Kevin Pullein: MK Dons corners bet could provide value against Rotherham

Best bet

Milton Keynes Dons +1.5 Asian handicap corners
1pt 1.95 bet365

Analysis

Bookmakers are probably right to think that Rotherham are the most likely winners of the Sky Bet League One game at Milton Keynes Dons.

Rotherham won the League One playoffs in two of the past six seasons and are in the playoff places again. They found it hard to stay in the Championship – not surprising when you compare budgets – but each time they dropped down they bounced straight back.

The Dons won automatic promotion from League Two last season and started well, then results turned on them and manager Paul Tisdale lost his job during what is now nine defeats and a draw from ten games, in which they scored only twice.

But bet365 may have overestimated how much possession and territorial advantage Rotherham might command. Back Milton Keynes Dons +1.5 Asian handicap corners at decimal odds of 1.95, equivalent to fractional odds of 19-20. The bet will payout unless the Dons lose the corners count by two or more.

The result-related odds, which might be about right, imply a 52 per cent chance of an away win, a 25 per cent chance of a draw and a 23 per cent chance of a home win.

How are corners normally split in such a game? Over the past two decades in EFL games with similar result expectations the home team beat a +1.5 Asian handicap corners line about 60 per cent of the time. Odds of 1.95 suggest only a 51 per cent chance of a bet being successful.

Corners for and against the Dons and the Millers this season have been mostly what we should have anticipated from the goals they have scored and conceded. Usually those things move in tandem.

Admittedly the Dons’ results have been worse than most would have anticipated, but there are good reasons for thinking the players are better than their rewards suggest. Russell Martin, who retired as a player to become manager, comes across as a thoughtful man. Results in future should improve. And win, draw or lose, the Dons might beat bet365’s Asian corners handicap.

Thoughts for the week

Harry Redknapp, a former Tottenham manager, said this is a great time to be the present Tottenham manager.

Mauricio Pochettino was fired from that role on Tuesday and Jose Mourinho was hired on Wednesday.

Redknapp said: “It is a great time to manage Tottenham. The only way is up because they cannot go any lower than they are at the moment in the Premier League.”

Of course they could go lower – they are currently 14th out of 20 – but they are unlikely to. As Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher has said, Tottenham are a top-six club with the good fortune right now to have a top-four squad. More likely than not, Tottenham would climb up the table over the rest of the season whoever was their manager. Even if it was still Pochettino.

In a book called The Economics of Football, professors Stephen Dobson and John Goddard studied clubs who sacked their manager and comparable clubs who did not.

Their research covered quarter of a century. They found that clubs who sacked their manager improved overall, but no more than comparable clubs who stuck by their manager.

Jose Mourinho was pictured on his first day holding a Tottenham shirt. Every new manager seems to be photographed holding up a club shirt. There must be fresher ways of recording an appointment.

Photographers are creative people. They are always coming up with imaginative new ways to capture other scenes. So why not this one?

Presumably the chairman, or a club PR, asks them to take the same old shot and they agree because they do not think they are going to win any awards from this assignment however they click the shutter.

They are probably right. And it does not matter much. But there must be other ways of taking a picture that associates a manager with their club.

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