No one thinks that pre-season matches are taken seriously, they do pre-season matches just to see how much strength they have. It is not uncommon for us to see them fielding all the players in one match, from there we can see that their goal is to see the ability of an individual player and carry out many strategies to be applied later in the real match.
There are many cases where a team is very good in pre-season, but they are bad in the actual match. It is not uncommon for us to see teams that play badly in pre-season matches, but in actual matches they can play very well. That means they are not serious in pre-season.
Regarding betting, I also really avoid betting in pre-season, because the risk is very big because they don't play to the best of their abilities. In the past I have experienced many losses when betting on pre-season matches.
Yes agree. It is very risky to place bets on pre-season matches because each team will of course play reserve players, and as you said pre-season is not that important even though the purpose of pre-season matches is to test the strength of young teams. but often pre-season matches are full of surprises, small teams are able to beat big teams. The reason is, apart from the coach wanting to test the young players, the players also play very carefully because they don't want to get injured in pre-season.
It often happens that teams perform poorly in pre-season, but are good when entering the new season, and vice versa. So Man United's defeat during pre-season is not a sign that they will start the season badly. I still believe Erik Tan Hag can compete in the EPL league next season, even though he doesn't get the EPL trophy, but I think they will be in the top four because Erik Ten Hag will definitely learn from previous seasons.