Kevin Pullein: Saturday's best bet and thought for the week

Best bet

Leyton Orient +0.5 Asian handicap corners
1pt 1.975 bet365

Analysis

Bet on Leyton Orient taking at least as many corners as Bradford in their Sky Bet League One game at Brisbane Road. A payout just might be more likely than the odds suggest.

Back Orient +0.5 Asian handicap corners with bet365 at decimal odds of 1.975, equivalent to fractional odds of 39-40. The bet will succeed if Orient take as many or more corners than Bradford.

Orient, in their first season back in the EFL, are 19th in League Two with 21 points from 20 games. Bradford are sixth with 34 points from 19 games. They are in the playoff places and one point below the third automatic promotion place, with a game in hand on the team in it. Only this season did they come down from League One. For this match, though, Orient, should benefit from playing on their own ground.

The result-related markets, in my opinion, put all those bits of information together reasonably in suggesting there is something like a 31 per cent chance of an Orient win, a 27 per cent chance of a draw and a 42 per cent chance of a Bradford win.

In such games usually the away team would be ever so slightly more likely than the home team to take most corners. But for our bet backers of the home team will be paid not only if the home team take most corners but also if both teams take the same number.

Over the past two decades in EFL games with comparable win-draw-loss expectations the chance of the home team taking as many or more corners than the away team was about 56 per cent. Decimal odds of 1.975 imply only a 51 per cent chance of a bet being successful.

Orient and Bradford this season have taken and defended about as many corners as we should have anticipated from the number of goals they have scored and conceded. Generally goals and corners are related, because both are things that a team can get when they attack and give away when they defend. Both are by-products of how play unfolds.

Orient have fared less well than we might have anticipated in corners handicap markets at home but better away. Last season in the National League it was the other way round. Such things can develop into longer-term trends. More often they are merely something strange that happens for a short time then stops. Hopefully the second explanation will hold this season for Orient.

Thought for the week

Manchester United had a good week. That is all it was. Within four days they beat Tottenham and Manchester City.

Some could not help reading more into it. Much more. They said manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has turned a corner and now a brighter future lies ahead for him and United. It might or it might not. At this stage there is no way of telling.

Some went even further. They said Solskjaer had feared for his job and was galvanised into getting better when Tottenham sacked Mauricio Pochettino. This was a neat-sounding explanation, but only if you did not want to risk spoiling it by checking the facts. After Pochettino was sacked United drew with Sheffield United then Aston Villa.

Those two downbeat draws were followed by the two upbeat wins. If the first two results gave no indication of the last two, why should the last two give any indication of the next one or two, let alone more?

This sort of question is among the most helpful that anyone interested in sport can ask. Hardly anybody seems to.

We can expand it for Solskjaer at United. He won 32 points from his first 12 games. From his next 23 games he won 26 points. Fewer points from nearly twice as many games. Then he won six points from two games.

Call those three periods A, B and C, and the one that will follow them D. Period A gave no clue to what would happen in period B, which gave no clue to what would happen in period C, so why should period C tell us what will happen in period D?

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