The Sky Bet Championship weekend continues on Sunday afternoon when the bottom of the table is in the spotlight once again as Cardiff City take on their former manager Neil Warnock and his Huddersfield Town side.
The Welsh outfit now know they will be in the Championship next season so this is all about whether Huddersfield can take a step towards guaranteeing their own safety and avoiding doing a Barnsley and being relegated the season after losing in the play-offs.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Football channel. The build-up in Wales begins at 11.30am with the kick off coming along at 12 noon.
Cardiff City
When the schedule for this week was put together it looked like Cardiff City had drawn the short straw. That is still very much the case having played in Rotherham on Thursday night and then having to back that up against Huddersfield on Sunday lunchtime but it doesn’t really matter now because their win in Rotherham ensured they will stay in the division. They will still want to win their last home game of the campaign but this doesn’t carry the importance it might have done.
I think Sabri Lamouchi deserves a lot of credit for keeping Cardiff up. When he arrived they bored their way through the early matches but he has realised they needed to open up a bit and look to win matches if they were going to survive and that is what has happened. They form of Sory Kaba has been important because they haven’t been as tight at the back as Lamouchi sides tend to be when the situation is a little more normal.
Huddersfield Town
It looked like Huddersfield Town had little to no chance of staying in the league but then they went cap in hand to Neil Warnock and he looks like he has worked his magic once again. If the Terriers do survive they can count themselves very fortunate because they have made some horrendous decisions over the course of the campaign which should have come back to haunt them, but courtesy of the Reading point deduction probably won’t.
The one thing Warnock was always going to do was make Huddersfield hard to beat. As such, Huddersfield have lost just one of their last seven matches which came when Swansea City passed them to death a couple of matches ago. That was the only time in those seven matches where the Terriers haven’t scored and that is the big difference. They have tightened up at the back as they were always going to do under Warnock and they have goals in them as well.
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Team News
Sabri Lamouchi has confirmed that Callum O’Dowda will miss the remainder of the season with a concussion while first-choice goalkeeper Ryan Allsop will not feature in this match either. That leaves Jak Alnwick in goal again.
Neil Warnock has confessed that goalkeeper Lee Nicholls is now available and could come into the side. He could be without his skipper though as Jonathan Hogg is rated doubtful by the veteran boss so aside from the keeper Huddersfield could be unchanged.
Betting
The odds for Cardiff City to win this match have been steadily climbing since Thursday evening and that is understandable. This is now a match which has nothing on it for the Bluebirds who wouldn’t have got back from Rotherham until deep into the early hours of Friday morning and now have to go again barely 48 hours later which is clearly less than ideal. It is even more less than ideal when you consider that Huddersfield Town didn’t have a game last weekend and will be fresh as daisies.
This match means a lot more for Huddersfield but a draw isn’t a terrible result. It would mean that if they beat Sheffield United on Thursday they will be safe for another season. It would also give them the draw in the huge clash with Reading on the final day of the campaign too. Obviously Huddersfield will be keen to win here and then one more point would be enough from their last two games to guarantee survival. Against a jaded Cardiff side whose motivation might be lacking I expect some sort of Huddersfield result from this one.
Tips
Back Huddersfield Town (+0.25AH) to beat Cardiff City for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Bet365
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