Is it Worth Betting on Corners in Football?

When I first heard about corner betting I must admit I found it a bit ridiculous, is there anything the bookies won’t take a bet on these days?

However after looking into the market more I can see that this may be of interest to those who like to bet and analyse football matches and statistics.

So which teams are likely to generate more corners?

Generally speaking for a corner to occur a team has got to press offensively so the defenders have to respond and kick the ball out of play to prevent an attack on goal.

With this in mind the most offensive teams should get the most corners, but is this true?

If we looked at https://www.thestatsdontlie.com/ we can check for football stats that may be relevant for us forming an opinion on how many corners will occur in a game.

They give stats for corners for a range of leagues but lets focus on the most popular league the English Premier League for the purposes of this articles.

Below is the average corners won by each Premier League side at the time of the article. Also is the current standing in the table. The top 4 teams in the league also correlates to those with the most corners. This would suggest a general trend to the top teams having more corners.

However there are some discrepancies. Burnley are fifth but 19th in the league and are not offensively strong and are third from bottom in number of goals scored. However, they gain an average of 5.93 corners a game, suggesting they are gaining far more corners than is typical for teams in the lower half of the table.

Is this reflected in the odds? Lets compare Burnley and Aston Villa. Both have 5.93 corners but in there next game the odds of Over 4.5 Corners is 6/5 for Aston Villa and Burnley are 5/6 for Over 3.5 corners.

Aston Villa play Man City who’s corners conceded averages 3.86 one of the lowest in the leagues. Burnley are playing Brighton who are also very good at not conceding corners at 3.93.

Although Aston Villa have the home advantage compared to Burnley, it seems Burnley is perhaps the better value bet as you can get 5/6 (1.83) on them getting 4 corners. Since they average near to six this looks from a statistical point of view a better bet than Aston Villa at 6/5 (2.2) to get 5 corners. Despite similar stats and similar defensive opponents (in terms of corners) the bookies seem to think Villa have more chance of hitting more corners.

They obviously favour Aston Villa because they are stronger offensively scoring 33 to Burnley’s 15 goals so far in the league, yet Burnley are still hitting high averages of corners, so perhaps there is some value there? Discrepancies like this are certainly worth testing and analysing to improve your football betting strategies.

So if you fancy betting on corners we would recommend visiting your preferred stats website and digging into the data, without data it really is a stab in the dark of what is already a tricky and under used betting market.

Depending on what league or team you look into its important to look at past data to form an informed opinion. That said remember to gamble responsibly as past performance does not give you a crystal ball to say what happens, this is gambling after all, so only bet what you can realistically afford to lose.

To give yourself a good start, why not claim one of the free bets at our recommended bookmakers to get started with your bets.