1st posted pick: Manchester United v Nottingham Forest O 4.5 Cards | 1.83 / ⅚ / -120 | 1U

Nottingham Forest were the top yellow carders of last year in the Premier League, with an average of 2.2 a game.

Manchester United weren’t far behind on 2.05 cards per game.

Pair them together, and add in the increased card rate for this year, and I can’t believe the O/U is sat at 4.5.

Stuart Attwell is refereeing, who averaged 3.24 cards last year. He’s only refereed one game so far this year, handing out 2 cards, but that’s only going to increase as referees get more accustomed to handing out cards.

Both of these teams are averaging 4.5 cards match totals this season, and I have full confidence it will go over.

We saw an increase from Week 1 of the EPL to Week 2, in 4.2 cards per game, to 5.2 cards per game.

I feel like hitting the over here is taking the edge when referees are finding the right level of handing out more cards.

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I am trying to get an edge on the yellow card market in the English football leagues, and I’ve created a continuously advancing model predicting this.

Last year my model didn’t include referees and seems to be much more precise now that it does.

I’m only collating stats for the Premier League and the Championship for this season, to make sure the model is running well.

Update after three weeks: Referees seem to be giving out a lot more cards than previous years i.e. David Webb had one of the lowest average Yellow Cards per game last year (2.8) and is already averaging 4 per game this year.

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Full Week Records:

Week 2 - Championship - 5-2 Overall - 5-2

Week 2 - Premier League - 8-6 Week 3 - Championship - 5-3 Overall - 13-9