The one major piece of sports betting news today is, of course, the return of the English Premiership as Arsenal takes on Leicester tonight. Saturday and Sunday sees the rest of the Premier League teams kick off.

Do you currently bet on football? Or, indeed, in the age of betting exchanges, do you currently trade football?

Football is a superb sport to profit from, basically because it is so well covered in the mainstream press, as well as in specialist stats websites.

Long-suffering readers know how much I like www.soccerstats.com. It is my go-to website for football statistics.

There are other stats sites, such as www.accastats.com, which could give you pointers to high-pay-out football accumulator bets on a number of markets.

Additionally, www.statsbunker.com is a great website if you want to specialise in markets such as bookings points (red cards and yellow cards).

Sites like www.footstats.co.uk have a prediction model incorporated. They’ll do all of the work for you. They’ll rate and predict outcomes.

Me? I’m staying with my close show biz pal www.soccerstats.com.

If you want to take your football seriously, I would recommend using what I call a ‘betting research template’. It’s a template you can use to help your research. Here’s a basic template for you: head on over to http://bettinresearchtemplate.blogspot.com/ (yes, it is misspelt). There you will find the kind of football template I recommend for getting a good angle into football matches. I would begin to use this template once we have five or six games under our belts.

I asked in a recent eletter whether you had your battle plans in place for the football season. Do you have a niche to specialise in? I would highly recommend you specialising in one team, one league or one or two markets.

I put forward the Halftime Score market for instance. My close showbiz pal Soccer Stats has dedicated halftime score stats now. Perfick!

What’s your niche? Relegated teams in weaker leagues? Newly promoted sides? The top-four? Greek Super League? Over 2.5 Goals? The +1 market?

Don’t be a Jack(ie Charlton) of all trades!

Enjoy the new season and may your team win every match they play in (apart from when they are playing Wolves).