BOTH Brentford and QPR would have expected to be faring better in the Championship this season. Mark O’Haire (@MarkOHaire) takes a look at the best bets from Friday night’s West London derby.
Brentford v QPR | Friday 19.45 | Sky Sports 1
Oh crumbs. Another QPR game to preview. Another QPR game to preview at a London rival. Another QPR game to preview at a West London rival. These tend to go swimmingly…
Forgive the pessimism but most R’s fans despise these London derbies with one simple and obvious reason – we’re pretty crap at them. Can you be crap at derby matches? Probably not. But we can be. And we very much are.
Whilst knocking back the beers in Munich at Oktoberfest around this date last month my phone was alive and kicking with goal alerts as Fulham sent the Super Hoops to the cleaners in front of the television cameras, and not for the first time. So yeah, there’s a large sense of dread when it comes to Friday’s contest.
To be honest, I’m too fearful of the findings to even start researching our London derby record in recent years but I can tell you, matches with Brentford (all six of them) this millennium have been tight, full-blooded and actually bounced in our favour more often than not.
OK, Ian Holloway was in charge the last time we faced the Bees but W2-D4-L0 across those six head-to-heads and a memorable Marc Bircham stoppage-time winner at Griffin Park on the way to League One promotion still sticks in the brain. Ah, nostalgia.
But we’re here for betting purposes and I’ll swap my supporter head for an analytical view of the game and I’m sticking with my hunch and that’s for goals. So I’ll fire straight in with an even-money play on Over 2.5 Goals and Both Teams To Score at Bet365. Job done.
Ah… I’m supposed to explain my reasoning, aren’t I. Well, Clint Hill’s return to the defence has been heralded as the main reason Rangers have kept back-to-back clean sheets against Sheffield Wednesday and MK Dons. But there’s a long, long way to go before claiming the R’s are anything close to being solid at the back.
QPR’s 13 league games have produced a huge 44 goals with 9/13 (69%) breaking the Over 2.5 Goals barrier and a further six even featuring four or more goals. A chunky eight also saw both teams score with the side boasting just three shutouts whilst firing blanks in a trio of Championship matches.
On the road, the R’s have seen exactly half of their outings produce ticks in both the Overs and BTTS columns with only Huddersfield failing to breach the shoddy Super Hoops backline.
As for the hosts, the Bees are buzzing again. Three successive victories over Rotherham, Wolves and Charlton have lifted the club into 12th in the table under the guidance of rookie Lee Carsley. Brentford only leaked a solitary goal across those three fixtures but neither Rotherham nor Charlton were in the greatest shape going into those duels.
More telling is their lack of a clean sheet in six Championship encounters at Griffin Park this term and the total goals tally of 19 seen on home soil. That’s an average of over three goals-per-game seen in front of their home fans and so it’s no surprise to see a humungous 15/16 Griffin Park games feature Over 2.5 Goals.
For the record, the Bees have bagged Over 2.5 Goals in 8/13 (62%) of their league matches this season with the same figure also proving profitable for Both Teams To Score hunters. And since the start of last season, a ridiculously high 22/29 (76%) of home games have produced three or more goals with two fewer tallying up in the BTTS department.
Best Bets
Brentford v QPR – Over 2.5 Goals and Both Teams To Score (1/1 Bet365)
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