Plymouth v Liverpool FA Cup Tips: Back Under 2.5 Cards at 5/6

Betting.Betfair.com

·7 Februari 2025

Plymouth v Liverpool FA Cup Tips: Back Under 2.5 Cards at 5/6

English FA Cup

Stinch is back to preview Plymouth v Liverpool in the FA Cup

Video OneFootball

Football tipster and odds compiler Mark Stinchcombe is back to preview Plymouth v Liverpool in the FA Cup fourth round on Sunday afternoon...

Plymouth v LiverpoolSunday February 9, 15:00 Live on ITV1

Bigger Fish to Fry

Liverpool enter this fourth round FA Cup clash at Home Park as huge 1/8 favourites so the market is expecting a comfortable win. Under Arne Slot this season in the domestic cup competitions, Liverpool have beaten Accrington, Southampton, West Ham and Brighton by an aggregate score of 14 - 4.

Plymouth have been under new management since the beginning of this year when Austrian Miron Muslic took over on the 10th January. Despite a 5-0 home defeat to Burnley, across his six matches so far in-charge, you have to say he's done very well. He won 1-0 at Premier League Brentford in the previous round, has drawn 2-2 at high flying Sunderland and beaten play-off hopefuls West Brom 2-1 at home.

However, they are still bottom of the Championship and four points adrift of safety and have a home game three days later against Millwall which has to be their priority.

With Liverpool's focus likely to be on the Merseyside derby next Wednesday as well, I feel like this won't be an intense game and so I'm looking at a low carded affair here, especially when we have two lenient sides involved.

Low cards everywhere

Only five teams have collected fewer yellow cards than Plymouth in the Championship and only three teams have collected fewer yellow cards than Liverpool in the Premier League. Despite causing an upset, there were zero cards in Plymouth's win at Brentford in the previous round, there was just one card in their 5-0 defeat to Burnley and again just one card in their 2-1 upset win over West Brom.

In the previous round for Liverpool in their 4-0 victory over Accrington Stanley there was just one card and last season against lower league opposition when beating Southampton 3-0 there was just one card and at this same stage when beating Norwich 5-2 there were zero cards.

The referee here is Samuel Barrott who has actually shown just one card in each of his last two Premier League games - a competition that is averaging 4.50 cards per-game this season - and he is actually the same referee who gave zero cards in the aforementioned Liverpool 5-2 Norwich in the fourth round last season.

The line is set at 2.5 and unders looks very attackable. In round three this season, 20 of the 32 ties went under 2.5 cards as the FA Cup no longer holds a high level of motivation for the players with the referees also recognising this.

The motivation may be even more prevalent this season with the scrapping of replays so even a draw for the likes of Plymouth is now no longer enough to earn a big day out at a Premier League ground like Anfield.