Expect improvement from basement boys Bradford

3pm Saturday

Bet365 may just have underestimated the chance of Bradford taking most corners in their Sky Bet League One game at home to Walsall.

Back Bradford 0 Asian handicap corners at decimal odds of 2.0 – equivalent to a fractional price of evens. The bet will succeed if Bradford take most corners, stakes will be refunded if both teams take the same number and the bet will fail if Walsall take most corners.

The starting point for any assessment of how many corners each team might take in a match should be how many goals they might score. More often than not there is a relationship between those things. Both are occasional byproducts of attacks.

The result-related markets imply something like a 35 per cent chance of a Bradford win, a 29 per cent chance of a draw and a 36 per cent chance of a Walsall win.

There is no obvious reason to think those expectations are wrong by much, if at all, given that after 21 games Walsall are tenth in the table with 30 points while Bradford are 24th and bottom with 15 points. Even after allowing for the strong likelihood that Bradford’s results will improve the odds in the result-related market seem to be in about the right place.

Over the last 20 seasons in Football League games with similar result expectations fair odds about the home team on an Asian handicap corners line of zero typically would have been shorter than 2.0 – about 1.85.

Bradford have taken only a small share of the corners in their games this season. But that is primarily because they have scored only a small proportion of the goals. At home in League One they have taken most corners in three games and conceded most corners in five games.

But, as mentioned, there are good grounds for believing Bradford’s results will improve. Results of teams who have struggled at the start of a season generally get better as the season progresses. And if Bradford’s results improve they should start to take most corners in matches more often as well.

Walsall have taken a slightly higher share of the corners in their games than we should have anticipated from the goals they have scored and conceded, especially away from home – but really not by much considering the small number of games.

In any market in any match any outcome is possible. Bradford could take fewer corners than Walsall or the same number. But the chance that they will take more may be at least a bit bigger than bet365’s odds acknowledge.

Recommendation
Bradford 0 Asian handicap corners
1pt 2.0 bet365

Thought for the day

Why do so few people think probabilistically – that is, in terms of the chance of something happening rather than a certainty it will happen or a certainty it will not happen? This is my explanation.

We are descended from hunter-gatherers who roamed through jungle. When they heard a noise from behind a bush most of them assumed it was a lion and ran away.

Some stayed put. They thought: “It probably is not a lion. There are many other possibilities. I am not going to waste my energy running away every time I hear an unidentified noise.”

Many times, somebody who stayed put would laugh at their friends afterwards for having been scared away by a deer. Eventually, though, they got eaten by a lion.

We are the descendants of the people who ran away. Hard-wired into our brains is the notion that a question should be answered yes or no, not maybe.

Running away was always the right decision for hunter-gatherers. There is no point being right most of the time if being wrong once will kill you.

But for almost everyone today life is a lot different than it was then. For nearly all the questions we face now the best answer is some shade of maybe rather than a black and white yes or no. Our lives have moved on but our brains have not caught up.

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