FOOTBALL LEAGUE fan James O'Rourke (@JamesOR1) shares his thoughts on Friday night's massive League One play-off semi-final second leg between Fleetwood and Wycombe.
Fleetwood v Wycombe | Friday 3rd July 2020, 19:30 | Sky Sports
The League One play-offs continue on Friday night as Joey Barton’s Fleetwood entertain a Wycombe outfit who very much benefitted from the early curtailment of the regulation season due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Chairboys were promoted into the play-offs, after being just outside, due to the points per-game method voted in by the majority of clubs. Peterborough fans therefore will probably be cheering on Fleetwood in this!
Nevertheless, Wycombe are a team that have been in and around the top spots for the majority of the campaign, and at one stage it really did look as though they could potentially runaway with the league title. That incredible run did halt, and understandably considering who they were up against, but Gareth Ainsworth continues to work miracles, and getting the club into the Championship would top it all off.
Any League One bettor across the campaign will have often be quite to back against goals when Wycombe are involved. Only four other clubs in the division saw a higher amount of their league contests contain Under 2.5 Goals.
Prior to the forced stoppage, Wycombe had won five and lost four of their last nine, and were ultimately struggling for consistency. Just five more teams drew fewer times that they did, so they’re something of an ‘all or nothing’ type of outfit in that regard.
Fleetwood built a reputation for a team that ultimately plays some attractive football, but one with a solid foundation as well. The Cod Army proved exceptionally hard to beat, with only eventual champions Coventry losing fewer times. Despite that, they’re still middle of the road in the league in relation to clean sheets, whilst 22 of their 35 clashes witnessing both teams scoring proves they were often involved in some end-to-end matches.
Only Wimbledon in fact saw more matches contain BTTS than Fleetwood, but we of course much factor in the lengthy stoppage and the fact the Cod Army haven’t played since early March, and believe it or not it was February when Wycombe last appeared! Both have played four times since the start of 2018, with those head-to-head encounters finishing 0-1, 1-1, 1-0 and 1-1. Goals clearly not in high supply.
Much like how I viewed the first-leg, I just cannot go against that same approach once more. A 0-0 Half Time Score is priced 13/8 (Sky Bet) and I very much expect this to pay out.
To just be thrown into a game of this magnitude won’t be easy, and neither side will have any real rhythm to build upon. You saw in the League Two play-offs that things got a bit more interesting in the second-legs, and that should be the case here, too.
Fleetwood lead the league in relation to half-time draws in their home games, with them being the only team to reach double-digits in that regard. Wycombe’s away league battles over the campaign produced only 14 goals across 16 games, so below an average of one per game.
Wycombe will likely be the more defensive-minded here with the hope of frustrating Fleetwood and taking a good score back to Adams Park. Only Oxford, Peterborough and Coventry have a higher number of clean sheets than Wycombe, and tactically I just think they’ll be happy to keep things tight to begin with, whilst Fleetwood won’t be at full throttle by any stretch of the imagination.
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Fleetwood v Wycombe – 0-0 Half Time Score (13/8 Sky Bet)
