On the face of it there is a bit of a chasm between these 2 sides. Burnley are 2nd in the Championship and Reading 6th in League One, but the market may well latch onto the fact that Scott Parker is highly likely to rotate his team to a large extent, and therefore the prices could move closer together by the time of kick-off.

Parker is yet to lose a 3rd round FA Cup tie in 3 matches, 2 with Fulham and one with Bournemouth, but he did show rotation in those matches. Another source of potential hope comes in that Parker’s last FA Cup tie, in the 4th round in 2022 for Bournemouth was a defeat to then National League Boreham Wood. Parker’s Fulham team also drew at QPR in 2021.

Burnley are a very low margin team. They have conceded a record low number of goals in the Championship so far this season, only 9 in 26 matches, but they also are 19th in the Championship for xGF for the whole season.

Besides, this is the cup, with a rotated team, and the club surely focused on a very important return to the Premier League, there could be something there for Reading to exploit. The Royals have an exceptional home record, winning 9 of 11 at the Select Car Leasing Stadium this season, averaging over 2 goals a game and a +14 goal difference to boot.

It wouldn’t be a surprise to see this market more around 2.2 or less come kick-off.

This is put up as a value bet with the expectation that the market will take an opinion on the 2 form lines of these clubs and back one over the other.

Barnsley are now on a 4-match winning streak and are doing it nicely. Beating Bolton away, Peterborough away, and Wrexham at home, before putting Crawley mercilessly to the sword last time out (3-0), form that deserves recognition.

They are already as short as they have been in a League One match away from home this season, but there should be room to move further in as the market latches on to them. They went off 1.91 v Shrewsbury earlier in the season, and they won that match, they also won at Burton as 1.8 shots, so they have worn the odds-on favourites tag well. On neither of those previous occasions have the Tykes gone into those matches in as good form as they are now.

Northampton did pick up a morale-boosting victory on the road against Burton on Saturday, but that ended a run of 6 games without a win, this is not a Cobblers team in form. They have scored in only one home game in their last 4, one of which was a 5-0 hammering against Charlton.

They went off a longer price than their current 4.2 against Stevenage in their last home match, and Barnsley should be much higher rated than them. 4.2 was also the price that Northampton were at kick-off against Charlton, and that didn’t go well either, given this evidence there could easily be a drift on Cobblers in the prices.

Yes, Walsall are already a short price to win the match, but this is a great example of a match that looks enough like a home banker to be added into a lot of accumulators, and also backable enough for the big rollers with deep pockets to back as a single.

Walsall should be good value for it too. Their win against Notts County on New Year’s Day was their 8th in a row in the league. Meanwhile, Tranmere have won only twice in 11 attempts away from home, currently 5 without a win on the road, scoring only 7 goals in the process.

Walsall went off a very short 1.29 against Newport, a match they duly won comfortably, and they have been shorter than this current price against Bromley, Crewe, Carlisle, and earlier in the season against Cheltenham. The majority of those teams would be rated as better than Tranmere away from home, if not similar, and Walsall are in their best form of the season, so it makes sense for them to move even shorter in the market, perhaps into somewhere close to 1.5.