Manchester United v Burnley: Can’t ignore big-priced draw

“A draw at 5.24/1 isn’t a price to be sniffed at given Burnley’s record over the past few seasons, how many draws they’ve had of late and the latest team news.”

Poor performance at Newcastle but progress being made

United put in a pretty poor performance against Newcastle last time, ‘escaping’ with a 1-1 draw.

It’s not often that you’d use that word when talking about them getting a point against a side struggling as much as the Magpies but the truth is Eddie Howe’s men really were much the better team.

Had it not been for some really good saves from David de Gea and it could easily have been 3-1 or so.

But everyone is allowed a bad day at the office and they’ve certainly improved under Ralf Rangnick who is after all, still unbeaten.

Edison Cavani came off the bench to get their equaliser and, with Bruno Fernandes suspended after picking up his fifth booking, may get a rare start with Ronaldo starting on the bench. Or they could just play upfront together.

Burnley staring relegation in the face

The Clarets haven’t played since December 12 when they drew 0-0 at home to West Ham.

There have been plenty of draws recently for Sean Dyche’s men, with stalemates in four of their last five matches, the exception being a defeat away at Newcastle.

Unfortunately for them, draws aren’t going to be enough. They’re 18th on just 11 points and even though we’ve been here before, maybe this really is the season that their direct style of football and pragmatic approach to survival just doesn’t do it.

Maxwell Cornet, who has five goals already as one of the few positives of their season, is likely to miss out again with an injury.

Warhorse Ashley Barnes continues on the sidelines, as well.

Given Burnley’s position in the table and that Manchester United are at home, 1.42/5 could be the sort of price the big hitters may have been interested in.

But if they were to look at the recent history in this fixture at Old Trafford, they may have wanted a rethink. It was a 3-1 win for the Red Devils last time out but before that there was a 2-0- win for Burnley and consecutive 2-2 draws.

So, are United a lay instead?

If they were to play as badly as they did a couple of days ago then yes, certainly.

The slight problem is it’s extremely hard to know if Burnley are going to be refreshed and invigorated against a side who must be pretty tired or if they’ll be rusty and off the pace having been out of action for so long.

But anyway. A draw at 5.24/1 isn’t a price to be sniffed at given Burnley’s record over the past few seasons, how many draws they’ve had of late and the latest team news.

Bruno Fernandes hasn’t been at anywhere near the level of the last couple of seasons and many will point to the arrival of countryman Cristiano Ronaldo as a contributing factor to that.

But he’s still their most creative midfielder and so rarely are they without him, that they may struggle on the night.

Raphael Varane looked extremely out of sorts and they’re clearly missing the somewhat underrated Victor Lindelof, who is missing after testing positive for Covid.

I think there are enough reasons to think of a share of the spoils could be on the cards at a big price.

Given those problems in defence for United, even though De Gea is admittedly in good form, we could make a case for ‘both teams to score’.

After all, they’ve scored in each of their last four visits here and got seven goals in total across those four games so netting at Old Trafford isn’t something they’ve found hard to do of late.

If you’re not convinced by my tip on the draw, at a much bigger price, this could be the wager for you. The slight problem of course is that Burnley haven’t been scoring many this season at all.

Just 14 in 15 games, top be precise. But of course, you can’t have it all your own way in terms of stats that back up your bet.

But 2.0621/20 just about does it for me and that’s my second and final wager for the match.

In the world of Bet Builders, how about this for one? A double featuring Ronaldo in both legs of it!

We’ll start with the obvious. He’s 4/7 to score and though he hasn’t looked at his sharpest in the last couple of weeks, it’s hard to keep a man like him off the scoresheet for too long.

But he’s also cut a frustrated figure at times and has had his name in the book four times already this season in 15 appearances. That makes the 9/2 on him being shown a yellow (perhaps while celebrating a goal!) decent value at 9/2. The double comes to 11.89.