Football Tips 15/05/2014 -

The Women’s Asian Cup Group B kicks off today and we have two match ups with clear favourites, South Korea and China PR take on Myanmar and Thailand respectively, both likely to pick up BIG wins. While odds on the former are not to our liking we cannot ignore the HALF TIME result on the latter. China PR look very likely to bring a world of hurt to their Thai opponents here, their last 2 H2H meetings ended 5-1 and 7-0 and while these may have been a while ago now we still expect a thrashing. China PR are just a class above Thailand, they finished 5th in the Algarve cup earlier in the year, above the USA and Russia to name a few. Thailand have been restricted to facing teams in their vicinity, if they are still level at the break today we will be very surprised.

Great value on this today, Baltika may be below their opponent in the table but this means little when we look deeper. Recent form shows Shinnik riding a 4 game winning streak, great you may think… not exactly, apart from their surprise 1-0 home win over 3rd place Ufa all of these games have been against teams in the bottom 5 positions. Baltika have been solid at home all season, they have built a fortress and it is certainly working, 16 games have been played there this season, they have conceded just 7 goals (only 1st place Mordovia can match this) and lost just 2. This is bad news for Shinnik who just cannot perform on the road, they have won 4 away games all season. These two have met 6 times in the league since 2010, Baltika have lost once.

CSKA have done the impossible.. having gone into the winter break looking poor and lingering in the Europa league spots they have come to life, stunning form has seen them win the last 9 league games straight, Zenit's slip up to Dinamo last week gave CSKA all they needed to move top and with just 1 game remaining they will not want to give it all up. Lokomotiv have dipped at the worst possible time having lead for so long, slip ups to Amkar and bottom place Anzhi allowed Zenit to capitalise, a loss to Rostov last week is yet another poor showing for Lokomotiv but a win today coupled with dropped points for Zenit and the title is theirs, they will not get beaten easily. CSKA are just in better form right now and can almost touch the title, they have beaten Lokomotiv the last 5 times they have played and with home advantage today the outcome seems obvious.

Zenit have 1 final chance to clinch the title and unfortunately for them a win for CSKA will see their efforts wasted. The shock defeat to Dinamo last week ended on a sour note as Zenit faithful ran amok on the pitch, Dynamo captain Vladimir Granat was punched in the back of the head suffering a concussion, in the days since it has been marked down as a 3-0 defeat for AVB and his side. Kuban Krasnodar have nothing to play for, they have shown fight in recent weeks but do come into this off a poor 2-0 defeat to 12th place Ural, Zenit absolutely need to put this game to bed early, we expect them to attack from the off and likely bag few before the full time whistle is blown.