Kevin Pullein: Leyton Orient can boss the corner count against Cheltenham

Back Leyton Orient to take the most corners in their Sky Bet League One game at home to Cheltenham. With bet365 you can get decimal odds of 1.9 – equivalent to fractional odds of 9-10 – about Orient
-0.5 Asian handicap corners, a bet that will payout if Orient flight more flag-kicks than Cheltenham.

The prospect of a payout might just be better than the odds imply.

At Brisbane Road home supporters will reflect on what should have been. Justin Edinburgh, the manager who guided Orient to the National League title last season, died in June. He was a tragically young 49.

Orient’s results in the National League suggests they are likely to finish around mid-table in League Two, based on the records of other promoted teams in the National League then League Two. And that is what ante-post markets envisage.

This in turn suggests Orient should be slightly better than Cheltenham, who in the three seasons since they returned from the National League have finished 21st, 17th and 16th. And Orient are playing on their own ground.

The general win-draw-loss markets seem spot-on in implying something like a 47 per cent chance of an Orient win, a 27 per cent chance of a draw and a 26 per cent chance of a Cheltenham win.

Over the last two decades in EFL games with similar goal-related expectations the chance of the home team taking most corners was typically 56 per cent. Decimal odds of 1.9 indicate less than a 53 per cent chance of the bet being successful.

Orient’s corner counts for and against in the National League were broadly consistent with the number of goals they scored and conceded. Usually those stats move in tandem. Both are connected to how much attacking and defending a team do.

Although there will inevitably be more uncertainty than normal in any evaluation of a team who have changed division, there seem to be reasonable grounds for thinking that the prospect of Orient taking more corners than Cheltenham may be better than bet365’s odds acknowledge.

Recommendation
Leyton Orient -0.5 Asian handicap corners
1pt 1.9 bet365

Thought for the week

Anyone can beat anyone, according to the old saying. It happens more often in the EFL than in many other competitions.

Since season 1995-96 there have been 20 teams in the Premier League and 24 in each of the three divisions of the EFL - the Championship, League One and League Two.

During this period the team that would finish bottom of the Premier League beat the team that would finish top one time out of 48 – a strike-rate of just more than two per cent. The team that would finish bottom in each division of the EFL beat the team that would finish top 14 times out of 144 – a strike-rate of just less than ten per cent.

One reason the EFL is more equal, of course, is that it has a regular filtering process. In each division at the end of each season the best few teams are promoted upwards and the worst few teams are relegated downwards, to be replaced by others who have proved too good for the level below or not good enough for the level above.

Inequality can be measured in more detail by the Gini coefficent. It was devised in 1912 by mathematician and sociologist Corrado Gini to measure inequality in incomes. It can be used to measure inequalities in many other things, including points won by a football team. Inequalities, in this context, means disparities in a season between the points of different teams.

In most football leagues the minimum possible Gini coefficient is zero and the maximum possible is 0.35. In League Two it has been 0.12, in League One 0.13 and in the Championship 0.14. In French Ligue 1 it has been 0.16, in the German Bundesliga 0.17, in the Italian Serie A, Scottish Premiership and Spanish La Liga 0.18, and in the Premier League 0.19.

Follow us on Twitter

Like us on Facebook RacingPostSport