The Bookies Don't Rate Us Again

Crewe are ranked either last or second-last in terms of winning League 1 by bookies this season. No great surprise there, without a definite answer about the future of Maynard, and coming off a close shave from relegation, it's hard to be bullish about our prospects of winning the title. If you shop around, you'll find 80/1 or bigger with one or two bookies, or the betting exchanges.

A bit more realistic are our chances of promotion, but the bookies don't agree - 25/1 you can find at several outlets.

The first of the handicap markets has been released by BlueSquare, with Crewe getting a 23pt start. If you've never seen this market before, how it works is that every team is given a headstart in points against the favourite to win the league (Leeds). But it's not just Crewe v Leeds, it's Crewe vs every other club. Each team is priced the same, 18/1, and each-way betting at a quarter the price, paying 1st-4th is available. There are a lot of clubs quite close together with 20-29pts start, so the Alex would need to be pushing for the playoffs to be able to win this market (as you'd expect with the odds of promotion being fairly similar). Other bookmakers will release handicap markets in the coming weeks, they are not all the same so it's worth shopping around.

For the pessimists, our odds for relegation are as low as 11/8 (BetFred has a very poor opinion of us obviously!) and as high as 5/2 with Skybet. We're better than that, so a positive bet would be laying Crewe to be relegated (betting on it NOT to happen) with Betfair at around 3/1, which would pay you 1/3 - but you'd have to wait all season to be paid out.

If match betting week-to-week is more your thing, then you can 6/4 on us taking three points against Brighton on opening day.

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