Kevin Pullein: Walsall value to win corner count against Crewe

Best bet

Walsall +1 Asian handicap corners
1pt 2.0 bet365
Bet on this tip with bet365

Analysis

Crewe have taken a lot of corners this season. Away from home they have won the corners contest by more than one as often as they have tied or lost.

I mention those figures because they are relevant to bet365’s Asian handicap corners line for Crewe’s League Two game at Walsall.

If you back Walsall +1 you will be paid if they win or draw the corners count, get your stake back if they lose by one and forfeit your stake if they lose by more than one. Bet365’s decimal odds are 2.0, equivalent to the fractional price of evens.

At first sight this does not seem like value for money. If you had backed the home team in all of Crewe’s away games this season you would have won seven times and lost seven times. Where is the edge there?

If Crewe carry on in the same way then opposing them in this match will not represent value for money. And they might.

But Crewe have taken an unusually large share of the corners in their games, even for a team who normally dominate possession, scoring lots of goals and conceding only a few. So they might not keep getting so many corners. And if we accept that in corners markets things might stay the same but might not, then even-money about Walsall +1 Asian handicap corners could seem to be value for money.

Crewe have played well this season in every way. They are third in League Two, one of the promotion places, with 52 points from 29 games. Walsall are around mid-table – 14th out of 24 – with 36 points from 30 games.

The result-related markets suggest Crewe are more likely than Walsall to score most goals, and they are probably right – or as close as makes no difference – in their implication that there is something like a 29 per cent chance of a home win, a 27 per cent chance of a draw and a 44 per cent chance of an away win.

How are corners usually distributed in such games? Over the past two decades in EFL games with similar result expectations fair decimal odds about a randomly chosen home team +1 Asian handicap corners would have been 1.65.

The right odds for this match would definitely be bigger because they would incorporate the fact that Crewe have done abnormally well in corners markets and could keep going. But they might not be as big as 2.0. In any market in any game anything can happen, but there do seem to be grounds for thinking bet365 may have underestimated the chance of Walsall +1 Asian handicap corners.

Thought for the week

It is lovely when nice things happen to good people. Seeing Dean Smith’s face when Aston Villa scored an injury-time winner against Leicester in their EFL Cup semi-final second leg I remembered why I still watch football, even in this accursed age of VAR. Every now and again something heart-warming happens.

Smith is Villa manager. Since he was a boy he has been a Villa fan. When the ball went in the net he was overjoyed and overwhelmed. If you saw it you will know what I mean, and if you missed it I am sorry you missed it.

Football can be a contrary game, but every once in a while its contrariness can be delightful.

Villa won 2-1 at home having drawn 1-1 away. Were they the best team in the first leg? No. Were they the best team in the second leg? No. The standout performer in both games was the Villa goalkeeper Orjan Nyland.

Over the two legs Leicester had twice as much possession, three times as many shots on target and nearly four times as many attempts in total. In a sport that always makes sense they would have gone through. But this was football.

Leicester manager Brendan Rodgers is also a good person, as are his players and their fans. They will hurt, and that is not nice. We can feel for them. Life is full of injury-time goals. Nearly all of them seem to be scored against you. One out of goodness knows how many goes in for you. But that makes up for all of the others.

Enjoy your day at Wembley, Dean.

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