you can easily afford to lose.

With gambling there is always a decent chance that you’ll lose no matter how certain the bet may seem.

The high you get from winning a bet is amazing and as good as that feels the annoyance you can receive from losing is a million times worse.

Don’t pay for tips. I’m more than confident that everyone can place their own bets, but if you do feel that you do need some help there are more than enough people around that share their bets for free.

Don’t forget to cast your vote for the Best Football Gambling Blog in the form below!

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing