Football Tips 10/04/2014

Bulgaria's 31 times champions host Botev late this afternoon in a match that will be key in deciding Europa League qualification for next season. Sofia have won nine of their last eleven home league games, only losing twice to league leaders Ludogorets in this streak. In fact, Ludogorets are the only team to score away at the Bulgarian Army Stadium in the league since May 2013. Botex have lost two of their previous three away games, and their two top-scorers Andrianantenaina and Kortzorg have both failed to find the net in their last six appearances. Botev see their upcoming cup semi-final with Lokomotiv Sofia as a more likely way to secure Europa League qualification and focus is on this.

Porto travel to Sevilla with a delicate 1-0 lead from the first leg. Sevilla need a goal and will be confident of scoring early as in their last 3 homes games at the Estadio Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán they have recorded victories and found the net within the opening 23 minutes: Real Valladolid, Real Madrid and Espanyol. Porto have previously been gung-ho away in the Europa League, playing out 3-3 and 2-2 draws with Frankfurt and Napoli respectively, and they know that an away goal could prove essential here.

Scotland Women sit top of Group 4 with five straight wins ahead of their trip to Bosnia, they come into this following back-to-back wins over Poland picking up 2-0 and 4-0 results and we are confident they can bag a few before the break. Scotland have scored 22 goals in the 5 matches played so far, 11 of these came in the opening 45 minutes of games, holding the lead in 4 of the 5 at the break. Bosnia will look to sit back and defend deep just as Poland did but with Scotland in such fine form it won’t take long to break them down, these two met in September last year in a game which ended 7-0 to the Scots. Bosnia’s most recent fixture was a 1-1 draw with Faroe Islands, the team sitting bottom of the group with just 1 points, 3 scored and 19 conceded, this does not bode well for them.

This looks like David vs Goliath with Al Ain sitting in 7th against a poor Shaab side occupying bottom place but look at the most important factor in the game, home/away form and the bet becomes obvious. Al Ain have relied almost entirely on solid home performances to pick up points this season, a far cry from the solid team which topped the table last year, on the road they are poor having gathered just 9 points from 30 available, 2 away wins all season and conceding at least 1 per game on average it’s easy to see why they languish in mid table. Shaab on the other hand perform admirably on their own turf, maybe not picking up the results but scoring is no issue for them when surrounded by fans, they average almost 2 goals scored per game and just 1 of the last 16 home fixtures passed without a goal in their favour, even 1st place Al Ahli and 2nd place Al Shabab couldn’t keep the hosts of the score sheet, the latter actually falling 2-1 in defeat. We toyed with the idea of a handicap on Shaab today but we feel it’s safer to expect them to just bag a goal.