Football Bet of the Day: Burnley can keep another clean sheet

The festive football feast begins in earnest this weekend and we’ve got a boat-load of action to get stuck into on Saturday. It means we’ve got plenty of options to choose from when assessing our Football Bet of the Day, but as usual I’ve turned my attention to the league I know best - the Championship. 

Read on for my Football Bet of the Day for Saturday, November 30.

There are currently seven wonders of the world. But if Burnley keep up this defensive record, Scott Parker’s carefully crafted back four can sit alongside The Great Pyramid of Giza and the Taj Majal. 

They’ve currently kept four clean sheets in a row, and won their third match in a row to nil as they defeat Coventry City 2-0 at Turf Moor in midweek. But across the whole season they have been nothing short of superb. It’s barely believable. Do you remember Jose Mourinho’s famous Chelsea side that only conceded 15 goals across a 38-game Premier League season? 

Well Burnley have only let in SIX in their 17 matches so far. Extrapolate that over a 46-game Championship season and they are going to concede fewer than 17 goals over the entire campaign. The current record, to put that in some perspective, is held by Watford in 2020/21, when they finished second and only conceded 30 goals along the way. 

Beating that record has to be the target for Burnley this season, because clean sheets equal points on the board. They are still not the most exciting team in the league to watch, but quite frankly, that doesn’t matter one jot if Parker is racking up the points. So what makes their defence so consistently good?

We have to start in goal, where James Trafford is enjoying a spectacular season. He is England’s future number one and Burnley spent £15m on him last summer - but he hasn’t actually been tested all that much this term. Only Leeds have conceded fewer xG than Burnley this term, but in my mind, Burnley’s playing style is better suited to consistency when it comes to keeping teams out. 

While Leeds are the dominant attacking force in every game they play, the Clarets are far more measured in possession, and seem to be able to suffocate teams in terms of chance creation. It helps that their back four is made up of Conor Roberts, CJ Egan-Riley, Maxime Esteve and Lucas Pires. 

Roberts has plenty of experience, Egan-Riley is a Manchester City academy product who is improving every week and Pires has been a wonderful arrival since joining from Santos this summer. But the star of the show is Esteve. He is a key member of France’s U21 team and even played for them at the Olympics this summer.

He’s the best centre-back in the Championship for me, and I don’t think he will be hanging around in the second tier if they fail to get promoted this season. With any two of Josh Brownhill, Josh Laurent or Josh Cullen lining up in midfield, they have protection, and with this defence first attitude, they are turning themselves into title challengers. 

After a 0-0 draw with Preston North End last time out, I don’t think Stoke City will be able to cause them too many problems this weekend, and am more than happy to back Burnley to keep yet another clean sheet. Priced at 7/4, this is my Football Bet of the Day for Saturday, November 30. 

Offers

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