JOSE’S OLD STOMPING GROUND Another battle of English giants this weekend and Man United hit the road to visit Stamford Bridge. Jose Mourinho will have mixed emotions being back at his old club in the away dugout. Elsewhere the top teams look to have very winnable games, and in a few places we have some excellent prices available. So let’s see the ebst bets for the weekend.
Bournemouth v Spurs
12.30pm Saturday Let me start this by saying the price here is excellent in my opinion. These are two sides and two managers with quite similar philosophies, they both like to play the game the way it should be played. Both pass the ball around a lot and like to work their attacks. The one main difference between the two sides? Quality. Although they play in a similar fashion they are worlds apart, Spurs just have a much stronger side. We saw this in their meetings last year with Spurs winning 5-1 and 3-0.
I have said it a few times already this season, I admire what Eddie Howe is doing at Bournemouth but his approach does leave his side prone to a few hammerings every now and again. It does go the other way of course, we saw this last week as they handed Hull an embarrassing 6-1 defeat. When playing a team of similar or less quality than they have they look really, really good. But when they play the top teams they often look out of their depth. This will be the case this weekend as they play a Spurs team that is even stronger than last year in my opinion.
Spurs are without Kane of course, who which means a loss in a certain amount of goals for the team but I think that Janssen does a very good job of holding the line for Spurs. He may not get the goals himself but he does allow other players get into the attack a lot more. As I said at the beginning, this is an excellent price. I thought Spurs were going to be a very short price here so I was going to go with them -1 at 2.24 but when you can get them around evens I think the price is plenty good enough to go straight up.
TONY’S BEST BET:
Back Spurs at 1.98
You can view all markets here -> http://bit.ly/BDQBourSpu
Hull City v Stoke City
3.00pm Saturday These two sides are very close in the league right now with only a point separating the two. However as I said last week, I think there is a lot between the sides. Stoke have had an extremely bad start to the year as they did last year but i fancy them to pick things up and steer well clear of danger by the end of the season. There is too much quality in the team not to pick up some results moving forward.
Hull are a poor team in my eyes. They really lack quality when compared to the other sides in the league. They had an excellent start to the year, beating Leicester, but make no mistakes about it, they should have been well beaten that day. They have all the looks of a team that will be going right back down to the Championship. They gave Mike Phelan a full time role as manager….but only until the end of the season! That shows the amount of confidence they have in the rest of the season.
Stoke will be able to score a couple against Hull, they have a good attacking side and Arnautovic is a top player to me. He has size, speed and is a good finisher of the ball. Hull will struggle with him greatly. I can’t see Hull getting a goal, they don’t offer enough going forward at all and there isn’t enough arial threat in the team for them to grab a goal from a st piece. I see this being quite comfortable for Stoke, not as bad as Hull’s beating last week but still comfortable. These two sides will trend very differently for the rest of the season.
TONY’S BEST BET:
Back Stoke at 2.54
You can view all markets here -> http://bit.ly/HullStok
Chelsea v Man United
4.00pm Sunday Jose is back in town. A very busy week for Man United having played Liverpool on Monday and playing in Europe on Thursday and now another massive game for two teams who will be really aiming for Champions League football at least. It will be interesting to see how Jose sets his team up on Sunday. When seeing the team sheet on Monday night, you just knew Man United were not playing to win. It was always going to be a defensive game by United, and to see if Liverpool could break them down. Normally their fans would be outraged by this, but after a few poor seasons I think they were content not to lose to their hated rivals.
I expect Sunday to be very similar. Jose will show loads of respect to his former side. He knows what they are capable of and will get his side to sit quite deep again. He isn’t afraid to go against the popular decision in games. To me these are two very evenly matched teams. I also don’t think Conte will have his side go all out for the win. They will be the more adventurous of the two teams for sure, but they are still trying to figure a few things out in the side, like their three men at the back system. I think they look a lot more solid in this formation, they recorded their first two clean sheets in their last two games and although they are still liable to lapses, they are much more solid now.
This game really has a draw written all over it. I normally don’t like to sit on the fence, and I could easily go to lay either side or the other but to me a draw is the clear bet of this game. I just can’t see either team doing what it takes to win the game. Neither approach to the game will be adventurous enough to sway the result one way or another. They drew their last two games and three out of the last six, expect the trend to continue. I think there could be a couple of goals, but the best bet is certainly the draw.
TONY’S BEST BET:
Back a draw at 3.25
You can view all markets here -> http://bit.ly/BDQCheMNU
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