Free football betting tips: Premier League Punting Pointers - betting trends from matchdays one to eight

Alongside some new ones, regular readers of this column will find some familiar points this week and I promise it's no error.

The arrival of another international break provides us with a second opportunity to assess. To look at what has been working and what hasn't, and try and get a handle on our staking plan for the remaining 302 fixtures.

While this campaign has been relentless thus far, it's only going to get busier when it resumes in a fortnight's time as midweek top-flight games begin to be drip-fed into the calendar. So now is the time to catch our breath.

Careful with cards

It's not been easy tracking the card trends during the behind-closed-doors era, with any effort to compare it with normal times slightly hampered by the final quarter of 2019/20 being played before empty stadiums.

One to quickly draw a line through is red cards, with little to no discernible change there. If there has been a decrease in rush-of-blood dismissals, presumably as a consequence of crowd-less stadia, it appears to have been balanced off by something else; the capability of a VAR to upgrade yellow cards to reds springs to mind.

But when it comes to bookings, there has been a slight drop-off.

Last term's 1,281 yellow cards was a tiny fraction higher than 2018/19, an average of 3.4 bookings per game. On the face of it, things don't look to have changed much this season with that average dropping to 3.1.

Scratch the surface and we can dig out a little more.

Just focusing on the past fortnight, there were 57 yellows dished out in 20 matches. An average of 2.85 per game.

But breaking things down, two fixtures involved four bookings, two involved five and three involved six. The remaining 13 matches shared 21 yellow cards between them at an average of 1.6 per game.

As is always the case when betting in the card market, the contest is vital, and of our seven high-booking games, only one - Everton v Newcastle - was a match you wouldn't class as either a local derby or a fixture between direct rivals - be that title challengers, top-four contenders or relegation battlers.

More run of the mill matches, at least in this sample size, are likely to involve 0-3 yellow cards, making under 30 booking points are smart play.

Just for clarity there was one red card across matchdays seven and eight, with Luka Milivojevic sent off for Crystal Palace at Wolves. His red card was upgraded from yellow following a VAR review.

That match, like so many others, saw just two bookings.

Safe to back unders

In the early days of the season, any under goals staking plan that may have worked in the past was destroyed by madcap matches but there has since been a notable drop-off in goalscoring for a concerted period.

After an average of 3.8 goals per game were scored across the opening four rounds, the last four have seen 2.7.

For our purposes, what is more important is the likelihood of there being under 3.5 or under 2.5 goals, with the latter incredibly rare in those initial weeks of the campaign.

In total, 31 of the past 40 matches have involved under 3.5 goals, and 25 of the past 30. Those are high, reliable numbers, and it's a bet to safely use in an encounter where you have a good feeling for both the result and likelihood of it being hard-fought.

When it comes to under 2.5, after a very slow (or fast) start, teams became circumspect. Now, it's a far more realistic play and one that when you factor in the circumstances of the game in question, can still be very much in our favour.

From just 12 of this season's opening 38 games involving under 2.5 goals, there have been 23 from the last 40; don't be scared to back unders is the simple takeaway here.

If we're looking for specific teams to get behind, Sheffield United and Wolves are our go-to.

Look past the Blades' 4-1 thrashing by Chelsea last time out, and 47 of their previous 50 matches had involved under 3.5 goals. For Wolves, it's now 19 from 22 for under 2.5.

Value in wing/full-backs

Matchday seven saw this theory really come to prominence, as half the fixtures had a full-back/wing-back on the scoresheet.

For defenders generally, if we class wing-backs as that, it's been a highly profitable season in front of goal. But while prolific centre-backs like Michael Keane, Kurt Zouma and Jannik Vestergaard have seen their prices cut, the players adjacent to them on the field haven't.

It does make sense too, the centre-halves are the ones going into the box at corners and free-kicks and therefore more likely to get on the end of a cross. But the goals from wing-backs and full-backs are, to a degree, being written off as one-offs.

When Rayan Ait Nouri, Kyle Walker, Tariq Lamptey, Ola Aina and Stuart Dallas all netted on the same weekend, it put paid to that theory in my eyes.

The evolution of the position and the current fad for plenty of Premier League teams to play with wing-backs is hugely increasing the likelihood of players in those positions getting on the scoresheet.

Reece James, who scored for Chelsea at Brighton on opening weekend, and Liverpool's Trent Alexander-Arnold also take direct free-kicks for their teams, hugely improving their opportunity to score.

The current prices simply don't reflect the attacking threat of the modern-day full-back.

Penalties, penalties, penalties...

I really wanted to consign this one to history, and truthfully I thought we had.

Few could stomach the penalty numbers before the last international break, and hey presto the referees had a meeting and fewer were given thereafter. They even started being more sensible with the handball rule!

But all of that was slowly forgotten over the past four weeks, culminating in a ridiculous Sunday to round off matchday eight as both Wolves and Liverpool were penalised for very unfair handball offences.

There were 91 penalties awarded in the Premier League last season, which is about par over recent years – since 2006/07 there have been between 80 and 106 in each campaign.

At the current rate there will be 200 this term, and I promise that is no exaggeration. There have been 41 already and we have had only 78 fixtures, it doesn't take a maths whizz to work out that that averages out to a penalty more than every other game - what a farce.

You could do far worse than to back a penalty to be given in pretty much every match, but let's finesse it slightly.

Leaders Leicester have been awarded an incredible eight spot-kicks already, twice as many as any other team in the division - Liverpool and Chelsea are on four.

Villa, Leeds, Arsenal, Everton and Southampton are all on one, with the rest of the clubs on two or three.

Picking out designated penalty takers and backing them in the goalscorer market has to be the smartest of all plays this season, especially if that player isn't a striker.

Unfortunately, we've seen Chelsea's Jorginho and James Ward-Prowse at Southampton both pass over responsibility, but the latter has assumed duties once again while Danny Ings is injured. Youri Tielemans plays second fiddle to Jamie Vardy at Leicester, but has still scored twice from the spot this season.

Bruno Fernandes is usually short to score for Manchester United anyway, and Sheffield United barely ever find the net so Sander Berge would need to be a juicy price to tempt us in any game.

Leeds midfielder Mateusz Klich and Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne are the only two others that spring to mind as non-strikers who have penalty duties.

I feel comfortable speaking for the majority of people and saying we hate the handball rule and how it is currently being implemented. Let's at least make some money from it.

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