Saudi Arabia v Egypt

The rest of this week will be all about considering group angles, motivations and permutations. Fortunately Group A should be pretty straight forward in this regard - not least in Egypt v Saudi Arabia, wherer both sides are out and it's all about just trying to finish the World Cup as well as possible and avoid propping up the group.

Conventional wisdom usually dictates that dead-rubbers tend to open up and produce more goals than meaningful matches where the stakes are higher. I've not currently got any depth of data to confirm of deny this but it certainly tends to feel to be the case.

Let's look at the side's overall stats for the World Cup for a start off.

Egpyt

Shots For/Agg - 17-20

Shots On Target For/Agg 4-9

Corners F/A 4-12

Goals For/Agg 1-4

Saudi Arabia

Shots For/Agg 10-22

Shots On Target For/Agg 3-11

Corners F/A 5-11

Goals For/Agg 0-6

Egypt have certainly held their own a little better in terms of shots overall - especially against Russia where the scoreline flattered the hosts, but so far the results have probably more accurately reflected our outright bet on Egypt finishing bottom at 7/2 than of the Saudi Arabians being considerably weaker than their opponents here. On balance though, the Suadi have been marginally worse though, but not enough to justify Egypt being odds-on favourites in this one.

In terms of an open game, Egypt tend to keep things pretty tight and despite the game being a dead-rubber, odds of around even money on the match seening over 2.5 goals don't feel long enough. Nine of Egypts last 15 have gone Under 2.5 Goals.

Sorry about this, but this has to be a "No Bet" game after all that. Even the goalscorer, man of the match and corners markets seem to have thrown up nothing obvious.

No Bet!