Considering Mata plays in one of the three attacking positions behind a single striker, for him to be priced alongside holding midfielder Scott McTominay makes little sense. Jesse Lingard, who is almost certain to fill another of those attacking midfield roles, is 4/6 in the same market.
Man United's 3-0 win against Luton is deceiving. They lacked pace in their play and were generally pretty poor - other than Mata. He took the man-of-the-match award because he was a constant buzz for them, so to manage five attempts on goal in a team performance lacking any kind of rhythm is impressive.
As the man most likely to be on direct free-kick duty too, are tempters given last week's numbers, but we're asking a lot then. For reliability looks really good.
But what I prefer there is a bet that might never see the light of day, given the unpredictability of Carabao Cup team selections.
I don't like Brighton defensively at set-pieces, and here we're talking about their second string with Graham Potter set to ring the changes as he has in the previous two rounds.
Albion have struggled to contain opposition centre-halves in their opening two home league games, Kurt Zouma scored for Chelsea and Harry Maguire twice caused mayhem for United as he first forced Lewis Dunk into an own goal, before later tempting Neal Maupay into a baffling, decisive handball in the closing seconds.
It's not certain that Maguire will start, but the United captain did play against Luton in round three. which caught my eye along with surprisingly high odds of 5/2 to have one shot on target and 16/1 to have two.
I agonised over this making the staking plan, but ultimately nothing is lost if Maguire doesn't play. If he does, the value is there.
Score prediction: Brighton 1-2 Man United ()
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Odds correct at 1800 BST 29/09/20
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