Everton Likely To Find Stoke Tough To Beat In Low Scoring Match

By Sam Darby on 01/05/2012 11:05

Everton continue to finish the season in outstanding form, helped by the goals of January signing Nikica Jelavic, but they face a tough match on Tuesday night when they go to the Britannia Stadium to take on Stoke, who took a draw against Arsenal on Saturday. Everton are still hoping to finish in the Europa League placings, does ValueChecker think that Everton can win this match and continue their great run?

The ValueChecker Value Bets, which are based on a statistical analysis of previous results, think that under 2.5 goals is the best bet for this match. ValueChecker has highlighted the odds on under 2.5 goals as being too big according to form and recent meetings between the sides with ValueChecker suggesting the correct odds for this bet are 1.61 rather than the 1.72 that is available on this selection at the time of writing. The difference in odds means that this has been given a value rating of 0.41 by ValueChecker and that makes it one of the value plays of the day.

This game is going to be very difficult for Everton according to the Stoke ValueChecker wikis as Stoke have an outstanding home record and tend to pick up most of their points at the Britannia Stadium. In the 10/11 Premiership season Stoke gained 34 of their 46 points at home and two seasons before 35 of their 45 points came when playing at home. Stoke are clearly a strong home side but also a team that struggles on the road, largely because other team's pitches are wider meaning Stoke's set pieces that are sent towards the six yard box are not quite as effective.

Stoke have become a team who score many more goals in the second half than the first half in their matches. In the 10/11 Premiership season Stoke scored just 35% of their goals in the first half of games and 65% in the second half of games. This can be particularly helpful for in running betting in this match.

Another in running bet to consider in this match is Stoke to win the game if they hold a half time lead. The Stoke ValueChecker wikis show that they were winning 6 games at half time in the 10/11 Premiership season and they went on to win all of those games. This record wasn’t backed up in the previous season but could be worth looking out for in future games as Stoke seem to have added some extra grit and determination to their game making them better at seeing games out.

As for the Everton ValueChecker wikis, they show that if you fancy Stoke to win this game (many will fancy Stoke to win at home) then the best value could be to back Stoke to win by a one goal margin. In the 10/11 Premiership season Everton lost 10 games, 7 of which were lost by a 1 goal margin. In the 09/10 season Everton lost 9 matches and 6 of those were lost by a 1 goal margin.

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