TUESDAY .......

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11th

Wins for St Patricks Athletic 

( odds 2.14) and Andy Murray (odds 3.22) made for a very solid start to the week and hopefully we can build on that today.

2014 WORLD CUP QUALIFICATION:

UEFA :

BELGIUM - CROATIA

We discussed Belgium on Friday ....

This really is the time for the visitors to come good, they have a really talented group of individuals and should be playing at major championships. In a tough group with Croatia , Serbia and Scotland, they need to hit the ground running and three points here will take the pressure off the visit from Croatia next midweek.
Eden Hazard, Moussa Dembele, Vincent Kompany, Thomas Vermaelen, Simon Mignolet, Jan Vertonghen, Marouane Fellaini, Kevin Mirallas and Romelu Lukaku are all well known to fans of the EPL and are almost all big players at big clubs,  Axel Witsel has recent joined fellow international Nicolas Lombaerts at Zenit St Petersburg , who paid 40 m euros for his services. The whole squad play at big clubs across Europe, are packed with talent and they HAVE to go to Brazil. This is a golden generation and they have to end a decade plus of underachievement.

For Wales,Gareth Bale (definitely), Aaron Ramsey and Joe Allen ( possibly) could make the visiting squad, the others would not even come into consideration and there is a big gulf in class, between the two groups. The hosts have not won for new boss Chris Coleman, are injury hit and looked really poor against Bosnia recently, where they hardly troubled the visitors. at the same time Belgium were enjoying a morale boosting 4-2 win over their Dutch neighbours. No goals there in the opening 20 minutes, so maybe we will get that 2.0 in running, if you can't wait, you could try a  little on them winning by two or more, which I have seen at 3.40/3.50, they could run riot if the fancy takes them.

They won in Wales 2-0, creating a lot of chances, 22 in total ,half of which were on target, although to be fair, the hosts did have to play well over an hour with ten men. At the same time Croatia were beating Macedonia 1-0 in Zagreb, but were far from impressive and only the woodwork saved them from conceding a late equaliser. The visitors are very talented but need a match fit Luka Modric to be seen at their best and he has only played 56 minutes of league football and had a very disrupted pre season with his on-off transfer to Real Madrid ,only finally going through a couple of weeks ago. He played against Macedonia but was not 100% and he was not the only one, new coach Igor Stimac admitted that several of his squad were "only half fit" and whilst they will come on for the outing, this really is a match that the hosts should now be looking to win....... REST OF THE PREVIEW IS RESTRICTED

CONMEBOL:

PERU- ARGENTINA

I doubt Argentina are looking forward to this too much, the hosts have alreday hinted at a physical approach to take care of Messi and the team bus was stoned in Lima yesterday, security is high around the team hotel and the atmosphere inside the stadium is going to be very intimidating.That is not to say that the Peruvians are without talent, they finished third at the 2011 Copa America under Sergio Markarian and started the WC campaign full of optimism, but they have been badly hit by injuries through early group games and currently lie four points off the playoff spot, five away from automatic qualification, they have only played six rounds so far, but defeat tonight would leave them with a mountain to climb, hence the tension in Lima.....

 

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CHILE- COLOMBIA

Colombia looked very impressive in a 4-0 defeat of Uruguay on Friday and any team with Radamel Falcao and Teofilo Gutierrez up front and in such good form , is going to carry a massive goal threat. However and there is always an however, conditions are going to be very different tonight, on Friday they played in sweltering Barranquilla with ..... 

 

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Good Luck.

 

Contact : gowi8@btinternet.com