The main thing that struck me ahead of this game was that the corners quotes available looked quite low. The whole outlook of the game changed, though, when Villa's Steve Sidwell banged one in from outside the box after about 30 seconds.
How a goal affects corners, bookings and team's goals for the rest of the game is a very subjective matter. But a goal as early as this makes these questions very simple - there's 90 minutes left, so how many more or less corners will there be given that Aston Villa are a goal ahead?
Everton are a good team with strong mental fortitude. I suspected they'd react well to the setback mentally - they wouldn't give up, they'd keep their cool and start to exert pressure on Villa. Goodison Park is also a fantastic crowd, the fans would not get on the team's back in this situation, and if Everton were putting pressure on, the atmosphere for the rest of the game would encourage a fast tempo which would hopefully yield lots of corners.
Perhaps things will be different when Everton move to yet another identikit new stadium out of town, with the fans nowhere near the pitch and no atmosphere. So, my main opinion after the goal was that corners would be higher. I noticed that all the spread betting firms moved up on corners after the goal went in, but one of them didn't move up quite enough in my eyes, and this coupled with the fact that I thought corners should have been a bit higher initially meant that a BUY OF CORNERS AT 16 was the bet.
After the bet it was actually Villa that got a few corners, and they were ahead on corners when Lescott equalised for Everton on 30 minutes. This goal was probably bad for my bet, but I still felt fairly positive as both sides were attacking plenty, there was a good tempo and the corners kept coming. A mistake by Phil Jagielka gave Villa the lead again on 54 minutes.
After this Everton stepped up the pressure to another gear, and in the last 10 minutes there was a flurry of corners to bring the total up to sixteen. They got the equaliser right at the end through Joleon Lescott, a player who I originally thought was just a solid centre back, but who seems to be able to play the role of overlapping full-back and instinctive goal-poacher amazingly well at times.
There was yet more drama to come as Ashley Young put Villa ahead for the third with the last kick of the game, and I was left happy with my five point winner on corners.
AR
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