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

Football tips, stats and philosophy from Kevin Pullein.

Best bet

Brighton 0 Asian handicap cards
3pm Saturday
1pt 1.8 bet365

It is possible that bet365 have underestimated the possibility of Brighton receiving most cards in the Premier League game at Arsenal.

Back Brighton 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 as two cards. If Brighton’s total is highest the bet will win, if both totals are the same stakes will be returned and if Arsenal’s total is highest the bet will lose.

Cards can be shown for all sorts of reasons. Players can be booked for celebrating the winning goal or complaining about the losing goal. Generally speaking, though, most cards are shown for sincere but mistimed attempts to regain the ball. This means the team likely to do most defending are most at risk of receiving cards.

And at the Emirates today that will be Brighton.

Arsenal are challenging for a Champions League place. Brighton are just below mid-table, ten points above the relegation line – a reassuring gap even if the team just below the relegation line have a game in hand.

These teams have very different budgets. Arsenal should be and usually are better than Brighton. That is reflected in result-related odds implying a 58 per cent chance of an Arsenal win, a 25 per cent chance of a draw and a 17 per cent chance of a Brighton win. Those seem about right to me.

Brighton are a possession-based team who will probably have more of the ball than most visitors to Arsenal, and partly for this reason they tend to accumulate fewer cards than most others. However, it is still possible that decimal odds for Brighton 0 Asian handicap cards should be at least a little bit shorter than 1.8.

Thought for the week

Pep Guardiola was right. He had seen something that most people have missed.

This is what the Manchester City manager said before the Champions League quarter-final first leg about Atletico Madrid manager Diego Simeone: “There is a misconception about the way he plays. It’s more offensive than people believe. He doesn’t want to take a risk in the build-up but they have quality in the final third.”

We did not see that on Tuesday, when Atletico lost 1-0 at City. They had the ball for little more than 19 minutes and during that time they did not manage a single attempt on goal.

Usually, though, Atletico spend quite a lot of time with the ball near the opposition goal – but not elsewhere on the pitch.

Here are some figures from the Champions League over the last seven completed seasons, 2014-15 to 2020-21.

Atletico had possession for 47 per cent of the time the ball was in play during their matches. Not a lot. City had possession for 57 per cent of the time the ball was in play during their matches. Considerably more.

For how much of the time that the ball was in play, though, did each team have possession in the attacking third? For City the answer was 13 per cent, for Atletico 12 per cent. Atletico spent almost as long with the ball in the final third as City.

And how about other leading teams during those seasons – say Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Real Madrid and PSG? They had possession for between 53 and 61 per cent of the time that the ball was in play during their matches. For how much of the ball-in-play time did they have possession in the final third? Between 10 and 14 per cent. Atletico were roughly in the middle of that range.

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