Football betting tips: Norwich v Brentford
1pt Teemu Pukki to score first at 4/1 (Unibet)
1pt Ivan Toney to score last at 5/1 (Paddy Power)
Ah, the birds and the Bees. No, not those ones.
Although spending an afternoon explaining all that to the kids might well be preferable trying to pick a winner in this one as the Sky Bet Championship’s premier pair couple up at Carrow Road.
It should be a tasty affair full of excitement, the equivalent of a Year 6 sex education class for your football hormones – lie back and think of England’s best two second-tier sides.
So, the question is: who’s going to be, er, on top?
Kick-off time: Wednesday, 17:30 GMT
TV channel: Sky Sports Action
Home 6/5 | Draw 12/5 | Away 9/4
Who is the better team – Norwich or Brentford?
Norwich have assumed that position at the moment, five straight wins having opened up a seven-point cushion to second-placed Brentford, with Watford three further adrift in third.
Daniel Farke’s Canaries set aside a wobble of three games without a win or a goal, with the return of Emi Buendia from suspension sparking that winning sequence.
Intriguingly, Brentford have endured a similar stutter, three straight shock defeats to Barnsley, QPR and Coventry sandwiched in between six wins – four prior and two since.
There are all sorts of mixed signals here though. Take the 'table never lying' tenet, then, of course, Norwich are better. But if you look at Infogol’s Expected Points table, Brentford should be top.
That’s perhaps unsurprising given their goal tally of 61 in 33 games – the Bees have netted 12 more than the next highest-scoring side in the division (Cardiff).
Brentford are over-performing in front of goal – their xG (Expected Goals) figure is 52.2, so they have netted nine more than, in theory, they should.
Norwich, meanwhile, are underachieving, despite Teemu Pukki’s lethal finishing – the Canaries have an xG of 53.61 and have scored only 47 – but their defence is exceeding expectations, conceding a jaw-droppingly low 25 from an xGA (Expected Goals Against) of 38.
That tells us opponents are wasting chances against them – but you suspect Brentford won’t.
Who is the better striker – Teemu Pukki or Ivan Toney?
Brentford are over-performing in the goalscoring stakes due to one man – 25-goal marksman Ivan Toney. His xG is 18.29 so he’s six or seven goals better off than he should be, indicating a striker in prime form.
But he hasn’t – yet – got Brentford promoted. Pukki, of course, fired the goals that shot Norwich up two seasons ago and he also proved he could find the net in the Premier League.
The Finland forward is exceeding his expected output too – he has scored 18 from an xG of 15.23.
This match should be more than a Pukki-Toney shoot-out but it’s difficult to shake the feeling that the outcome will hinge on the two strikers, so central to their sides’ successes have they been.
You can back both to find the net at 4/1 with Sky Bet or go for larger stakes on one or both to score at any time – with Pukki a best price of 13/10 and Toney 9/5. But I have a pair of value plays in mind, given the habits of both.
Nine of Pukki’s 18 goals this season have been deadlock-breakers. It’s an art he seems to have perfected and the generous 4/1 Unibet offer on PUKKI TO SCORE FIRST can only be so high because Toney is also playing.
Toney, meanwhile, seems to come alive in the second half of games, particularly the final throes – he has scored six times in the final 15 minutes of matches and 10 of his 25 have been the last goal in games.
Paddy Power go 5/1 on TONEY TO SCORE LAST here – not bad for a man who has done so in a third of the Championship games he’s played this season.
In a game that really is too tough to call result-wise, the two top scorers clearly offer by far the best value.
Norwich v Brentford score prediction and best bets
- Teemu Pukki to score first at 4/1 (Unibet)
- Ivan Toney to score last at 5/1 (Paddy Power)
Score prediction: Norwich 2-2 Brentford (Sky Bet odds: 12/1)
Posted at 1930 GMT on 01/03/21
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