Kevin Pullein: Bet on low cards between Newcastle and Huddersfield

Premier League, 3pm Saturday

Bet on a low card count in the Premier League game between Newcastle and Huddersfield. It is just possible that a payout is more likely than bet365 anticipate.

With bet365, back under 3.5 Asian total cards at decimal odds of 1.975 – equivalent to fractional odds of 39-40.

Each yellow will count as one card and each red as two cards. The bet will win if there are no reds and no more than three yellows, or alternatively if there is one red and no more than one yellow. If anything else happens the bet will lose.

The number of cards likely to be shown in a match is influenced by three things, in particular: the difference in ability between the teams, the behaviour of the players and the characteristics of the referee.

Kevin Friend is a good and experienced official. This will be his 195 Premier League game spread over ten seasons. His card counts tend to be middle of the range.

Friend will show yellow or red when he needs to, in circumstances where most of his colleagues would, but not otherwise. His appointment neither raises nor lowers the number of cards likely to be shown.

Nor is there anything apparently unusual in the disciplinary records of the players. Neither Newcastle nor Huddersfield have received an unusually high number of cautions or dismissals.

Which brings us to the third factor: the difference in ability between the teams. The chance of a low card tends to be smallest when the difference in ability between two teams is at its smallest. As the difference in ability between opponents becomes progressively larger so does the chance of a low card total.

Before this round of fixtures began Newcastle were 16th in the table with 25 points while Huddersfield were 20th and bottom with 11 points. Newcastle are at home for this game, which will give them an advantage, and they appear to be better than Huddersfield anyway – both teams probably deserve more points than they have got.

The result-related markets imply something like a 52 per cent chance of a Newcastle win, a 29 per cent chance of a draw and a 19 per cent chance of a Huddersfield win, which is probably about right.

In other Premier League games with similar result expectations the chance of under 3.5 Asian total cards tends to be higher than the 51 per cent suggested by decimal odds of 1.975.

Recommendation
Under 3.5 Asian total cardsin Newcastle v Huddersfield
1pt 1.975 bet365

Thought for the week

Thirty years ago this month there was an article in Baseball Analyst called On Why Teams Don’t Repeat.

Author Phil Birnbaum had observed that teams with good results in one season tended to do less well in the following season, and that teams with bad results in one season tended to less poorly in the following season.

His explanation was mainly that high achievers had not been quite as great as their results suggested and that low achievers had not been quite as awful as their results suggested. They had been lucky or unlucky as well.

What is true of baseball is also true of other sports, and of every betting market on all sports. It is true not only from season to season but for periods within a season. It is perhaps the most important of the reasons why what happens next can be different from what happened before.

And it is particularly applicable to football.

Two out of every three football matches finish with no more than one goal between the teams. In two games out of every three one touch out of well over 1,000 represents the difference between a loss and a draw or a draw and a win.

Teams can easily run up sequences of results that give a misleading impression of how they played. And of the sort of results they are likely to get next.

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