Football Bet of the Day: Carnival Club to throw a Christmas party

Werder Bremen v Mainz
Tuesday 17:30

In the Azores yesterday, Sporting Lisbon were just a little unsporting in thrashing Santa Clara 4-0 to bring down our BTTS bet.

Today we're back on mainland Europe for one of this evening's quartet of games from the German Bundesliga. (Our old friend Kev has rounded up a couple of the others here.) Our pick is 15th-placed Werder Bremen's home match with 14th-placed Mainz. Both teams have scored in seven of the last eight head-to-heads, including 4/4 at Weserstadion. BTTS is a relatively short price for tonight's game, but all of the other trends are in its favour too, so it's our bet of the day.

Since the start of last season, both teams have scored in 20/24 Bundesliga games at Weserstadion, including 11 of the most recent 13 and 5/7 this season. Florian Kohfeldt's men are now 13 home matches without a clean sheet, registering just 2 in 24 since the beginning of last term. Nevertheless, they start as odds-on favourites to take all three points from tonight's game.

That's in part because Achim Beierlorzer's visitors are without a clean sheet on the road themselves this season. In fact, the Carnival Club have the worst defence in the league, conceding an average of three goals per away game so far (24 conceded in eight matches). At the other end, however, they have recently scored in 5/7 so, even if they end up on the wrong side of another heavy defeat, we fancy they can at least trouble the scorers tonight.