Cross Game Multi Tips: Jack Lambden's Champions League card and SoT plays

The Champions League returns this week and I've taken a look into the shots and card markets to find some potential value, featuring the games between PSG & RB Leipzig, and Krasnodar & Sevilla.

It's a must-win game for PSG in Group H on Tuesday night as they play host to RB Leipzig, another club with plenty of financial backing behind them who are trying to dominate both domestically and on the European stage. 

The 2-1 defeat PSG suffered in Germany a few weeks ago leaves them in third place in the group, 3 points behind Leipzig so a failure to win again here would likely mean elimination for the French champions, an embarrassing climb-down from being finalists in last year's competition. 

As is so often the case, it was ill-discipline that let down the Parisians on matchday 3 as they saw two men sent off and therefore struggled to find a way back into the game after falling 2-1 behind. Cards flowed on that night in a match that saw a whopping 40 fouls in total and I think therefore there's an opportunity to find some value in the player booking markets in what is sure to be another tempestuous encounter with so much on the line. 

Frenchman Dayot Upamecano will be coming up against some of his fellow countrymen on Tuesday night and the centre-back is no stranger to a card. Playing as part of a back three, the 22 year-old will sometimes have to come across and cover the team's wing-backs who are very attacking and through Leipzig's intense way of playing, that often leads to high tackle and/or foul numbers which only increase in the Champions League with more defending to do than domestically. 

As a results, Upamecano has been booked in two of the three group stage matches so far this season (admittedly for handball on matchday 3) but 3 in 8 European matches last season prove that a card is no fluke. If the youngster doesn't win his defensive duels, he can be exposed positionally and cannot always rely on his pace to bail him out, especially here when he almost certainly be up against the extremely dangerous front three of Di Maria, Neymar and Mbappe and it could result in a cynical foul or two to stop an advancing attack. 

With PSG requiring a result, you would expect them to be on the front foot and give Leipzig plenty of defending to do as a result so the 20 and 24 fouls racked up by the Germans in the last two head-to-heads may well be repeated and Upamecano stands out at the 13/8 price with a 1.7 fouls per game average in this season's competition.

Another Frenchman in the limelight here but this time for PSG - left-back Layvin Kurzawa. The 28 year-old made the move that many of his teammates have back in 2015 when signing for the Parisians from Monaco. The move has not worked out quite as planned with the full-back finding regular game time hard to come by but when he has started, Kurzawa has certainly made his mark from a disciplinary point of view. 

Kurzawa has been carded three times already this season, including a sending off in the bloodbath that was PSG v Marseille back in September. One of those bookings came in the last meeting between these two sides with the left-back having his name taken for a foul to stop a Leipzig counter attack, a tactic the German side will surely adopt again here. 

Kurzawa was booked in 7 of his 21 appearances in 2019/20 which is a 1 in 3 average, suggesting that the 11/2 odds available with Bet365 is overpriced. The numbers registered on tackles and fouls this season by the French international certainly suggest that he is not hesitant to get stuck in and in a match expected to see plenty of cards and fouls being the third meting of the teams in a matter of months, I'm happy to back Kurzawa at a big price to find his name into the referee's notebook. 

Sevilla can seal their passage to the Champions League knock-out stages on Tuesday night by beating Russian champions Kuban Krasnodar who they edged past 3-2 on matchday 3 to take their tally to 7 points from 3 games. 

The Europa League winners, along with Chelsea, have unsurprisingly outclassed the other two teams in the group to date- Krasnodar and Rennes - and are likely to put out a strong team here to get over the qualification line and potentially then look to resting some more senior figures in the final two matches of the group. 

Sevilla have been however, like a fair few teams across the continent, dealing with injuries and COVID positive cases off the back of a hectic domestic and international football schedule so manager Julen Lopetegui will be forced to shuffle his pack in Russia. You would however expect the Spaniards to be too strong for a Krasnodar side in a rotten run of form and the outright odds, with Sevilla best priced at 7/10 win the game, reflect the disparity between these squads - even if Sevilla are hardly setting the world alight in their own league. 

With Marco Guida in charge of the cards here, it's worth a delve into the card markets to try and spot some value.

Sweden international Kristoffer Olsson has, quite simply, picked up more cards than Clintons this season. Olsson has been committing on average 2.3 fouls per game in the Champions League group stages, one of the highest in the tournament so far, and those numbers have resulted in 2 bookings in 3 matches. 

Furthermore, the 2020/21 numbers are not an anomaly with Olsson averaging 3 fouls per match in last season's Europa League and having already played 23 times for club and country this season, the 25 year-old has been booked a whopping 10 times so I'll be taking on the 13/5 odds offering from WilliamHill. 

Opposition cards against Sevilla are almost always high with the last 8 teams to play Los Palanganas picking up two or more so based on the fouls per game statistics, Olsson has to be one of the favourites to be carded should that trend repeat itself. 

Krasnodar will more than likely have a lot of defending to do here as they did in Andalusia a few weeks ago and the foul count could therefore rise, with referee Guida acting on that as he so often does. The Italian official has dished out 19 cards in four 2020/21 matches, just under 5 per match.