The West Brom defender primed to strike at Sunderland

There are currently nine central defenders that have scored more than one Premier League goal this season and Joleon Lescott looks massively overpriced at 10/1 to make this 10 when West Brom travel to Sunderland in the next round of fixtures.

Looking closely at the five Premier League fixtures since Tony Pulis’ appointment as Baggies manager, it is the sudden improvement of striker Brown Ideye that has been most noteworthy.

However, it is worth pointing out that Lescott has had the same number of chances in this period as the club’s record signing and he is primarily a force from set pieces.

No club has conceded more headed chances than Sunderland across the last five rounds of fixtures and taking all of this into account, 10/1 is big value that the former England international scores in the 90 minutes at the Stadium of Light.

What also increases the value of Lescott is how his price compares to other central defenders this weekend who are far less of a set-piece threat.

Here we compare Lescott to Vincent Kompany, Jan Vertonghen, Phil Jagielka and Phil Jones in terms of their attacking statistics from recent weeks and their prices to score in their respective Premier League matches this weekend.

None are any more threatening that the West Brom defender, yet are substantially shorter odds to score, even though Sunderland have given up 14 more chances than any other side across the past five weeks of fixtures.

For those seeking even greater value, the last four goals that Lescott has scored have all broken deadlocks. It is 28/1 that he grabs the opener at Sunderland.

This fixture has a history of goals too. The pair have squared off 11 times in the Premier League since late 2008 and nine of these clashes have gone over 2.5 goals.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.

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