Football betting analyst Mark O’Haire returns to share his favourite fancies from the weekend with a pair of plays proposed from Portugal and Germany.
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With five games to play in Portugal’s top-flight, no bottom-half Primeira Liga side is assured of survival with five points separating ninth and 16th. Two of those teams’ face-off on Saturday as second-from-bottom Chaves welcome fellow basement battlers Estoril to their compact Estádio Municipal de Chaves home.
Rather than throw our support behind either side, the opportunity to support goals holds plenty of appeal with Both Teams To Score trading at 1.75. Despite their lowly league position, Chaves boast an excellent goalscoring record here, getting on the scoresheet in all bar three of their 14 fixtures with two of their blanks arriving against Benfica and Sporting.
Moreno’s men have also struck twice or more in all of their home dates when hosting bottom-seven opposition, yet a porous backline is to blame for their season’s struggles. The Flavienses have managed only four clean sheets overall this term, shipping multiple goals in 10 of 14 matches at the Municipal – a tasty 11 of those 14 encounters delivered BTTS.
Estoril have tightened up of late, shipping a solitary strike in four. However, the visitors are bound to be put under pressure with Chaves becoming increasingly desperate in their quest to survive. Clean sheets have also been a rarity for the guests with Estoril recording a paltry two shutouts on their travels, with 11 of those 14 away days seeing BTTS pay-out.
With both teams delivering a 79% hit-rate for Both Teams To Score in their respective home/away showdowns, collectively combining to score in 23 of those 28 contests and posting just three clean sheets in the same sample, I’m happy to support a repeat at appealing odds of 1.75.
With St Pauli and Hamburg faltering, Fortuna Dusseldorf are looking to seize the moment by chucking their hat in the ring for automatic promotion from 2.Bundesliga. Die Flingeraner have charged into third off the back of five successive league victories and a nine-game unbeaten sequence since the start of February (W6-D3-L0).
Still five points shy of the top-two, Fortuna are looking to close the gap as we turn for home with Daniel Thioune’s team backing up their impressive recent results with eye-catching data. Die Flingeraner are returning a 67% Expected Goals (xG) ratio over their last eight encounters, comfortably clear of their divisional rivals, averaging 2.04 Expected Points (xP).
In fact, go back further and Fortuna are topping the charts for xP over the past 12 and 16-match splits in the 2.Bundesliga, highlighting their quality. The hosts have scored at least twice in 11 of their most recent 13 fixtures across all venues, whilst they’ve posted W7-D3-L2 at their Merkur Spiel-Arena base when excluding games against the top-two this term.
Greuther Furth arrive in mid-table no-mans-land with their season spiralling following a drastic loss of form since January. The visitors have suffered seven defeats in their last 10 tussles, including five consecutive losses on the road – Alexander Zorniger’s charges have been beaten in all six previous trips to the top-seven, shipping 18 goals in the process.
If Fortuna are flying high across almost all performance data metrics, the same cannot be said for Greuther. The Furth club sit rock-bottom on xP through the previous 4-8-12 and 16 game splits, with their defensive metrics proving particularly problematic. With that in-mind, I’m eager to support Fortuna Dusseldorf -0.5/1.0 at 1.75 on Saturday.
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