Kevin Pullein predictions: free football betting tips from the Soccer Boffin

Football tips, stats and philosophy from Kevin Pullein.

Best bet

Lecce 0 Asian handicap cards v Sassuolo
BT Sport 5, 7.45pm Saturday
1pt 1.8 bet365

It is possible that bet365 have underestimated the chance of Lecce receiving most cards in their Serie A game at Sassuolo on Saturday.

Back Lecce 0 Asian handicap cards at decimal odds of 1.8, equivalent to the fractional price of 4-5. Each yellow will count as one card and each red will count as two cards. If Lecce’s total is highest the bet will win, if both totals are the same stakes will be returned, and if Sassuolo’s total is highest the bet will lose.

The number of cards issued to each team in a match is influenced by the difference in ability between them. The stronger one team is in relation to the other the less likely they are to receive most cards, and vice versa. This is because most cards are shown to players trying to regain the ball, and the weaker team are likely to spend longer trying to regain the ball.

The result markets for the game imply a 54 per cent chance of a Sassuolo win, a 24 per cent chance of a draw and a 22 per cent chance of a Lecce win, and those proportions seem about right to me.

In previous seasons in Serie A games with similar result expectations fair decimal odds about the away team receiving most cards would normally have been shorter than 1.8.

Overall I cannot see anything unusual in the distribution of cards last season in Sassuolo’s games in Serie A or in Lecce’s games on their way to becoming champions of Serie B. However, Sassuolo did receive a higher share of the cards than we should have anticipated in their home games while Lecce received a lower share of the cards than we should have anticipated in their away games.

If that pattern continues this season it will probably turn out to have been a mistake to back Lecce 0 Asian handicap cards against Sassuolo. But the pattern might not continue. It was unusual.

There were no useful clues in the first weekend of this season. Sassuolo lost and received most cards at Juventus and Lecce lost and received most cards at home to Inter. In both matches those were the most likely outcomes. Inter and Juve are leading Italian sides.

The referee tonight will be Andrea Colombo, who will be officiating for only the fourth time in Serie A.

Thought for the week

There are two stats flashed up on television screens during matches that I particularly like. They seem to me to illustrate clearly something about how the teams have played.

The first is touches in the opposition box. There is a strong correlation between touches in the opposition box and goals scored from inside the opposition box – and most goals are scored from inside the opposition box.

Obviously I get a sense from my eyes of which team has been more threatening, but touches in the opposition box clarify vividly for me who has been doing most of the thing that is most likely to lead to a goal.

I should add that on average there seem to be about 20 touches in the opposition box for each goal scored from inside the opposition box.

The other stat I like is completed passes. There is a near-perfect correlation between completed passes and possession. If two teams complete the same number of passes they will have about the same share of possession, and if one team complete twice as many passes as the other they will have spent about twice as much time in possession.

But differences seem sharper to me if instead of being told the possession percentages I am told, let us say, that one team have completed 200 passes and the other have completed 400 passes.

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