Tuesday's Bet Of The Day: Championship cards appeal

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

Brentford vs Cardiff | Tuesday 20^th April 2021, 18:00 | Sky Sports

Brentford are fast entering last chance saloon territory as far as automatic promotion is concerned, sitting eight points adrift of Watford, the current occupiers of the second, final and only remaining place to guarantee Premier League football next season, with a game in hand and five fixtures left to fulfil.

The Bees missed a big opportunity to close that gap at the weekend dominating a goalless draw at home to Millwall while Watford slipped to a surprise defeat to Luton Town at Kenilworth Road, they will be doing their utmost not to slip up once more against a side who are all but mathematically out of the play-off picture.

With the Hornets travelling to already promoted Norwich who know a win over their closest rivals will also secure their second Championship title in three years, we should expect Thomas Frank’s side to be fired up knowing they have an excellent chance to narrow that gap to second place.

We won with Cardiff as recently as Friday night when they comfortably picked up more booking points than Reading and I am anticipating a similar game here.

Mick McCarthy’s men aren’t too concerned about having the ball and as a result spend a fair amount of time chasing it, as their season average of 45.9% illustrates, dropping in to the bottom three for possession after accruing only 35% at the Madejski Stadium – only bottom club Wycombe and third bottom Rotherham have less.

Brentford have the fifth highest possession average (54%) which being a little higher than Reading’s I expect to see them clock up north of 65% too and they have drawn the seventh highest number of fouls in the league.

However, this time rather than looking for the Bluebirds to pick up more booking points I am simply taking the line on them collecting 20+ which is something they have done in seven of their last ten outings and four of their last five both overall and when on the road.

Referee Darren England isn’t the most prolific with his cards but has shown at least one team two cards (20+ booking points) in six of his last seven appointments and has a season average in the Championship of 35.63 from his eight games – this will be his first meeting with either of these two sides this season.

But having watched Cardiff on Friday I confidentially put them up as Tuesday’s Bet of the Day to collect 20+ booking points at 5/6 with Sky Bet – a price that has been nibbled in but is still in our favour in my opinion.