League of Ireland Predictions – Longford Town v Cork City

ALL three predictive methods – Poisson, Rateform and the score prediction heuristic, which tracks the shorter-term trends – favour a win for Cork City against Longford Town at City Calling Stadium today.

Both Poisson, which models total goal counts in games, and the score prediction heuristic suggests a 1-0 win for the Leesiders.

As our exclusive Poisson matrix (immediately below) shows, there is a 21.8 per cent chance of such an occurrence. There is a 33.1pc probability Cork will score precisely one goal. There is a 66pc chance Longford will get no goals.

Interestingly, Cork have yet to concede a goal on their travels in the first half of a game this season. Like leaders Dundalk, they also remain unbeaten on the road. They have five wins and four draws from nine games.

Also, all of Cork’s wins this season have come against sides outside of the top five. Longford are sixth.

Top three Poisson outcomes: (1) Longford 0 Cork 1 (21.8pc); (2) Longford 0 Cork 2 (16.8pc); (3) Longford 0 Cork (14.2pc).

According to our estimation of the ‘true’ or ‘fair’ odds, a Cork win represents ‘value’. For instance, Boylesports and Paddy Power (at the time of writing) were both 1.75 about a Cork victory, an implied probability of 57.1 per cent. We estimate Cork have a 64.9pc chance of winning (1.54).

Anything greened-up on our exclusive betting grid represents value