It is the final night of European matches in this international break on Tuesday as the World Cup qualifying continues with another nine matches and this set of fixtures include England, Northern Ireland and Scotland so they will have plenty of attention on them.
Defending champions Germany are also among the sides in action on Tuesday night and they will be looking to kick on and consolidate their position in their section of the qualifying campaign.
Group E
The first group to get underway on Tuesday night is this one as there is an early kick off in the Kazakhstan vs Romania match. The other two matches in the group see Poland hosting Armenia and Denmark playing Montenegro.
Group C
Northern Ireland have the tricky task of playing world champions Germany for the second time in four months having played them in Euro2016. The other matches see Czech Republic playing Azerbaijan and Norway up against San Marino.
Group F
England play their first away game under Gareth Southgate when they head to Slovenia while Scotland have a tricky looking away game at Slovakia. Lithuania host Malta in the other game of a group England can take a stranglehold of with a win.
Betting
There are plenty of bets that interest me in this set of matches but in the end I’ve decided to go with just two. I was going to take Poland to cover a two goal handicap but the nasty injury to Milik puts me off that one while I’m just not convinced enough on the three goal line in the Germany match to take the unders.
My first bet is a bet I hate placing because it is on San Marino. Don’t worry I’ve not gone stark raving mad. It isn’t on them to win. It is on them with a sizeable looking 4.5 goal start. You might think that isn’t enough but you have to go all the way back to 2009 for the last time Norway scored four goals in a match and it is 2004 when they last scored five in the same game so history is very much on our side.
San Marino won’t offer too much in the game, we know that, but they can keep things tight. England only put five and six up on them in Euro2016 qualifying and they are significantly better than Norway. Perhaps better guides are San Marino’s more recent matches against Slovenia, Lithuania and Estonia who are of a similar level to Norway. None of them scored more than two goals so the handicap looks high.
One handicap which doesn’t look high to me is Lithuania’s one at home to Malta. Malta have just been given a real run around at Wembley by England and while the 2-0 scoreline makes the match look close it really wasn’t and if England were ruthless early on they would have run up a cricket score very quickly.
Lithuania might not open Malta up as easily as England did but they had Scotland on the ropes in the first half of their match on Saturday. Malta have just looked chronic in this campaign so far and if Lithuania have anything about them they will win this by at least a couple of goals.
Tips
WON – Back San Marino (+4.5AH) to beat Norway for a 4/10 stake at 1.84 with Ladbrokes
Back them here:
WON – Back Lithuania (-1.25AH) to beat Malta for a 4/10 stake at 2.08 with Bet365
Back them here:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2016
