Arsenal v Everton - Stats suggest Emery's outfit to prevail

PREMIER LEAGUE expert Daniel McCulloch (@DMcCulloch1984) is back to attack Super Sunday's encounter between Arsenal and Everton at The Emirates.

Arsenal v Everton | Sunday 23rd September 2018, 16:00 | Sky Sports

Clearly goals are expected at The Emirates on Sunday afternoon and a best price of 4/7 on both sides finding the net is understandable given that nine of their 10 combined games would have seen such a bet emerge in profit.

While I wouldn’t oppose such a position, I do think that looking at longer-term trends should be used in such circumstances and hopefully this explains why I like the look of Arsenal to win and Under 4.5 Goals to be scored at 21/20 with BetVictor.

The beauty of Arsene Wenger being at Arsenal for so long – and their style of play (and position in the table) not varying too much – was that you could put together a greater dataset to inform your position. Clearly that is not the case under Unai Emery, but I don’t believe the expectations are too different for the Spaniard.

Looking at data since the start of 2014/2015 season, this bet would have obliged on 37 occasions in a 57 game sample (65%). Moreover, across the same time period away to the Big Six, Everton have lost and seen four goals or fewer in total being scored in 13 of those 24 games.

These two may well finish a place apart but I expect there to be 10-15 points between them. Arsenal are worthy favourites and given that only around 13% of Premier League games involve five goals or more, we should be confident that this is a good way of finding value when backing a heavy favourite.

Possible anytime angle

Elsewhere, it might be worth having a look at the price on Shkodran Mustafi in the Anytime Goalscorer market come kick-off. The German has performed reasonably well for Arsenal this season – although he was poor at Newcastle last week – and has an eye for goal, scoring six times in 57 Premier League appearances for the Gunners.

Marco Silva’s sides have become known for their iinablity to deal with such situations and they’ve already conceded four goals from set-pieces this term. If you can get 9/1 or 10/1 on the Arsenal centre-half finding the net then I believe that is worth a few pennies.