Bundesliga corners predictions: Go low in Dortmund on Saturday

Saturday's best prop bet

Under 10.5 Asian total corners in Dortmund v Mainz (2.30pm)
1pt 9-10 bet365

Bet on a low number of corners in the Jurgen Klopp Bundesliga derby between Dortmund and Mainz. With bet365 you can back under 10.5 Asian total corners at odds of 9-10.

Klopp played for and then managed Mainz before he managed Dortmund. As a coach, he took Mainz into the Bundesliga for the first time and won the Bundesliga twice with Dortmund.

He will have other things on his mind this weekend – Sunday's Premier League game between Liverpool and Manchester United – but if he does get time to tune in he might not see a large number of flag-kicks.

There were a lot in Dortmund’s first four games under new manager Edin Terzic – an average of nearly 11 per game, but that was unusual for Dortmund and might not continue. Historically Dortmund have not participated in matches with high corner counts abnormally often.

Mainz are on their fourth coach of the season: Bo Svennson. There have not been large corners make-ups in their games particularly often, but in previous seasons away from home there were – in each of the last four and nine of the past 11.

Dortmund, who are fourth in the Bundesliga, are by far the more likely winners against opponents who are bottom.

They are also likely to dominate possession and spend a lot of time with the ball in the Mainz half, in the process gaining a fair few corners. But the flip side of this is that Mainz may not take many corners. Dortmund are likely to take the overwhelming majority of corners that are taken, but the total might not be excessive.

Dortmund started this round of fixtures 14 places above Mainz. Since Klopp became their manager at the start of season 2008-09 Dortmund’s games at home to teams who finished 14 or more places below them did not feature 11 or more corners as often as is suggested by bet365’s odds for the contest at the Westfalenstadion.

Thought for the week

Manchester City have won seven games in a row in all competitions. After winning only four of the previous nine. What explains this upturn in fortunes?

Manager Pep Guardiola has said: “The only difference is that we run less. We were running too much. When you play football you have to walk – or run much, much less. Without the ball you have to run. But with the ball you stay more in the position and let the ball run, not you.”

Probably there were other factors at work as well, but Guardiola’s stress on running less is interesting. It is the opposite of what most commentators and fans call for.

I have studied running stats from various competitions – Champions League, European Championship, World Cup – and what I find is always the same: that there is not much difference in the distances covered by teams, but where there are small differences it is usually because successful teams cover less distance than unsuccessful teams.

This chimes with Guardiola’s insistence that attacking should require less running than defending. Good teams do more attacking and less defending than bad teams.

Yet commentators praise players or teams for out-running their opponents and fans urge them on to greater effort. Why? I think one of the reasons is that running is visible. If players are running about a lot it looks like they are doing something. They are doing something – only, in certain circumstances, it is not doing them any good. As in so many other things, effort is prized even when it is counter-productive.