The latest weekend in the Sky Bet Championship begins at Kenilworth Road on Friday night when Luton Town look to get an indifferent start to the season back on track when they welcome a West Bromwich Albion side who themselves have hit a buffer recently.
West Brom go into this match without a win in six and face a Luton side who have lost seven of their opening 12 matches after relegation from the Premier League last term, so both will be keen to jump start the rest and pick up three points here.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Football channels with the build-up getting started at 7pm with kick off at Kenilworth Road coming at 8pm.
Luton Town
This certainly hasn’t been the start to the season that anyone would have anticipated of a Luton Town persuasion. They wouldn’t be the first team to need a few games to rebound from relegation from the Premier League but three wins in their opening 12 matches certainly wouldn’t have been foreseen. They need a big second quarter of the campaign if they are going to get themselves back into the mix to get back to the Premier League at the first time of asking.
If there is a positive for Rob Edwards, it would come in the fact that he doesn’t need to look too deep to find out where the problems lie. Luton have conceded 20 goals in their 12 matches this term and only Plymouth Argyle and Portsmouth have shipped more. 12 of those have come in their last six so the last thing Luton needed was two of their defenders to pick up suspensions at the weekend. On the flip side their potent front two both found the net in Coventry and they remain one of the best strike partnerships in the division.
West Bromwich Albion
West Bromwich Albion came storming out of the traps this season which is very much to their credit as there can be a hangover for a team who lose out in the play-offs in the previous campaign. The Baggies won five of their opening six matches and looked like they were really going to lay it down to the likes of Leeds United and Burnley who were expected to be in and around the top two for much of the season. Things have gone a little stale for West Brom in the second set of six matches though with no win in that time and a real shortage of goals.
West Brom have scored just one goal in their last five matches and that is something that is going to need to change in the not too distant future if they are going to achieve their goals this term. The good thing for them is that they have already kept seven clean sheets in their opening 12 games so they look to have the right mix defensively but in attacking areas they need to find themselves again. If they do that then they are going to be right up there you feel.
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Team News
Luton boss Rob Edwards will be forced into at least two changes to his side with Alfie Doughty and Tom Holmes missing having picked up suspensions in the loss at Coventry last week. Teden Mengi is hoping to be fit to take one of those places.
West Bromwich Albion have a few issues defensively too. Semi Ajayi picked up an injury last week which will keep him out for a few months while Paddy McNair is out for the foreseeable future too. Kyle Bartley is also going to be missing. Daryl Dike remains out too.
Betting
When you looked at this game in isolation you would say with West Brom having a solid defensive record and a really poor recent attacking one that goals might be at a premium here but then you see that the Baggies are missing their first-choice central defensive pairing and a defensive midfielder and that Luton are without their left wing-back and another centre-half, we should be looking at goals coming along in this game.
The question then is how you play it and with Luton struggling to keep anything out of their net at the minute and West Brom having the second leading scorer in their division in their ranks while Luton have a potent front two as well, the 4/5 on both teams to score looks good here. It would be a major surprise if Luton aren’t on the front foot after their collapse against Coventry at the weekend but they will be playing makeshift players or unfit ones in defence so this has both teams scoring written all over it.
Tips
Back Both teams to score for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with William Hill
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