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

Football tips, stats and philosophy from Kevin Pullein.

Best bet

Mallorca 0 Asian handicap cards
1pt 1.975 bet365

Alejandro Muniz Ruiz is in his first season as a La Liga referee. He has officiated at eight games. In only one of them did he show more cards to the away team. In four he showed more cards to the home team and in the other three he showed the same number of cards to both teams.

He has shown a lot of cards in total. He also did this in previous seasons at a lower level, but in years past he did not always show such a small proportion of a large number of cards to away teams.

Muniz Ruiz could carry on as he has been this season. But it is possible that in future he will show more cards to away teams. And it is possible that bet365 have underestimated the chance that he will start tomorrow by showing more cards to Mallorca than to Granada.

Back Mallorca 0 Asian handicap cards at decimal odds of 1.975, equivalent to the fractional price of 39-40. Each yellow will count as one card and each red as two cards. If Mallorca’s total is higher the bet will win, if both totals are the same stakes will be returned, and if Granada’s total is higher the bet will lose.

This has been a strange season for cards in La Liga. Fans are back and home teams have won more often than they have lost but they have received as many cards as away teams. Usually in previous seasons when fans were in attendance home teams received slightly fewer cards than away teams.

The rest of the season could be like the first part. Almost half of the games have been played and that is a lot. Still, more likely than not in the rest of the season away teams will receive slightly more cards than home teams.

And for this reason as well it is possible that decimal odds of 1.975 may underestimate the chance of Mallorca receiving more cards than Granada on Sunday. Overall, there has been nothing unusual about the distribution of cards in Granada games or in Mallorca games.

Thought for the week

Technology is used in football to try to discover whether a player was offside by a millimetre, or whether the ball crossed the line by a millimetre, but it is not used for a simpler and more fundamental purpose. It is not used to determine how long the match should last.

If someone was watching football for the first time, one of the things they would find strange, I think, is that the match is in progress when it is not in progress – that is to say, the clock ticks down when the ball is dead and nobody can score. We do not think it is strange because we have become so used to it.

Fans get angry if their team are losing and opponents are wasting time, but when the situation is reversed and the ball comes into a stand they do not throw it back.

Referees are supposed to add time for unnatural stoppages but rarely, in my opinion, do they add enough.

Last Saturday the fourth official indicated seven minutes of added time at the end of the first half of Manchester City v Wolves. That was a lot but I thought there should have been even more. Then in added time Raul Jimenez was shown two yellow cards and there was a lengthy delay before he left the pitch. Yet referee Jonathan Moss still blew his whistle for half time after just seven minutes of added time.

I do not criticise Moss. He was simply following procedures he has been told to follow. Other referees do the same. To me, though, football’s attitude to timekeeping is mind-boggling. It is like saying the time for a 100 metres race should include all the minutes the athletes spent taking off their tracksuits then settling into their blocks and waiting for the starting gun to be fired.

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