There is a saying when betting on football to be careful not to lose the shirt on your back – and this blog is always highlighting the importance of not gambling with more than you can afford to lose.

But how do you go about betting on the shirts on footballers’ backs? To be more precise, just exactly how do you spread bet on Shirt Numbers in football matches?

It may sound like a confusing concept, but in reality it’s a very simple bet – and one which can add an extra dimension to watching a football match.

Let’s take Sunday’s pulsating Liverpool v Manchester City match at Anfield as an example of this type of bet.

Before kick-off, Spreadex offered a spread of 50 – 54 on this market. This meant Spreadex believed the shirt numbers of the goalscorers’ in the game, aggregated, would be somewhere between 50 and 54.

In Liverpool’s eventual 3-2 win, the Shirt Numbers actually added up to 101 (Sterling 31, Skrtel 37, Silva 21, Johnson o.g. 2 and Coutinho 10) meaning spread betters who bought at 54 would have made 47 times their initial stake.

As always with spread betting, it’s important to remember that you can lose more than your initial stake should the bet go against you. Therefore sellers at 50 on Sunday would have indeed have been feeling shirty if they ended up losing 51 times their initial stake.

In-play spread betting on Shirt Numbers

Don’t forget that with in-play betting though you can close out your bet at any time to either take a profit or cut a loss – so for example after Sterling and Skrtel had netted early on for the Reds at the weekend, wily punters could have closed out at a level higher than the eventual 101 make-up for bigger profits.

So if you’re into spread betting on Shirt Numbers during football matches, just what should you be looking out for?

Well with the days of strikers always wearing 9 and 10 long behind us, it makes sense to look out for forwards or attacking midfield players who are likely to find the net, who wear high shirt numbers for their clubs.

Raheem Sterling, mentioned above, with squad number 31 is an obvious name but how about Yaya Toure wearing 42, Adnan Januzaj 44, Harry Kane at Spurs wearing 37, Samuel Eto’o 29, Peter Crouch 25 or Ross McCormack, leading scorer in the Championship, wearing 44 at Leeds United.

And then there are defenders with a goal threat to consider including the likes of Martin Skrtel, mentioned above wearing 37, Seamus Coleman wearing 23 or John Terry or Gary Cahill with 26 and 24 respectively.

Where things really get interesting when spread betting on Shirt Numbers however can be in some of the European leagues, when regular starters can wear squad numbers up in to the 90s.

With that in mind, below we take a look at the top five spread betting Shirt Numbers make-ups.

Top 5 football spread betting Shirt Numbers outcomes

1. Celtic 5 Hearts 0, Scottish Premier League, 13-05-2012
Gary Hooper may not be pulling up trees with Norwich in the Premier League, but it was a different story north of the border at Celtic. Wearing shirt number 88 in the 2011-12 season, Hooper bagged 50 goals including all five in the 5-0 final-day win over Hearts meaning Shirt Numbers made up at a massive 440 and resulted in profits of 346 times their original stake size for spread betters buying at the pre-match spread of 94.

2. Rubin Kazan 2 Dinamo Moscow 2, Russian Premier League, 26-09-13
Remember that own goals count towards the make-up of Shirt Numbers, so when former Blackburn and QPR defender Chris Samba put through his own goal for Dinamo Moscow against Rubin Kazan wearing number 84 in a 2-2 draw it contributed towards an outcome of 335 (the other scorers were Gokdeniz Karadenis wearing 61, Aleksai Ionov wearing 99 and Alexander Kokorin wearing 91). Buyers at 66 made 269 times their original stake.

3. Napoli 2 AC Milan 2, Serie A, 17-11-12
A striker wearing shirt number 92 always raises the chances of a high Shirt Numbers make-up especially against a side with other players also wearing large squad numbers. So when Stephan El Shaarawy scored twice in AC Milan’s 2-2 draw at Napoli last season he helped Shirt Numbers settle at 296 when Napoli’s goals came from Inler, wearing 88, and Insigne, wearing 24. Spread betters who bought at 72 made 224 times their original stake.

4. Man City 5 AC Milan 3, pre-season friendly, 31-07-13
Yep, you can even bet on Shirt Numbers on selected pre-season friendlies. One of the more glamorous warm-up matches last summer saw Manchester City take on AC Milan in the Audi Cup in Germany in an explosive encounter in which eight goals were scored in the first-half. Shirt Numbers made up at 277 meaning profits of 193 times their stake for spread betters who bought at 84. However, those that closed out at half-time when the live spread was much higher reaped even greater profits.

5. Trabzonspor 3 Lazio 3, Europa League, 3-10-13
When a substitute enters the fray wearing a high squad number there’s always the possibility your bet on Shirt Numbers is going to get interesting. And that was the case when Sergio Floccari came on for Lazio wearing number 99 against Trabzonspor in the Europa league and netted twice in a 3-3 draw. With the other goals coming from Erdogan wearing 32, Mierzejewski 10, Onazi 23 and Henrique 12, the eventual Shirt Numbers make-up reached 275 and resulted in profits of 213 times their stake for buyers at 62.