BOOKINGS boff Gavin Murphy (@GamePlanGavin) takes aim at Sunday's live Scottish Premiership action from Tynecastle.
Hearts v Celtic | Sunday 14.15 | Sky Sports 1
The Scottish Premiership kicks-off this weekend and champions Celtic travel to Edinburgh to tackle Hearts.
The Hoops will be in buoyant mood after their stoppage-time victory over Astana in the Champions League in midweek.
The Jam Tarts boss, Robbie Nielsen, feels that a visit to Tynecastle will be “a tough game for Celtic” and the recent meetings between these two teams suggest that there should be cards.
The past five meetings have produced total card numbers of 6-9-4-6-7, an average of 6.20 cards-per-game.
Thirty-four year-old John Beaton gets the whistle and his average is relatively low at 3.50 cards-per-game but, encouragingly, he took charge of this fixture in 2014/15 and gave six cards that day.
He also took charge of the Scottish Cup quarter-final between these two at this venue in October and dished out seven cautions on that occasion.
This referee was actually headbutted in March after he sent off a player in the Saudi Arabian derby between Al Hilal and Al Nasr – of course, nothing like that is expected on Sunday.
Beaton typically gives Hearts a healthy 3.30 cards-per-game. He averages just 1.07 cards-per-game to Celtic but most of those games were at Celtic Park and/or games they won easily, so a slightly misleading statistic.
You would expect a hostile environment for the visitors with Tynecastle sold out.
The average first card across the last five league encounters is issued in the 16th minute, which suggests plenty of early niggle.
Four of those five battles featured 6+ cards, so to see lines of around 4.5 cards offered is attractive.
I've been watching this line all week and there has been money for the Overs. With solid stats I'm getting involved too by taking the 6/5 on Over 45 Bookings Points with William Hill.
If you’re new to Bookings Points, a yellow card earns 10 points and a red card earns 25 points. If a player receives two yellow cards and is consequently shown a red card, he receives a total of 35 Booking Points.
Best Bets
Hearts v Celtic – Over 45 Bookings Points (6/5 William Hill)
