Dave Tickner is backing Ukraine to win the crunch World Cup clash with Croatia, while there's little between Wales and Republic of Ireland.
There are a couple of tasty-looking, crucial World Cup qualifiers on Monday’s coupon as places in Russia or at least the play-offs come down to the wire.
And it’s in one such game where we find the bet of the night. Ukraine meet Croatia in Kiev in what amounts to a play-off for a play-off, and the hosts remain a cracking bet at anything approaching 2/1 despite being consistently backed throughout Saturday.
The reason for that is that Croatia, a footballing country that marries prodigious talent with utter dysfunction like no other, have embarked on one of their all-too-frequent meltdowns.
After a 1-1 home draw with Finland made it four points from four games and left World Cup hopes hanging by a thread, Croatia have sacked their coach Ante Cacic and named Zlatko Dalic as his replacement. His first task: arrest the slide and secure second spot in Group I and a play-off place.
Top spot now looks a forlorn hope with Iceland two points clear and ending their campaign at home to Kosovo.
But even second looks at serious risk now. Croatia’s form is poor, confidence is low and the mess with the coach suggests panic has set in.
They’ve lost three of their last four away games, against Turkey, Iceland and Estonia. It’s hard to make much of a case that Monday night’s crunch game marks a step down in class from that trio.
Ukraine, meanwhile, bring a fine home record into the game. They’ve won four of their last five at home, and nine of the last 12. The only defeats in that time have been a perfectly understandable 1-0 loss against Spain and a slightly less understandable 1-0 loss against Malta. But it was a friendly, and Ukraine made 10 substitutions that day; it’s such a silly result we’re inclined to ignore it.
Let’s focus instead on a side who have in the last 18 months secured home wins against Slovenia, Wales, Finland, Serbia and Turkey. This is clearly a side well capable of beating a tottering Croatia.
Crucially, they also have to win. Such necessity isn’t in itself a reason to get involved, but it’s certainly easier to back a team when you can be 100 per cent sure they won’t be settling for a point at any time.
Anything 7/4 or better looks perfectly acceptable here.
The other big play-off decider comes in Cardiff after wins over Georgia and Moldova respectively left Wales and Republic of Ireland on collision course for second place and, possibly, even first should Serbia surprisingly come unstuck at home to the Georgians.
For Wales, qualification remains an odds-against hope due to a damaging run of five straight draws – they remain unbeaten in this group – but three straight wins this season have repaired much of the damage.
Ireland, too, have suffered from too many draws but the real eye-catcher in the results of this pair is the lack of goals.
There have been under 2.5 goals in Wales’ last seven qualifiers, and Ireland’s last six. But the layers are on to that, offering barely better than 1/2 on what looks sure to be a nervy, cagey night at the Cardiff City Stadium in the absence of potential gamebreaker Gareth Bale.
The reverse fixture ended goalless, but the layers are again taking no chances with their No Goalscorer quotes here, offering pretty miserable value at 11/2 in a match where Ireland will have to throw caution to the wind should it remain goalless down the stretch. Bearing all that in mind, Draw/Wales at around 4/1 and Draw/Ireland at 7s in the HT/FT market both look more enticing than the straight outright quotes.
Another bet to consider is the 1-1 draw at 6/1 – Wales have three 1-1s in their nine qualifiers to date and Ireland two. But fundamentally this looks a game that will follow a fairly predictable pattern, slow and cagey for the first three-quarters, increasingly frenetic in the last 20 minutes, but one the bookmakers are well on top of. No bet for me.
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Posted at 1455 BST on 07/10/17.
