Kevin Pullein: Atletico were in no shape to beat Liverpool, but they did

Atletico Madrid were the first team in five months to beat a full-strength Liverpool. Everything we had been told suggested they would not be.

Atletico scored in the fourth minute of the Champions League round- of-16 first leg and held on to win 1-0.

All the talk before the match had been that Atletico were out of sorts. One preview I read said Atletico could no longer score or pass through midfield and were dodgy at the back. The first two criticisms might have been justified, but the third was not.

Diego Simeone’s Atletico became a top team in Spain and Europe with a great defence and a fairly good attack. This season in La Liga they have defended as well as in previous seasons – conceding an average of 0.7 goals per game. At the other end of the pitch, however, goals have dried up – they have scored an average of just 1.0 goals per game.

Any team with a great defence have a chance, though, because every team will score now and again. Atletico got one goal on Tuesday.

Last season in the last 16 Atletico beat Juventus 2-0 at home then lost 3-0 away. Juventus are not as good as Liverpool – nobody is. As likely as not, Liverpool will still go through on aggregate after the second leg at Anfield.

But the first team to beat them in five months were a team supposedly in no condition to do so. How often does it happen that way?

Best bet of the day

Oxford most corners taken
0.5pt 2-1 Sky Bet

Back Oxford to take more corners than their hosts in their League One game at Ipswich. Sky Bet offer 2-1.

Oxford are less likely than Ipswich to flight more flag-kicks, but perhaps not as unlikely as those odds anticipate.

Ipswich have taken fewer corners than their opponents in only four of their 14 home games – 29 per cent. Odds of 2-1 imply a 33 per cent chance of a payout. So at first glance they do not seem to represent value for money. Oxford, however, may be better than most visitors to Portman Road and have more of the play.

Both teams will still be hopeful of promotion. Ipswich are seventh in the table, just outside the playoff places. They are three places and four points above Oxford, who have played one game fewer.

There may not be much difference in ability between these teams, though Ipswich will benefit from playing on their own ground. The result-related markets imply a 42 per cent chance of a home win, a 28 per cent chance of a draw and a 30 per cent chance of an away win. It is doubtful whether those percentages are wrong by much if at all.

Over the past two decades in EFL games with similar result expectations fair odds about the visitors taking most corners would typically have been about 7-4.

Odds of 7-4, implying a 36 per cent chance of a payout, are not much shorter than 2-1, but they are shorter. And there is no obvious reason for thinking the right odds at Portman Road would be much if any different from 7-4.

Usually there is a relationship between a team’s chance of scoring most goals and their chance of taking most corners. Increasing one tends to increase the other, and vice versa. Goals and corners are related because both are occasional by-products of attacks, though goals tend to be even less frequent than corners.

Ipswich and Oxford are teams who like to have the ball and attack when they can. Ipswich have averaged 58 per cent possession at home, Oxford 54 per cent possession away.

This does not have the appearance of a game in which one team will set out with the intention of letting the other have the ball most of the time – though play does not always develop in the way either or both teams intended.

All things considered, though, there appear to be grounds for thinking that odds of 2-1 are too big for Oxford to take more corners than Ipswich.

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