Norwich v Everton Tips: Goals at a premium at Carrow Road

“Perhaps the key stat of the whole match here is that Norwich have failed to score in any of their last four home games in the Premier League.”

Norwich look doomed

Norwich are bottom with just 10 points.

And if that alone doesn’t sound bad enough, consider this: they’ve played 20 matches for that tally, while the likes of Burnley (18th place, 11 points) and Watford (17th place, 13 points) have played 17 and 18 matches respectively.

I suppose if you wanted to look for one positive, it’s that they didn’t spend a load of money in a desperate attempt to stay clear of relegation.

So, the smart money is on them going back to The Championship, investing a fair bit of the so-called ‘parachute money’ and coming pretty close to coming back again next year. Let’s see.

At least they have something of a clean bill of health coming into this one: from regular starters, only Billy Gilmour is unavailable through injury.

What really happened with Lucas Digne?

Everton are having a pretty shocking season of their own.

Yes, they’re very unlikely to be relegated even though they’re only 15th in the table but the big difference between these two sides lies in the reputation of the manager in charge, the budget available for transfers and wages, and the sheer quality of the players themselves.

In the last few days, out went the excellent Lucas Digne and in came Anwar El-Ghazi. The former went to Aston Villa, the latter came from Villa (on loan), though they’re completely unrelated transfers.

Digne’s case is an interesting one.

His Instagram post regarding his exit was cryptic to say the least and we’ll have to wait to see if we ever hear what actually happened there and who he feels was to blame.

Richarlison and Tom Davies are injured, Alex Iwobi is way at AFCON.

Everton look short at 2.1211/10. That’s the sort of price reserved for an away side who are in decent form, have players doing well and are high on confidence. Quite frankly, none of those things apply to the Toffees.

In addition to that, Opta remind us that they’ve lost their last two matches against promoted sides and that they’ve picked up just two points from their last seven games on the road.

Not that Norwich are much better. Another Opta stat is that Norwich have taken just five points from a possible 45 when it comes to home games in the Premier League.

But then again, Norwich are almost twice the price at 3.8514/5. In a market where it’s case of not being able to trust any of the three outcomes, it’s quite clearly best to leave it alone.

Perhaps the key stat of the whole match here is that Norwich have failed to score in any of their last four home games in the Premier League.

During that sequence they lost 0-1, 0-2, 0-5 and drew 0-0, so you can see to what extent they have problems scoring and why they’re in the position they’re in.

Everton’s matches have admittedly been more high scoring of late but that’s mostly because they’ve been conceding a load of goals against sides with far better attacking records than the Canaries.

They’re hardly big scorers themselves with just 23 goals in 18 matches this season.

I wouldn’t want to predict who might sneak a goal here and win 1-0 and by the way, the 0-0 could well be on the cards.

But I’m more than happy to take the 3.412/5 that we have under 1.5 goals in the match.

Norwich could well draw another blank, Everton might be good for the single goal, and it could quite easily end up goalless so that covers quite a few bases in a match where good betting opportunities are quite frankly, at a premium.

Over in the world of Bet Builders, you can of course select as many bets as you want, put them together at big odds and hope they land in place.

A decent alternative to a low-scoring match is the 9/10 that there’s at least one clean sheet in the match or rather, the ‘no’ on both teams to score.

And if like me, you believe Everton aren’t in great form but are unlikely to lose the game, you can add Everon/Draw on the Double Chance market at 2/9 to the equation.

The double would then come to 2.466/4 and that’s worthy of consideration as well.