The Russian Premier League isn‘t exactly renowned as a hotbed of quality football even though some of the teams there tend to churn out quality in continental football such as Zenit and CSKA. What is interesting about the league, however, is the intense physicality and we‘re going to capitalize on it as the 13th round will commence on Saturday 31st October.
Rubin Kazan VS Arsenal Tula
How Rubin Kazan has started this season doesn‘t seem to indicate any halt to the five season long top-contesting dryspell Rubin Kazan is experiencing. Rubin welcome the roughest team in the league – especially away from home – Arsenal Tula and the referee assigned is an appropriate one, since he‘s quite keen to show off the nice cards he keeps in his pockets. Vasili Kazartsev has never failed to card both teams this far and has a decent balance in that, never failing to card the away side in the first half and sometimes both in both halves. He‘s given three penalties and one red so far. Rubin matches have seen 9 red cards and Tula 5. Penalties have also been a mainstay in Rubin matches and 6 penalties have seen the light of day while Arsenal matches have seen 5 penalties taken.
Arsenal Tula is a team that excels in fouls, and furthermore, they don‘t need to make many fouls to start seeing a card, suggesting their fouls are more cynical than on average. When Tula tours Russia this season, they leave all manners at home and tackles go flying into the air for them, and this is evident by their record all season. Rubin Kazan isn‘t a team that starts the fouling process early but, still see at least two bookings all season at home and brunt of them come in the second half. Rubin has a dismal home record in terms of getting wins this season and their late foulings seem to indicate their frustration with not being able to deliver on home soil. Corners, however, have been coming easy to them post-break at home, and they‘ve never failed to bring themselves to two corners in the second half. Arsenal also defend with their lives in the second half and tend to give away corners in the second half.
Therefore, we‘ll go for this one with two units through William Hill.
Other picks of interest are:
- Both teams +9.5 BP each half – 2.45
- Penalty taken – 2.75
- Red card in the match – 3.25
Spartak Moscow VS Rostov
Spartak who are comfortably top of the table get a visit from decent Rostov in a game straight after Rubin‘s affair takes place. While Rostov are ill-tempered off the road I‘m looking to seize the advantage of WH underestimation of Spartak‘s foul and card count combined with a disciplined referee who also is in favor of taking charge. The potential of having a high carding referee who‘s definitely on a high after dishing 22 cards in last two matches (39 in 6 this season) isn‘t quite reflected in the odds we‘re getting for Spartak Moscow here.
Ok, Rostov on the road are absolutely bonkers for cards. One of the aforementioned fiery affairs referee Vitali Meshkov took charge of was a ten-card match between Arsenal Tula and Rostov where they picked up 6 yellow cards and a red, and it took them a whopping 48 minutes of game time to cross booked both halves off their checklist – and this is only in 13 fouls counted. Rostov have 5 out of 6 away games going that way too, and the only time it didn‘t, their opponents saw red relatively early in the game. Spartak Moscow has also seem to be bringing out the absolute worst in their opponents when they host them and every opponent has seen a card each half while paying the Luzhniki a visit this season. Moscow‘s combined foul average this season is definitely not worse than Rostov‘s and while I‘d admit this is a risky pick, Spartak‘s rivals CSKA are breathing down their necks. The pressure is on them to both attack (and attract Rostov fouling, which should be easy) and defend the lead they‘ll ideally be taking here.
We‘ll be going for this for 2 units at William Hill. The odds for Spartak to see 2 yellow cards make this builder worthy. As I‘ve listed before, Spartak are well capable of dishing fouls and this is where I‘ll use the cliché of beating the bookies“
Analysis by IceTips.
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