The opening Sunday of the Premier League season is an unusually busy one as along with the two matches that form the Sky Sports Super Sunday there is also an extra match after Southampton were involved in European action on Thursday night.
That gives us three matches on Sunday. Super Sunday contains Arsenal vs West Ham and Stoke vs Liverpool while Newcastle play host to Southampton as well. All six sides will be looking to make fast starts to their season.
In the non-televised match I’m not seeing much in terms of betting potential. I’ll be interested to see how Southampton cope having played in the Europa League on Thursday night. Often sides struggle to back up performances in that in this competition and they have a number of injuries too so Newcastle would normally fancy their chances but they have injuries themselves. That puts me off the match from a betting point of view.
Arsenal host West Ham in the first London derby of the season with the Hammers having a similar problem to Southampton although they made 11 changes for their Europa League match so the effect might not be so large. Arsenal looked very strong in pre-season but they will be without Danny Welbeck and Alexis Sanchez along with a couple of others including Jack Wilshere so while I think they will win it might not be by enough to cover a handicap.
That leaves the later game and I do like a bet in this one. These two met on the final day of last season when Stoke humiliated Liverpool in a 6-1 win so Liverpool will undoubtedly be out for some revenge here. They won the previous fixture between these two at the Britannia 5-3 so this is a fixture which has a recent history of goals.
Stoke miss Ryan Shawcross in this match and Liverpool haven’t been solid defensively for a good while now so I think there is a strong chance of there being a number of goals in this match. Both probably have more about them going forward than they do defensively at the minute so I like the idea of both scoring in this one for the third season in a row in this fixture.
Back Stoke vs Liverpool – Both teams to score for a 4/10 stake at 1.91 with Betfair
