ANOTHER winner on Saturday for Gavin Murphy (@GamePlanGavin) and now he goes for glory in this Sunday World Cup qualifying tie.
Lithuania v Slovenia | Sunday 17:00
World Cup qualification gets underway in Europe on Sunday and familiar foes Lithuania and Slovenia do battle once again in Vilnius. Both teams were in the same qualifying group as England for the 2016 European Championships and have been pitted together again in the race to be in Russia in 2018.
Group F is one of the nine UEFA groups and consists of six teams: England, Slovakia, Scotland, Slovenia, Lithuania and Malta.
In the two most recent encounters Slovenia won once and the other matches was drawn. Eleven cards were shown in the combined matches at an average of 5.5 per game.
Portuguese referee Artur Dias is in charge of this fixture and he averages five cards per game in 2016/17. Indeed he has yet to give less than four cards in any of his matches this season so I expect this to go close.
Lithuania played Poland in a friendly in June and collected four cards out of five that day and look an ill disciplined outfit. Their opening World Cup qualification game in 2012 had eight cards (including two reds) in a 1-1 draw with Slovakia.
For their part, the Slovakians picked up three cards of the five given in their June friendly against Turkey. Slovakia collected three of five cards given in Oslo in 2012 in their opening World Cup qualification away match.
Most firms, at the time of writing, are offering limited card markets and only one are pricing this game up. With both of the last two meetings going over this line (5-6) and a referee averaging five cards per game I'm backing over 4.5 cards on Bet365's Asian line at 1.875. In this instance doing the Asian line gives us better odds for exactly the same bet as doing the ‘normal' line.
Best Bets
Lithuania v Slovenia – Over 4.5 Cards (1.875 Bet365)
