“How many countries can you think of where a corner kick is treated with the same applause as a goal? One. It only happens in England.” That quote is from Jose Mourinho, a man who would much rather applaud one of his players feigning an injury or taking eons over a goal kick than celebrate a corner.
But he’s right, fans in England always let out a roar when their side wins a corner. Which seems a bit mad when you know it takes about 33 of them for each goal they produce on average. Not that we need to worry about that here, as we’re only interested in how many corners there are.
Paddy offers plenty of corner markets upon which you can place a wager or add to your Bet Builder. Unlike many markets, though, this is obviously focussed entirely upon teams, with nothing for players. Luckily for us, there’s data freely available online which can guide our selections, so let’s look at the betting options with one eye on the numbers.
Corners Over/Under
The corner market most likely to catch your eye – it’s the only one in the Bet Builder options – is the over/under. It’s straightforward enough. You will be provided with a number ranging from 4.5 to 15.5 (though only 9.5 to 12.5 in a Bet Builder) and you can bet on whether there will be more or fewer corners than that mark. You can also do the same bets for home and away sides respectively, though obviously with lower numbers.
A Premier League match features an average of 10.4 corners so that’s the obvious place to start. Even if you do no further research, bear in mind that although that figure is the mean, only 44% of games see more corners than that, there’s more likely to be a maximum of 10.
As with everything in football, these things can fluctuate wildly from match to match and team to team. When Nottingham Forest beat Leeds 1-0 in February 2023 there just two corners, while Tottenham’s 3-2 victory at Bournemouth four months earlier saw a whopping 21.
The latter helps explain why Tottenham were joint-top of the standings for games paying out on over 10.5 corners in 2022/23, with 21, along with Newcastle. It may seem strange that Manchester City were tied at the bottom of the table, with 12.
But the champions highlight a few key things about corners, namely that tactics play into how many a team has and allows. City love to keep the ball in play and dominate possession, so while they have plenty of corners themselves, they allow their opponents very few. In this market, this matters.
Corner Match Bet and Corner Handicap
City’s dominance also matters in our next market, the Corner Match Bet. This is simple enough; you place a wager on which team gets more corners in the match (or if it will be a draw), and there will be a handicap option too. Self-explanatory, really. Ties are relatively rare.
There were 29 in the 380 Premier League matches this season, a hit rate of roughly one in 13. As no team had more than five and some had none, they’re impossible to predict.
Wins and losses are a bit more straightforward. Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest both had more corners than the opposition just seven times, each losing the match bet on 27 occasions. Aside from Leicester winning eight, every other side recorded at least 14 so the bottom three teams in this table were very much cut adrift.
This data is available so make sure you seek it out. Oh, and City were obviously top of the corner match bet wins table, just as they were for almost any stat you care to name. Yawn.
Corner Race Markets and First Half Corners
Another possibility it to bet on the Corner Race Market. You choose which side will be the first to hit a certain number of corners (with probably every option available between two and 10), or that neither team will reach that mark.
However, while the Match Bet data can guide you on which side will likely have more corners at full time, there are no stats available for how quickly they get them. Using football stat apps should enable you to compile the numbers manually but it’s a lot of hard work to do that.
It’s the same problem for the First Half Corners markets, which again can be on the total or for each team. Nowhere seems to carry that data and believe me I’ve looked. So, unless you’re prepared to do plenty of digging yourself, tread very carefully in these markets.
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