Jones Knows: "No matter how much our taste buds want this to be a pulsating encounter full of incident and goals, the sensible strategy in this one is to oppose goals and cards."
Saturday 8 May 2021 21:31, UK
Jones Knows thinks Manchester City vs Chelsea could turn into a cagey one and wants to back a low scoring and card-less encounter.
A weekend of social media boycott also became a weekend of boycott on the winners front. It wasn't a protest, though. Safe to say, Jones did not know.
All three bets (Vardy-Iheanacho assist 9/2, a yellow card accumulator 66/1 and Burnley to beat West Ham 5/1) went into the bin with no bad-beats or fine margins for me to use as an excuse. I took three square on the chin.
The dismal weekend of betting probably was for the best as if the 66/1 had landed my willpower to stay away from my Twitter account with my trumpet in hand would have been severely tested. Tipsters love a trumpet - it's a prerequisite for the job.
I could have been the strikebreaker. Strikebreaker Jones. That's got a a ring to it? Very powerful. Will keep that up my sleeve for any further offspring.
Adding another child into this world is far from my mind though. The short-term goal is to finish the season booming my way into the summer with winners firing in from all angles.
Remember, whatever I tip here, I back. We're in this together. And remember to cast your eyes over my prediction column. Every Premier League game is previewed with betting angles aplenty.
P+L for the season: -1
No matter how much our taste buds want this to be a pulsating encounter full of incident and goals, the sensible strategy in this one is to oppose goals. Without even factoring in the likely match scenario of caution-focused football with both teams potentially playing with a focus elsewhere, the basic numbers paint a strong argument for a low-scoring encounter where chances will be hard to come by against resolute defences. Since Thomas Tuchel took charge, Chelsea have kept 18 clean sheets in 24 games and have conceded just eight goals in 15 Premier League games under his watch. Amazingly, over half of those came in one game against West Brom.
Then you have the City wall, led masterfully by - arguably - the best defender on the planet in Ruben Dias. This is a defence that has stopped Neymar, Kylian Mbappe, Harry Kane and Erling Haaland scoring over the past month. And one that when Dias and John Stones are partnered together have conceded just eight goals in 21 matches.
Much like the FA Cup tie between the pair, this will be a game of chess played out in an environment where a draw will do just fine for both managers. I'm all over the under goal line with a 0-0 correct score a big runner.
Instead of just playing the outright goals line, I've admittedly gone a bit greedy and added a cards angle into the bet in order to substantially beef up the price to double figures.
My thinking is that if the game stinks from a goalmouth action point of view the possibilities of end-to-end football which is the perfect scenario for cards is likely to be very low.
A lack of fans in the stands has had an affect on referees keeping their cards in their pocket. Over the past seven seasons, there's been under two cards shown in a fixture every 8.4 games. This season that has increased to every 7.2 games with 45 games already this season seeing less than two cards shown in the match.
Chelsea have been involved in nine of those matches and Manchester City eight, showcasing a good ratio of their games failing to produce cards. Both teams like to dominate possession which explains the low card count.
We're all set for a cagey encounter. Let's hope we can profit from it.
