Betting Tips: Boosted Treble from Lars Sivertsen
13 min
The PL is back! With the September international break behind us it is time to get back to business, and time for me to pick out a boosted treble and three selected singles that I like this weekend.
By Lars Sivertsen, Football Expert for Betsson
Boosted Treble of the week
Southampton – Manchester United
We start off on the South Coast and we’re going to do something pretty unusual for me: We’re going to back Manchester United. We’ve had some good times going against Manchester United in various ways over the last couple of years, with the team often failing to live up to the club’s status and prestige. But I feel good backing them here, because they are facing Southampton. The Saints have actually had the second most possession in the league over their first three games, but they’ve scored just one goal and ended up with nil points. Early signs are that the style of play that got Southampton promoted last season is not going to serve them as well in the top division. Call them this season’s Burnley, if you will. But unlike Vincent Kompany, I suspect boss Russell Martin won’t get one of the top jobs in European football if Southampton are relegated.
Manchester United have been a deeply frustrating team under Erik ten Hag, though Ten Hag himself would no doubt argue that being the United boss has been a deeply frustrating experience – with injuries to key players and off-the-pitch distractions constantly undermining his effort to put his stamp on this team. Still, it is clear the Dutchman is under pressure to deliver results after an iffy start to the season. It can be hard to pinpoint just exactly what Manchester United are good at under Ten Hag, but one thing we know Ten Hag wants to do is make United one of the best transition teams around. He hasn’t been fully successful in this endeavour, to put it mildly, but one thing United have been doing fairly well at times is pressing high and forcing high turnovers. Their efforts have frequently been undermined by the massive gap left in midfield, but it is true that United tend to force a reasonable number of high turnovers. Southampton are happy, maybe too happy, to pass the ball around in their own half, making them a prime target for the one thing United do reasonably well under Ten Hag.
I’m still not fully sold on Ten Hag in particular and this Manchester United team in general, but Southampton’s first three games this season were very worrying. For all of United’s flaws, they have a good amount of speed up front and they are decent at winning possession high up the field – and I think they’ll get plenty of opportunities to show both of these qualities here. I think Manchester United will beat Southampton on Saturday.
Aston Villa – Everton
Speaking of a team that’s started poorly, here come Everton! Three games, two goals scored, ten conceded and no points is the bottom line so far for Sean Dyche’s men. Their woeful collapse against Bournemouth before the international break was the “most frustrating” defeat in Dyche’s career so far, according to the man himself. The most surprising thing about Everton’s start to the season has been just how poorly they’ve defended for many of those 10 goals conceded. You’re expecting a certain level of organization and aggression from a Sean Dyche team, and last season we mostly got that – even as misfiring strikers undermined the team’s efforts down the other end. At the start of this season it appears that the team has taken many steps backwards.
With a team in crisis, Villa away is not very high on the list of games you’re hoping to see on the fixture list. Unai Emery’s team had an impressive home record last season (12 wins, four draws and just three defeats), and have had a reasonable start to the season with two wins and a defeat – to Arsenal. The injury to Leon Bailey is a slight concern, leaving Aston Villa a little bit short down the flanks. They will be looking to the promising Morgan Rogers to pick up the slack.
Ollie Watkins is going through something of a slump – scoring no goals in his last eight starts in the league – but facing a generous Everton defence would seem to be a perfect time for him to get back on track in front of goal.
In their home games against teams that finished 9th or lower in the league last season, Aston Villa had 10 wins, two draws and no defeats.
Reliably getting the job done against teams you should be beating at home has been one of their big strengths under Unai Emery, and I don’t think they’ll slip up against a troubled Everton team. I’m backing Aston Villa to win here.
Tottenham – Arsenal
Next up, we just have to have a pick in the North London derby and I will be looking for goals. Now, there is a certain logic that suggests we may see a low-scoring game here – with Arsenal missing a few key players and Tottenham missing both their natural strikers in Dominic Solanke and Richarlison. Son Heung-min remains an uneasy fit as a striker, and Arsenal may choose to play a bit more conservatively than usual given their absentees. But come on, it’s the North London derby.
Eight out of the last 10 games between these two have gone over 2.5 goals, and even with the aforementioned caveats I think this one will do too.
The absence of Declan Rice means we’re likely to see Jorginho and Thomas Partey in the Arsenal midfield, and as much as Arsenal had the best defence in the league last season you’d have to say that Spurs should have a reasonable chance of getting through that midfield. Last season Tottenham scored in 18 out of 19 home games in the league, with the one exception being that rather odd game against Manchester City in which the home crowd were ambivalent about the occasion, to say the least. With Declan Rice having started 37 out of 38 games for Arsenal last season it becomes a little difficult to predict how much his absence will hurt them here, but logically his athleticism and work-rate should be a big miss. Spurs drawing a blank here would be a huge surprise to me.
Down the other end, of course, it’s very hard to trust the Spurs defence to not mess up at least once, and probably more times than that. The absence of Arsenal’s creator-in-chief will be a blow, but they are facing a Spurs defence that at times seems more than happy to create the opposition’s chances for them. I expect Arsenal to sit a bit deeper than they usually do, challenging Spurs to break them down and looking to hit their opponents on the break. Spurs have some decent long range shooters who might find some joy against a low block, and for sure it’s not hard to imagine Arsenal successfully hitting a snoozy Spurs backline on the break. And both teams carry significant threat from set pieces. It might be a bit more tight and niggly than North London Derbies have tended to be, but I still think we’ll get to “over 2.5 goals” in this game. So over 2.5 goals in Tottenham vs Arsenal on Sunday is my third and last pick for this weekend’s boosted treble.
Normally this treble would get you a price of 4.20, but Betsson have increased the odds to 5.00! Good luck!
Selected singles
Southampton – Manchester United
First up on the selected singles we’re going to double down on Manchester United, but we’re going to add -1.0 on the Asian handicap for a price of 2.29. A simple Manchester United win is priced at 1.78 and I think that is entirely backable, based on what I’ve seen from Southampton this season. But even though Aaron Ramsdale should be an upgrade in goal for the Saints, I think United could have a good time here and I’m happy to take the -1.0 Asian handicap version. For those who are unfamiliar with Asian handicap betting, -1.0 means that a United win by two goals or more gets you a full win – but if United win by just one goal your stake is returned. I’m very confident United will win here and I think there’s a fair chance they win by more than a goal – so -1.0 on the Asian handicap at a price of 2.30 seems like a sensible approach to me.
Fulham – West Ham
Next up we’re heading to West London and looking at Fulham against West Ham. It wouldn’t be one of my betting previews if we didn’t hit “both teams to score + over 2.5 goals” in at least one game, and this weekend I want to put that particular chip down at Craven Cottage. The “both teams to socre” test is, as usual, pretty simple: Home teams usually score, do we have a particularly strong reason to think this away team will keep a clean sheet? In the case of West Ham, not so much. It’s early days and I expect Julen Lopetegui will improve them defensively, but after three games they’ve conceded the second highest xG-number in the league – after Ipswich. This comes with two big caveats, the first being that looking at xG-numbers after just three games is a bit iffy, xG is a wonderfully useful metric but you should be careful with smaller sample sizes. The second caveat is, well, they’ve played Manchester City. That’s always unhelpful for your numbers. But West Ham conceded 15 shots at home to Aston Villa and they conceded 14 shots away to Crystal Palace. Fulham have a reasonably competent attack and I would expect them to find the net at least once here.
Now, the second question when looking at “both teams to score”-picks is, obviously, do we back the away team to get a goal? And in this case that is a pretty emphatic “yes” for me. Fulham have made some interesting signings this summer, but I’m not convinced they’ve fully filled the Joao Palhinha-shaped hole in their midfield. And as we’ve pointed out many, many times in our preview articles here, West Ham have a rather spicy attack. I’m not totally convinced that Niclas Füllkrug is the long-term Michail Antonio-replacement the team has been crying out for, but Jarrod Bowen has started the season in lively fashion and a supporting cast of Mohammed Kudus and Lucas Paqueta is not bad at all. I think this should be a watchable game in West London and I think both the hosts and the visitors should get on the scoresheet. “Both teams to score” is priced at 1.57, which is just a tiny bit on the low side, but if we add “over 2.5 goals” to the mix we end up with a much more palatable 1.95 – so I definitely think that’s worth the extra bit of risk here.
Bournemouth – Chelsea
Next up we’re going to take a bit of a swing with our last pick of the weekend, but I’m happy to do that in this early part of the season.
With just three games played in the PL so far we don’t really have quite as much data as I would like on the 20 teams in the league, meaning it’s inevitable that some of our early picks will be based more on gut feeling and subjective assessments than I typically prefer. So while we have to take some swings here, I figure it makes sense to take bigger ones now and again. For this game, I liked “Chelea to win and both teams to score” at a price of 3.30. Chelsea were very much the main character of this transfer window, and a chaotic, bordering on unhinged, approach to the market has been followed by news of boardroom squabbles and warring co-owners. With the incredible amount of money spent and very little success to show for it since the takeover, you can’t be too surprised that Chelsea’s various owners are unhappy with each other.
But forgetting all the noise and looking at the team for a moment, well, the team isn’t all that bad. One of the theories I have and that I’m willing to take a few bets on early this season, is my theory that “Chelsea are actually not bad”. They have last season’s breakout star Cole Palmer pulling strings and doing damage, and up front the much-dissed Nicolas Jackson has actually looked sharper at the start of the season. Noni Madueke suddenly scored a hat-trick against Wolves, showing flashes of his talent, and Chelsea have about 47 other wingers raring to go. How Enzo Maresca will manage the squad is one of the big questions of the season for Chelsea, but all the news of chaos and strife can distract us from the fact that the team and the players are really rather good. Playing Manchester City on the opening day of the season is a bit of a write-off, they then beat Wolves 6-2 and were enormously unfortunate not to beat Crystal Palace before the international break. I think this team is fine. The club, on a broader scale, is a circus and the squad makes no sense, but the 11 players Enzo Maresca will end up putting on the field are good – and I think the team is fine.
Bournemouth are a positive, likeable, attacking outfit under Andoni Iraola’s leadership, and with the Chelsea team still getting settled and still getting used to Maresca’s methods I would expect Bournemouth to at least lay a glove on their opponents here. Specifically, Maresca favours a patient build-up play and one of the things Iraola’s Bournemouth do well is set pressing traps for opponents who like to play out from the back. I can absolutely see Bournemouth scoring from a high turnover here. But I am less convinced that Bournemouth can keep a talented Chelsea attack out down the other end. A Chelsea win is priced at 2.08, which is not a bad bet in my opinion. I also like using the Bet Builder to get “Chelsea or draw + over 2.5 goals” at 2.02. But if we’re going to take a chance here and base our analysis on subjective assessment more than empirical data, we might as well take on a bit more risk and pick Chelsea to win + both teams to score at a tasty price of 3.21.
Good luck!
PS: Please note that the odds might have changed after writing and publication.
Last Updated: 13.09.24
