Bradford value for more corners if not the Cup upset at Peterborough

Perhaps there will be an upset today in the FA Cup second round. Perhaps Bradford will take more corners than Peterborough. It is a long shot. Although most people would neither notice nor care if it happened it may be more likely than Sky Bet’s odds of 4-1 suggest, and therefore it is worth backing.

Peterborough’s owners think the club should be in a higher division. Next season they could be. Today Peterborough are fourth in League One, in one of the playoff places and just two points below the automatic promotion places. Bradford are 24th and bottom.

This time next year Peterborough and Bradford could be playing their league football two divisions apart. By any rational assessment Peterborough now seem to be a better team than Bradford.

The result-related markets imply a 66 per cent chance of the home team scoring each goal that is scored. That seems about right.

Over the last two decades in Football League games with similar goals expectations the chance of the away team taking most corners was about 27 per cent. Odds of 4-1 imply only a 20 per cent chance of a bet being successful.

Peterborough this season have taken a much smaller share of the corners in their games than we should have expected from the number of goals they have scored and conceded. Usually there is a closer relationship between those things. Peterborough have taken most corners in only three of their ten League One home games.

There was nothing unusual, though, about the relationship between goals and corners at Peterborough manager Steve Evans’s previous clubs – Mansfield, Leeds, Rotherham, Crawley and Boston. Sooner or later it should return to normal at Peterborough.

The most important point, however, is that typically in a game like the one it seems reasonable to anticipate today at London Road the chance of the away team taking most corners is higher than 20 per cent.

One of the League One home games in which Peterborough did take most corners was two weeks ago against Bradford. Then Peterborough took nine corners and Bradford six. Back Bradford to take most corners today and something as unwelcome could happen again. Even so, the prospect of a payout may be better than Sky Bet envisage.

Recommendation
Bradford most corners taken
0.5pt 4-1 Sky Bet

Bet on this match at Soccerbase.com

Thought for the day

In different circumstances we would be hearing praise for the new manager of Queens Park Rangers. What a good job he has done, people would say.

Rangers in the Championship have won eight, drawn four and lost three of their last 15 games, scoring 20 goals and conceding 13. What a turnround to their season. They lost their first four games by an aggregate score of 2-13. Now they are ninth in the table.

Only Rangers do not have a new manager. They stuck with Steve McClaren – who, admittedly, was appointed only last spring – and results picked up.

This is the consideration that is missing from most discussions of the impact of new managers: what happens to clubs who go through a bad patch but do not change their manager? My research tells me that generally results improve, and by as much as for clubs in a similar predicament who did sack their manager.

Some things we can never know. When a substitute comes on and scores a goal we usually notice – and when we do not somebody else will point it out. But we will never know how many players who have been taken off would have scored if they had been left on.

With a little effort, though, we can look out for what happens to clubs who could have sacked their manager but did not.

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