Kevin Pullein's best Saturday football bet

Rochdale v Sunderland

3pm Saturday

Sunderland have a better team than Rochdale. As they should. They are a bigger club with more resources. Sunderland understandably are favourites to score more goals in the League One game at Rochdale. They should also do most of the attacking. More likely than not, they will take more corners.

But the chance of Sunderland winning the corners count easily might not be as great as bet365 imagine. Back Rochdale +1.5 Asian handicap corners at decimal odds of 1.9 – equivalent to fractional odds of 9-10.

If Sunderland win the corners count by two or more the bet will lose. If there is any other outcome the bet will win.

Today is the start of a potentially important four days for Rochdale and Sunderland. On Tuesday Rochdale play at Accrington while Sunderland play home to Burton.

If Sunderland win today and on Tuesday they will be in an automatic promotion place whatever happens elsewhere. If Rochdale win both games they probably will have gone a long way towards securing a fifth season in League One.

Sunderland could go into an automatic promotion place today, but they would have to win and Barnsley would have to lose, accompanied by a fair shift in goal differences. Just a point for Rochdale today could lift them above the relegation line, although Southend, Walsall and Wimbledon would all have to lose.

We do not know what the score will be in any of these games, though we can try to evaluate the prospects for different scores.

Odds in result-related markets for Spotland today seem reasonable. They imply something like a 21 per cent chance of a Rochdale win, a 26 per cent chance of a draw and a 53 per cent chance of a Sunderland win.

In other Football League games with similar goals expectations fair decimal odds about the home team +1.5 Asian handicap corners would typically be about 1.75, implying a 57 per cent chance of the bet being successful. Decimal odds of 1.9 imply less than a 53 per cent chance of a payout.

Sunderland have taken the lion’s share of corners in their League One games this season – but no more than we should have anticipated from their good results. They won the corners count by four on Wednesday at Accrington, and by two in their previous away game at Barnsley, one of only two teams currently above them in the table. Earlier in the season they won the corners count by three away to the other, Luton.

But anyone who had backed Sunderland’s opponents +1.5 Asian handicap corners in each of Sunderland’s away games would have won 12 times and lost seven times. And the chance of a payout today on Rochdale +1.5 Asian handicap corners might be better than the odds suggest.

Sky Bet League One standings

Recommendation
Rochdale +1.5 Asian handicap corners
1pt 1.9 bet365

Thought for the week

At the FA Cup semi-finals this weekend a replay will be shown on screens in the ground if a referee’s decision is overturned after a Video Assistant Referee (VAR) review. This is a characteristically well-intentioned gesture, no doubt encouraged by officials themselves. It is unlikely to make VAR less controversial, though.

A message announcing the decision will be followed by a “definitive video clip”. It might not prove definitive, however. Even if it is shown only once and viewed from a distance. The initiative is designed primarily for fans in the stadium.

For many incidents for which VAR is used there is no such thing as a right decision, in the sense that there is no decision on which everyone will agree whether they have watched one replay or a hundred.

Television companies show countless replays. Inside and outside the studio there can still be fierce disagreement over whether the VAR's declaration was right.

The question of what to do while the VAR is deliberating still has not been answered officially, so I will make my own suggestion. While the referee stands on the pitch with his finger in his ear, the public address system should lighten the mood with a blast of Benny Hill singing “stick your finger in your ear and go ting-a-ling-a-loo”.

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