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Friday 1 December 2023 15:12, UK
Jones Knows is back with his Premier League best bets column and is giddy with excitement about backing Dejan Kulusevski to score at 13/2.
Three points. It's what a weekend should be focused on.
Pity mine ended with losing them. It was a sorry state of affairs in terms of the best bets, albeit when you play big prices, guess what, you're going to back a lot of losers.
That said, all three legs of the 7/1 treble got beaten - Charlie Taylor to make 1+ foul, Brighton not to win at Forest and Everton to beat Manchester United. Horrendous.
That Everton flop (they did win the expected goals battle) meant the Jordan Pickford and Jarrod Branthwaite card angle at 100/1 never got off the ground - as didn't the 14/1 Bet Builder for the Man City vs Liverpool game. If anyone found a big-price winner in that damp squib of a game then fair play.
After the famine comes the feast hopefully. Time to get that P+L moving in the right direction. And remember, whatever I'm tipping in this column, I'm backing too, so I feel the losers just like you all do.
I'm all for following them to contribute towards what's likely to be a very high goals total when Tottenham travel to Manchester City, live on Super Sunday. As Chelsea showed in the 4-4 draw with City, if you can take the game into chaotic mode then City can be vulnerable through their midfield where Rodri is being overworked. Spurs thrive on chaos and they top the charts in the Premier League for shots from open play and fast breaks this season (164).
Dejan Kulusevski is the Spurs player to back to score at 13/2 with Sky Bet. It's a massive price and double stakes are advised. He has scored in both of Spurs' last trips to the Etihad Stadium and is getting into some dangerous scoring positions of late, notching against Chelsea and hitting the post in the 2-1 defeat to Aston Villa.
His positional play really caught my eye last Sunday as it seems Ange Postecoglou is negating the loss of creativity from James Maddison's injury by playing a front four with Kulusevski still playing off the left but with more instruction to play as a second striker. If this trend continues, then a player of his intelligence and skill is going to see a huge increase in his strike rate in front of goal - hopefully starting on Sunday.
Manchester United have failed to win away from home against a top-nine ranked side under Erik ten Hag in 10 attempts, to an aggregate score of 34-9. To my figures and ratings, Newcastle should be rated closer to 4/7 with Sky Bet to win this match, yet we can get Evens. Christmas may have come early in that regard.
Double that up with goals in the Nottingham Forest vs Everton clash, live on Sky Sports. The market expectation is underplaying the chances of goals and it's unusual to get such fancy prices on a Premier League game to surpass the over 2.5 line considering 15 of the last 20 matches have seen over 2.5 goals land which has taken the overall strike rate to 64 per cent for matches this season producing three or more goals.
Brighton remain very flat under Roberto De Zerbi and the absence of Lewis Dunk is a massive issue for them at Chelsea. All this evidence makes this a very winnable fixture for Chelsea but the 8/11 with Sky Bet isn't a price I'm willing to play at considering the hot and cold nature of the Blues at home.
I'd much rather back a bigger price for Chelsea to win by three or more goals at 5/1. When Brighton get beat, it can escalate quickly into a thrashing as shown in heavy defeats to Everton and Aston Villa under De Zerbi. And in their last seven Premier League defeats, the aggregate score has been a whopping 25-7 in favour of the opposition.
