Kevin Pullein: Underdogs Tranmere can keep up on corner count

Best bet

Tranmere +2 on corners handicap
1pt Evens Sky Bet

Analysis

Tranmere could do better in the corners count in their League One game at Rochdale than Sky Bet anticipate.

Back Tranmere +2 on a corners-taken handicap at evens. The bet will win if Tranmere take more corners than Rochdale, the same number or one fewer. If anything else happens the bet will lose.

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

This is Rochdale’s sixth season since winning promotion to Sky Bet League One. If you had backed the visitors +2 corners taken in each of Rochdale’s home games you would have won 74 times out of 129 – 57 per cent.

Tranmere are currently in the relegation zone, so they might be at least slightly lower than average in terms of the playing strength of visitors. However, the chance that they will beat the corners handicap might still be better than the 50 per cent implied by a price of evens.

The goals-related markets suggest there is something like a 43 per cent chance of a home win, a 27 per cent chance of a draw and a 30 per cent chance of an away win. Those percentages are probably about right.

In other EFL games with similar result expectations, fair odds about the away team +2 corners taken would typically be in the region of 10-13, implying a 56 per cent chance of a payout. On the evidence of what has happened in the last 20 seasons anyway.

There is no immediately apparent reason for thinking that the chance is much lower for Tranmere at Rochdale. In other words, a winning bet might be slightly more likely than not – rather than as likely as not.

Much could depend on how the play develops. It usually does.

Tranmere need points even more urgently than Rochdale. They are six points behind Wimbledon, the team just above the relegation line, and ten points behind Rochdale, though Rochdale have played a game more.

If Tranmere should take the lead – especially if they do it early – they could spend longer defending in the rest of the game than they would have done if they still needed to score, and in the process they could concede more corners.

The bet could lose that way, or in another way. Considering all the permutations, however, it does seem possible that the chance of the bet winning may be better than evens.

Thought for the week

With Carlo Ancelotti as their manager Everton have won more points than every Premier League team except Liverpool. Their record reads: five wins, two draws and one defeat.

Already we can read articles explaining how Ancelotti has transformed Everton. If I am reading them right, it was by being friendly, keeping instructions simple and letting players express themselves.

Few people will ask the question they should: “How many others have done the same things and failed? It is the question that should be asked of all secrets-of-their-success stories.

Ancelotti presumably has behaved in much the same way wherever he has managed, and nearly always he has been really successful. He has won the Champions League three times and national titles in Italy, England, France and Germany.

How many other coaches, though, were amiable and straightforward and achieved nothing? Perhaps what distinguishes Ancelotti is something subtler, something harder to pin down.

To form a proper idea of whether you should follow a strategy, you need to know its track record: how often has it been tried, how many times did it succeed and how many times did it fail? The most triumphant example, by definition, will not be representative.

Or, alternatively, ask this: “How many others did exactly the opposite and also succeeded?”

Stefan Szymanski did that in a book called Playbooks and Checkbooks. He wrote: “Even a brief reading of studies of motivation shows that successful coaches employ different methods – some aggressive, some gentle, some strict, some permissive, some close and personal, some distant and hierarchical. Given that all of these methods have achieved success at some time or other, it seems unlikely that there is a simple formula.”

When Brian Clough, a manager who won the European Cup twice, was told that people would love to know the secret of his accomplishments, he replied: “So would I”.

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