Only once this season have Bolton gone off at a bigger price than they currently are at home to Blackpool. This was when Bolton hosted Huddersfield in mid-September. At that time Bolton hadn’t won a home match in the league and the pressure was really on Ian Evatt.

Since then things have improved to an extent, at least at home. They lost that match to Huddersfield heavily, but are unbeaten at home since then, winning four out of five in all competitions, and their last three in a row.

This makes their current price look interesting from a value perspective. They went off 1.85 against Peterborough last week, a team in much better form than this current Blackpool team, and the week before they were as short as 1.32 against Burton.

Blackpool are in shocking form. An initial Steve Bruce bounce after his appointment has given way to a serious decline of seven League One matches without a win. This includes a 1-5 defeat at Peterborough United and a 0-3 defeat at Leyton Orient.

From a market perspective there is definite room for Bolton to get shorter when looking at recent historical precedence, and there isn’t going to be much faith in Blackpool to generate much support in the market. Bolton should shorten up over the coming days.

It was quite surprising to see Grimsby this big for this match. David Artell’s team are the only club in the EFL without a league draw at this stage of the season, and this illustrates their Jekyll & Hyde nature. However, this does also mean that they have won a good number of matches, eight in the league so far.

Certainly, whilst they would’ve started the season with a similar sort of rating to their opponents on Saturday, Colchester United, they have earned nine more points than Danny Cowley’s men, and sit in the play-off positions ahead of this match. The current prices do not illustrate this difference.

A part of this is because of the performance data. Grimsby are massively overachieving against their xG for and xG against numbers, and Colchester’s are actually slightly better in both counts.

However, Colchester have had a very curious recent record. They have rescued a point in the 90th minute, or later, three times in their last seven league matches, including both of their last two. This kind of record does tend to have a positive impact on performance data due to the nature of play when chasing the game, but, also, does skew their results slightly as they cannot possibly keep repeating the Houdini act.

The prices, when home advantage is removed, suggest that there is nothing between the two. On the face of it, Grimsby look to have a poor home record, winning three and losing four. However, their last three home matches have been against MK Dons, Walsall, and Doncaster, three of the six teams above Grimsby in the league. The Mariners beat Bromley, Bradford, and Cheltenham in home matches, so they are beating teams that they would expect to beat.

Grimsby went off shorter than this price against Bromley (2.12), Barrow (2.29), and Cheltenham (2.28), so there is wiggle room in this price to get shorter.

Both of these teams will expect to be in the promotion shake-up come the end of the season, but given recent form it is still a bit of a surprise to see MK Dons out towards the 3.0 mark here.

MK Dons were favourites for the title amongst bookmakers pre-season, whilst Fleetwood were priced for a play-off tilt. These positions haven’t changed massively, with MK in fifth and Fleetwood 13th, but both are probably still slightly underperforming their performances.

MK Dons have only once gone off at a longer price than this away from home in League Two this season, this was against AFC Wimbledon on 14th September. At this time MK Dons were struggling to get results under Mike Williamson, and there is a derby element to that match as well of course.

Since then, Scott Lindsey has been brought in as head coach from League One Crawley, and MK Dons have moved up the table. Indeed, MK have won their last three league away games 5-1, 3-1, 3-1, albeit against teams rated worse than Fleetwood.

However, it is easy to see punters latching onto MK Dons here given their big price and their impressive form. Taking Fleetwood’s home advantage out of the prices, MK Dons are rated slightly better than Fleetwood, but Fleetwood’s less than impressive two home wins from seven in the league would suggest that the gap between the teams should probably be bigger, and we think that the market will illustrate this by kick-off.