Friday Football Tips: Fair play in France

Lille v Montpellier
Friday 16 April, 20:00 kick-off
Live on BT Sport 3

There's nothing like a trip to France on a Friday, where we find Lille sitting on top of Ligue 1 after beating the mighty PSG a couple of games ago.

Lille entertain Montpellier on Friday night with the visitors looking like they're a bit too far away from the European places to make a late charge.

Lille are big 1.625/8 favourites despite winning just one of their last four home league matches, while Montpellier are unbeaten in their last eight away games in all competitions, but are a whopping 5.04/1 to cause what would be an upset win.

75% of Montpellier's League 1 games have seen both teams score, but Lille come into this with the best defence in the division after conceding just 19 goals all season, and with four clean sheets in their last five.

Goals, then, could go either way here so we're looking at the cards market and here we find a nice little statistic that draws us towards a stand-out bet for the game.

Lille have had a couple of ill-tempered games resulting in cards being shown recently, but both teams here are among the lower reaches of Ligue 1 in the booking stats - with both having seen 55 yellows this season at 1.72 per game.

What attracts us further here is the breakdown of the bookings, with Lille being the cleanest home team in the league with 22 yellows on their own patch this season, while Montpellier have a league-lowest 16 bookings on the road this term.

With under 40 booking points coming in at 2.68/5 for the cleanest home team versus the cleanest away team, the stats back this up as the bet of the day.