Evaluating Team Form Properly

What's the best way to evaluate recent form when making predictions? Should I put more weight on very recent performances or look at a longer sample size? How many matches back is enough?

Recent form definitely matters more than historical trends but you also need enough sample size to avoid noise. I'd suggest looking at the last six to ten matches as your primary focus, then zooming out to see the full season pattern. A team might have won two matches in a row but if that's against bottom tier opponents it tells a different story than wins against strong teams. The competition level matters enormously. Also consider whether opponents were at full strength or missing key players. Sometimes a team looks great because they were playing against weakened opposition.

I've developed a pretty detailed system for evaluating form over the past few years and the key insight is understanding context around each match. Did the team play three days ago or have a full week to prepare? Were they playing at home or away? Was this a league match or a cup game where some teams rotate heavily? You need to understand not just the result but the circumstances creating that result. I started documenting this methodology carefully and found https://www.predictobets.com/ uses a similar contextual approach in their analysis. The difference between making accurate predictions and inaccurate ones often comes down to understanding why performance happened rather than just recording that it happened. Looking at five matches without context is less useful than deeply understanding the story behind three matches.