Tuesday's Bet Of The Day: A feisty fixture from the EFL

JACK Wright's (@JackWright_BSB) brilliant Bet of the Day continues on Monday as we head to the Football League…

Exeter vs Grimsby | Tuesday 27^th April 2021, 19:00

When searching for a Bet of the Day – or any bet for that matter one of the key criteria at this stage of the season is to try and find a game with something riding on it for both teams – and that is exactly what we have here.

Exeter City must close a three-point gap on Newport to have a chance of finishing in the playoffs, while Grimsby must gain seven points on Barrow in their remaining three games to avoid dropping out of the EFL – and both these teams will also be relying on results going their way elsewhere to have a chance of fulfilling their respective goals.

The Mariners have shown some fight in order to even give themselves some hope at the foot of League Two, defeating Oldham with an 80^th minute Jay Matete strike on Saturday and shocking automatic promotion hopefuls Bolton at Blundell Park earlier this month.

Fight was displayed in the wrong way prior to that however, as prior to the Bolton win, Stefan Payne was dismissed at half time after headbutting his own teammate Filipe Morais – both players will take no further part in their club’s survival mission.

That incident does illustrate however the tension that must be around at this stage of the season as players deal with the possibility of playing at a higher level – or dropping through the trapdoor and in to the Non-League scene.

Therefore, with both these sides going into this game in urgent need of a victory and in the knowledge that a point would do very little for their promotion or survival prospects we should expect a full-blooded encounter, ripe for booking points.

At this stage of the season, I like to take a filtered view of how sides have played in their most recent games and so looking at the last five games and we can see that both Exeter and Grimsby have been picking up cautions.

A good benchmark is 20+ booking points and Paul Hurst’s side top the League by picking up 20+ in four of their last five away games, while the Grecians have crossed that line in three of their last five home games.

Grimsby 20+ booking points is a fairly prohibitive price and most BP’s is a tricky call as Matt Taylor’s team have actually picked up more than their opponents in four of their last five games at St. James Park.

So, with David Rock the man in the middle for this one I am instead taking a play on total booking points with 40+ being offered at 5/4 with Sky Bet.

The Hertfordshire-based official is ranked sixth in League Two for average booking points this season with a decent 41.88 per game average – putting that in to context for you readers not so familiar with the lower leagues or booking points – Mike Dean is averaging 41.67 in the EPL this season.

I am hoping for a repeat of this fixture last season which featured four yellow cards apiece and would have seen this bet land before the hour mark – with so much riding on the outcome we certainly have all the ingredients for something similar, so it’s over to the players at 7pm when…we can see who Mr. Rock is booking…