Betting.Betfair.com
·4 February 2025
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·4 February 2025
Robin Le Normand won Euro 2024 with Spain last summer
Atletico Madrid v GetafeTuesday February 4, 20:30
Old friend of this column, Robin Le Normand, is the man who stands out in the props markets ahead of Tuesday's Copa del Rey quarter-final.
He's been mentioned in dispatches on these pages for his remarkable ability to pick up a card and a price of 13/5 about the Euro 2024 winner receiving another here just looks too big to miss.
Since joining Atletico from Real Sociedad in the summer, Le Normand has been carded in eight of 19 appearances. Throw in his games for Spain and it's 10 of 21 or, to put it another way, nine of 18 starts.
That follows on from a card-laden 2023/24 campaign which saw the centre-back booked in 21 of his 48 starts for club and country.
So, he's been booked in 30 of 66 starts since the start of last season. That's some going.
A crunch cup-tie derby between two in-form teams - Atletico have won 18 and lost one of their last 20 in all competitions, while Getafe are unbeaten in six - hardly looks the sort of game where proceedings are likely to go calmly.
Getafe have long been La Liga's bad boys and, after a relatively slow start to the season on the cards front, they are back at the bottom of the fair-play table having collected at least three cards in 10 of their last 11 games.
Throw referee Guillermo Cuadra Fernandez into the mix and there's real potential for cards.
He's the fifth strictest in La Liga this season, averaging over 5.5 per game, and while he's not gone crazy in his four Copa del Rey fixtures thus far, it's notable that all of those games were Primera Division v lower-league opposition. Even then, he still produced a red card in two of the four.
Recent meetings of these two sides also suggest cards.
The last eight card make-ups have been 4-7-6-8-3-9-10-7, meaning 6+ has landed in six of those matches.
7/2.
Staked: 203pts Returned: 237.89pts 2024/25 P/L: +34.89pts
2023/24 P/L: +16.78pts 2022/23 P/L: +68.69pts