Jamie P (http://bettinginsiders.com )had another winning week last week with his assessment of the Leicester penalty situation spot on.
Before we look at his bet for this week I just want to tell you about a freebie you can pick up for Saturday's racing.
It's a complete breakdown of every race at the Kempton Boxing Day meeting and you can get it for free here – https://dailypunt.com/kempton
Get on Watford’s Dynamic Duo at Chelsea
If you’ve been betting for a while you’ll inevitably pick a few bets where you’ve just got it all wrong. You completely misread how a match would pan out and your bet never had a chance. That’s just part of the game. So it’s nice when the complete opposite happens and you get it spot on. This is what we said about Riyad Mahrez last week: ‘I saw Mahrez hand Vardy the ball when it was clearly his turn to take the penalty. With Vardy’s scoring run now over it should be down to Mahrez if the opportunity arises. A small detail but one which could be important.’
And important it was because Leicester were awarded a penalty and it was Mahrez, not Vardy, who took it. For interest’s sake, he also took the second one, converting both. That came in at 3.75, as did our bet on Leicester on the Double Chance market at 1.83 meaning the column is now showing a healthy profit. Just like Leicester, we’re not going to rest on our laurels though, so on we go.
Watford, similar to Leicester, continue to be grossly over-priced to win matches in the Premier League. This week you can get odds of 8.5 on them to beat Chelsea. Yes, Chelsea. A side eight places and 10 points below them in the league. A side who has lost more matches than they’ve drawn and won together. I’m sure Guus Hiddink will improve the side just like he did in his first spell at the club but that may take some time, even though the players’ attitudes improved markedly before he was even appointed, as evidenced by their display against Sunderland. That’s how much ill feeling there was in the camp toward Jose Mourinho.
We simply cannot have Watford at that price without having a nibble but there are actually bets we fancy even more. Watford have now scored in all of their last eight matches and more impressive still, have scored nine in their last four. Chelsea on the other hand have conceded 27 goals in 17 Premier League matches so far this season and that’s one of the chief reasons they’re in the position they’re in and why Mourinho is no longer in the Stamford Bridge hotseat.
So we’re pretty confident that Watford will score at least once but odds of 1.73 aren’t enough to get us excited. Instead, we’ll try to predict who will score that goal in the game. In Watford’s case, it’s not that difficult. 17 of their 19 goals in the league have been shared by two players: Odion Ighalo has 12 and Troy Deeney has five. Critics will argue that Watford are over-dependent on these two for goals and the stats certainly back that up. But so what? Aren’t strikers meant to be the ones scoring goals? Admittedly Watford will find themselves in a bit of a pickle if one of these two gets injured because their whole gameplan revolves around creating chances for those two. But for the moment those two are fit as fiddles and if one does get injured, Quique Flores will have to cross that bridge when he comes to it.
With Watford strongly fancied to score, we’re better off backing those two to score at anytime. One of them should come in and it would be no huge surprise if they both did.
0.5 pt Back Watford to beat Chelsea @ 8.5 with William Hill.
1pt Back Odion Ighalo to score @ 4.33 with SkyBet
1pt Back Troy Deeney to score anytime @ 4.5 with Bet365.