Friday's Bet Of The Day: Goals galore in Swiss showdown

JACK Wright's (@JackWright_BSB) Bet of the Day returns for Thursday as we head to Switzerland.

Vaduz vs Neuchâtel Xamax | Friday 22nd April 2022, 19:15

For Friday’s Bet of the Day I can’t resist heading to a country and a league I love for goals – the Swiss Challenge League.

Two defeats in the last two games against the top two, has put a big dent in Vaduz’s promotion hopes leaving them in fourth place – five points adrift of FCS who sit second and hold the play-off position.

The Pride of Liechtenstein have become something of a yo-yo club in recent seasons, promoted to the Swiss Super League for the fifth time in their history in the 2019-20 season, they made an immediate return to the second tier.

Since Mario Frick departed the club in December to take over at FC Luzern results have been a little inconsistent with his replacement, Alessandro Mangiarratti only managing two home wins with both coming to the leagues bottom two clubs, they have the second worst home record in the Challenge League, crazy for a side with aspirations of bouncing back to the top tier at the first time of asking.

The problem is clear given that in those aforementioned two defeats to the favourites for promotion, FCV scored four goals, but shipped seven – 3-2 at home to Schaffhausen and 4-2 away at league leaders Winterthur.

Vaduz's 30 league games so far have seen a colossal 106 goals at an average of 3.53 and they have managed to keep just four clean sheets – curiously two of those coming against the side sitting at the top of the league.

As a result, Neuchâtel Xamax will travel to Rheinpark Stadion confident they can keep their own slim hopes of gatecrashing the top two alive, having won their last two games scoring nine goals in the process.

The chance of attacking the shaky home defence should have the likes of in-form veteran striker and 11 goal top scorer Raphael Nuzzolo, licking his lips at the thought of adding to his recent run of seven goals in his last nine outings.

The Challenge League sees each team play each other home and away twice with this game being the fourth and final meeting between the pair this campaign, two of the prior clashes have seen this bet land with the first fixture here at national stadium of Liechtenstein ending 2-1 to Xamax.

These two sides have met seven times in the most recent seasons producing a grand total of 30 goals at an average of 4.29 per game with both sides hitting the back of the net in five (71%) – where both teams have scored there has always been at least three goals, the most recent of which being last month, ending in a 4-2 win for Vaduz.

With both teams struggling defensively and conceding regularly, but also knowing only a win will be good enough to keep their season alive we once again should see an open game with at least one side needing to attack throughout the 90 minutes.

I was pleasantly surprised to see over 2.5 total goals and both teams to score readily available at 20/21 and am more than happy to make it my Bet of the Day selection.