Saturday Football Tips: Back Bayer to batter lowly Schalke

Bayer Leverkusen v Schalke
Saturday 3 April, 14:30 BST kick-off

Another winner on Friday for this column made it three wins this week so we're aiming to finish strong.

It's the Easter Bank Holiday weekend and with so much football on it's been a tough ask picking out just one best bet for the day, but we've decided to head to the Bundesliga for what should be a nice start to life as Bayer Leverkuson manager for Hannes Wolf.

Wolf has had the international break to consider his plans for Bayer, and first up he gets lowly Schalke at home in what is a gimme of an opening fixture.

Schalke are bottom of the table with just one win and 10 points to their names and are currently mired in an 11-game winless run - consisting of just three draws and eight defeats.

Schalke have conceded 20 goals in their last seven Bundesliga games, also letting three-plus goals in on 14 occasions this campaign.

These stats leave even over 3.5 goals in the match at a price of 2.255/4 such is the confidence that there will be goals at the BayArena - where there's been an average of 3.38 goals per game this season.

Bayer have just one win in five at home and haven't kept a clean sheet on home turf in their last nine, but if there was ever a chance it's against a Schalke side with no wins and just eight goals on their travels this season.

You can get Leverkusen and over 3.5 goals at 2.56/4 and you'd have to think that will have a great chance of coming in, but we're going in just a slightly different direction.

The stat that stuck out was the fact Schalke have conceded a goal in both halves in 15 games this season - that's an incredible level of consistency, even if it is consistently awful.

Leverkusen to score in both halves is 1.75/7 but with Schalke's woes in front of goal Bayer won't have to do much more to win both halves, which clocks in at a much better 2.68/5 and what looks like the best value of the lot for this game.