Kevin Pullein's football bet of the day: West Ham to get more cards then Everton

Kevin Pullein's bet of the day

West Ham 0 Asian handicap cards
1pt 9-10 bet365

It could pay to take a chance on West Ham receiving more cards than Everton in the early Premier League kick-off at Goodison. In the sort of game it seems reasonable to anticipate, the away team receive more cards than the home team more often than bet365’s odds suggest.

Back West Ham 0 Asian handicap cards at decimal odds of 1.9 – equivalent to fractional odds of 9-10. Each yellow will count as one card and each red as two. If both teams get the same total, bets will be cancelled and stakes refunded. Otherwise if West Ham’s total is higher than Everton’s the bet will win and if it is lower the bet will lose.

Everton have started the season disappointingly. Marco Silva is favourite to be the next Premier League manager to go. But bookmakers also think Everton are better than they have shown so far, and rightly in my view. Result-related odds imply something like a 49 per cent chance of an Everton win, a 26 per cent chance of a draw and a 25 per cent chance of a West Ham win.

If you look back at Everton’s Premier League home games in the last six-and-a-bit seasons – all those since long-serving manager David Moyes left – you will find that they won 52 per cent, drew 23 per cent and lost 25 per cent.

• Everton v West Ham match preview

Arguably, therefore, Saturday’s fixture could be a fairly average Everton home game. West Ham are perhaps better than standard Premier League opponents, but not by much.

In those last 118 Premier League home games the visitors received more cards than Everton in 55, the same number in 28 and fewer in 35. In other words, away wins in this market were rather more common than home wins. More common, relatively speaking, than the odds imply.

Dirty players are rare nowadays. Nearly all cards are shown for a genuine but badly executed attempt to get the ball. The longer players spend defending the more opportunities there are for them to get a challenge wrong and be shown a card. Away teams at Goodison have tended to spend longer than Everton without the ball, and that is the most likely outcome on Saturday – though of course there are other possibilities.

Everton this season have received more cards than usual, though away rather than at home. If things go badly today the home fans could get angry and home players could lose their temper. This is one of those other possibilities, and one that would be bad for the bet – as well as being counter-productive for Everton. But it might not happen, and the chance that it does not happen may be better than bet365 suggest.

The referee is Paul Tierney, a fine member of the younger generation of Premier League officials.

Thought for the week

Paul Butterfield was a great harmonica player. He is long dead. He used to say that he only knew how to play one note, but that note he really knew how to play. Okay he was oversimplifying – but hold his thought.

Charlie Munger is still alive. He is a hugely successful investor, a longtime partner of Warren Buffett. Munger is 95 – 19 years older than Butterfield would have been if he were still with us.

Munger has said something similar. He gave this advice to stock market investors – and by extension, sports bettors: “You have to stick within what I call your circle of competence. You have to know what you understand and what you don’t understand. It’s not terribly important how big the circle is. But it is terribly important that you know where the perimeter is.”

Munger did not stop there. He went on to spell out some of the implications: “So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as certain as any prediction you can make. You have to figure where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.”

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