Check out ‘The Lars Resort’ host Lars Sivertsen’s odds tips, including a boosted treble!
Betting Tips: Boosted Treble from Lars Sivertsen
The weekend is here, and ‘The Lars Resort’ host Lars Sivertsen has drummed up a brand new boosted treble for this weekend’s football action from England, as well as a few single bets.
By Lars Sivertsen, Football Expert for Betsson
*Please be aware that the odds might have changed since publication
Boosted treble of the week
Nottingham Forest – Arsenal
Any lingering title hopes Arsenal may have had were well and truly snuffed out by Brighton last weekend. It’s been a brilliant season for the club overall, but right now the reality is also that they’ve won just two out of their last seven games in the Premier League. They’ve got little to play for here, but they will still want to give a good account of themselves against a Nottingham Forest team that isn’t out of relegation trouble just yet.
That said, by winning their last two home games, against Brighton and Southampton, Nottingham Forest have taken a big step towards possible survival. Getting a point away to Chelsea was pretty handy as well. Nottingham Forest have actually been pretty handy at home this season: In 18 games at The City Ground they’ve picked up 27 points, making them the 12th best home team in the division. The reason they’re still perilously close to the relegation spots with two games to go is, of course, that they’ve been the worst team in the league on the road.
With Arsenal’s form having collapsed a bit and the team having little to play for, it is tempting to back Forest to get some kind of result here. But Arsenal should still be a significantly better team than Forest, so I’m going to take a different approach: Both teams to score.
Arsenal’s defence has been iffy for a while now. Since the international break in November/December, a full 10 teams in the Premier League have conceded a lower “expected goals” number than Arsenal, and it’s fair to say that this kind of defensive performance will not win you a league title. In their last nine games in the Premier League, Arsenal have kept just one clean sheet, and that was against Newcastle in a game where the opponents hit the woodwork twice. Injuries haven’t helped, with William Saliba, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Takehiro Tomiyasu all set to miss out here.
Against a shaky, heavily depleted Arsenal defence you would expect Forest to at least manage to score a goal. They’ve found the net in 16 out of 18 home games this season, and “both teams to score” is a bet that has landed in five straight Nottingham Forest games now. They have a number of players out injured, as has always been the case with Forest this season, but their attack is looking good. Taiwo Awoniyi has scored four in his last two games, and with him up front and Morgan Gibbs-White and Brennan Johnson either side of him Forest actually have a pretty exciting front three. But I’m less convinced that Forest can keep a clean sheet down the other end, so I’m happy to put “both teams to score” in this game on our weekly treble.
West Ham – Leeds
Next up we head to Stratford and the London Stadium, where Europa Conference League finalists West Ham take on Big Sam’s Leeds United. “Big Sam’s Leeds United” is still a collection of words that feel unfamiliar and uneasy, somehow, but he’s there and so far he’s gotten one point more than most would have expected. I certainly didn’t predict a positive result for Leeds against Newcastle last weekend. Everton’s surprise win against Brighton has made survival much more difficult for Big Sam and Leeds, but that point against Newcastle may prove very handy indeed. Here Leeds take on West Ham, one of Sam Allardyce’s many, many ex-employers, and they face West Ham under quite unusual circumstances. By beating Dutch outfit AZ this midweek, West Ham qualified for their first European final in 47 years. This could really put some gloss on what has been an otherwise poor season for West Ham and David Moyes. For them it’s now all about the final against Fiorentina on the 7th of June.
Which raises the question of what kind of line-up we’ll get from West Ham here. When they faced Brentford between the two legs of the Europa Conference semi-final, Moyes made nine changes to the line-up and West Ham received a bit of a thrashing. How many changes will we see here? Maybe not as many as that, but it would make sense to rest some players after Thursday night’s exertions.
So we have a Leeds team who have shown some backbone in their first two games under Allardyce and who have to get a result, versus a West Ham team who know that the most important thing about this game is to avoid picking up injuries. Sure, it’s their last home game of the season and no one likes losing to Big Sam, but it’s hard to see why they would risk much of anything here. I think we’ll see some squad rotation with West Ham, I think we’ll see a much more motivated Leeds team, and I think Leeds can get some kind of result. I won’t go as far as backing the Leeds win (at a pretty chunky odds of 2.88), but instead I’d like to add a double chance with a draw or a Leeds win to our weekly treble. If Leeds can get a result against Champions League-chasing Newcastle United, they should be able to avoid defeat against a West Ham team who would probably have preferred to not play this game at all if that was an option. “Draw or Leeds United” on the Double Chance goes on our weekly treble.
Manchester City – Chelsea
To finish off the treble we’ll head to Manchester, where Champions-elect Manchester City take on Frank Lampard’s amusingly nonsensical Chelsea team. They may have gotten a win against Bournemouth two weeks ago, but they followed that up with dropping points at home to the worst away team in the league. Chelsea look set to finish in the bottom half of the table after what has been a truly disastrous season.
Only three teams, Everton, Southampton and Wolves, have scored fewer goals this season than Chelsea. In 17 games against teams that are 10th in the table or higher, Chelsea have won just once. That’s right, Chelsea’s record against teams in the top half of the table this season reads as follows: Played 17, one win, six draws and 10 defeats. Over those 17 games Chelsea have scored just nine goals. They come into this game having won just one in their last 11. There is probably never a good time to play Manchester City, the best team in the world right now, but certainly seems like an even worse time than usual to do it.
Manchester City could be champions by the time this kicks off and there is a risk of squad rotation. Still, these last few months City have just been relentless. They’re undefeated in their last 23 games in all competitions, winning 19 and drawing 4. They have the best home record in the league, winning 16 out of 18 Premier League games at the Etihad so far this season. 14 out of those 16 wins have been by a margin of more than one goal. City have also scored two goals or more in 16 out of 18 home games this season, and three or more in 13 of them.
They are very, very good.
From a betting perspective, there are two options I like here and I’m going to pick one for the treble and play the other as a single. The one I’ll stick on the treble is City to be ahead at half time. City have been in the lead at half time in 12 out of 18 home games this season, scoring a total of 30 first half goals at home. I think City will come out strong and look to put this game to bed early, so that they can start thinking about resting players in the second half. I’m more than happy to back City to be in the lead at half time and to put that on our weekly treble.
A treble with “both teams to score” in Nottingham Forest – Arsenal, a double chance with Leeds or draw in West Ham versus Leeds and Man City to be in the lead at half time versus Chelsea, would normally get you a price of 4.41. But Betsson have boosted that price to 5.00, which I think is good value this weekend!
Selected singles
Tottenham – Brentford
First off in our selected singles I want to head to North-East London where Tottenham take on Brentford. The visitors are actually just four points behind Tottenham in the table now, which given the vastly different resources the two clubs are operating with is a bit of an embarrassment for Spurs. The season is not ending well for Spurs, who have won just two games from their last nine.
Brentford don’t have much to play for, but have still won three out of their last four games. Ivan Toney’s lengthy suspension is a huge blow for them, but they do have other attacking options. Especially in a game like this, where Brentford are likely to have chances on the break, the speedy Yoane Wissa should be a real threat. Brentford have not been a typical “both teams to score” team this season, but we’re going to go in that direction anyway because of, well, Spurs.
Tottenham have been involved in the second highest number of “both teams to score” games in the Premier League this season, and the reason for that is obvious. As we’ve written ad nauseam on this blog: With Harry Kane and the rest of the Spurs attack up front you will always back them to score, but this current Tottenham defence can’t be trusted to do anything at all. So it should be no surprise that Tottenham have produced the second most “both teams to score” games in the division, and that Tottenham’s games have the third highest goal average in the league (behind Manchester City and Arsenal)
So we’re going to do it yet again. Both teams have scored in nine out of Tottenham’s last ten games, and so we’re going to go again here. Tottenham have scored in 16 out of 18 home games, do we think they’ll get shut out by Brentford? Not really. Do we think they’ll keep a clean sheet? Absolutely not. It’s not the most imaginative bet, it’s not the most exciting bet, but I am more than happy to back “both teams to score” in a Tottenham game yet again this season, with Betsson offering perfectly reasonable odds of 1.69.
Manchester City – Chelsea
Next we head back to Manchester and Manchester City’s game against Chelsea. As I mentioned in the treble analysis, there are two bets I like here and we’ll go to the second one here: Manchester City to win by more than one goal. The reason is obvious enough, Man City have won 14 out of their 18 home games this season by more than one goal. I don’t really fear rotation that much, whether City going into this as confirmed champions or if they need a win to confirm it on the day, there is going to be a party atmosphere at the Etihad and City will want to put on a show in front of their fans.
Chelsea are a mess, and while that is clearly not all of Frank Lampard’s making he has made no discernible impact since taking over. Chelsea have some pretty significant injury absentees here as well, with Reece James, Mason Mount, Ben Chilwell and N’Golo Kante all out. Kalidou Koulibaly and Mateo Kovacic are both doubtful. It’s a small sample size, they’ve had a difficult fixture list and they’ve played one game fewer than the teams around them, but since Frank Lampard took over Chelsea have the third worst record in the Premier League – ahead of Southampton and Leeds. I don’t see how they can stand up to Manchester City here, even if Guardiola does rotate a bit. I think it’s worth backing Manchester City to yet again win by more than one goal at home, and so I think Manchester City with a -1 handicap at odds of 1.75 is a bet worth taking this weekend.
Newcastle – Leicester City
Lastly we’re going to look at the Monday night game, which again features Leicester City. I was thoroughly disappointed with their efforts against Liverpool on Monday. It’s fair enough that Liverpool are a better team, but in an evening game, under the lights, in front of their own fans with Premier League survival at stake, you’d expect something more than that from Leicester City. They were comprehensively outplayed and produced just four shots over 90 minutes of football, at home, and then manager Dean Smith comes out after the game and tries to blame the referee. Dreadful stuff from everyone involved.
Newcastle continued their march towards a Champions League spot by beating Brighton 4-1 this week, and they’ll have every reason to feel confident going into this game. Leicester City have won just one game in their last 15 attempts, and only Bournemouth and Leeds have conceded more goals than them this season. They have some good players on paper, but heads were quick to drop once they went behind against Liverpool. There seems to be a real lack of both cohesion and fighting spirit, and a number of players appear to have at least one eye on the exit door.
Newcastle have looked pretty convincing of late. They had blips against Aston Villa and Arsenal, and put up a surprisingly undercooked performance against Leeds, but aside from that they’ve looked strong recently. They’ve won nine out of their last 12 games in the Premier League, and that run includes big results like beating West Ham 5-1, beating Spurs 6-1, beating Everton 4-1 and now Brighton 4-1. Given how Leicester City have been defending recently, I think we could be on for another one of those.
There are a couple of angles I like here and I’m having a hard time picking between the two. The first would be a Newcastle win + over 2.5 goals at a price of 1.87. I think Newcastle are more than capable of covering the overs on their own here, but shouldn’t rule out the possibility of Leicester City getting a goal. Newcastle have after all just kept one clean sheet in their last 18 games. Having said that, I was slightly taken aback by just how little Leicester offered at home to Liverpool. A simple -1 handicap on Newcastle here also appeals at 2.02. But I keep looking at Newcastle’s inability to keep clean sheets, and I’m finding the price of 2.72 on a Newcastle win plus both teams to score very hard to resist. True, Leicester offered nothing at all going forwards against Liverpool, but that was a bit of an aberration. They’d been putting up pretty healthy-looking attacking numbers, and before the Liverpool game Leicester had scored in nine out of their last ten.
So it comes down to this: We think Newcastle are a much better team, and with a few exceptions they’ve been playing well recently. They have, however, only kept one clean sheet in their last 18. Leicester City are woeful in defence, have some good players going forward, had been scoring goals pretty consistently before they had a stinker against Liverpool on Monday. For me all signs point to “Newcastle win + both teams to score” at odds of 2.72 being good value here, so I’m adding that to our selected singles this week.
Good luck!
