Sunday January 11th #1
I saw a poor and very limited Rotherham United side yesterday and it is going to be a long remainder of the season for them, Brentford were extremely lacklustre, well below their best, did not show up at all in the first half , but could easily still have won this by three or four goals, which doesn't augur well for the Millers. I did not see a lot of the other football games, so cannot say much about them at the moment, but felt that we were unfortunate not to collect on both NFL games and it has to be said that in Seattle, Cam Newton let his Panthers teammates and well, us, down. He had three poor turnovers, the last of which when his team were marching down field, were deep in Seahawks territory and about to secure the handicap, if not game, win.
La Liga : Athletic Bilbao- Elche
Bilbao come into this game on the back of a confidence restoring 4-2 midweek road win against their Galician neighbours Celta Vigo on Tuesday in the Copa del Rey. Having lost their last two La Liga home starts to Cordoba and heavily to Athletico, they will be desperate for a win in front of their home supporters and three points will haul them up into 9th and whilst it will be a huge ask and main domestic target for the rest of this season will probably be the Copa, they have to at least make a pretence at a run at a european spot in the league. They could hardly wish for a better opponent in basement club Elche, who are already five points from safety and have not scored in their last five away starts in all competitions, last of which was a 5-0 defeat at Barcelona on Thursday, which means that they will not only be tired from chasing shadows in that game, but arrive here on the back of 48 hours less recovery time that Athletic. Rotation was limited in midweek with ten of the 13 who played against Villarreal last weekend , featuring against the Catalan giants. With an already fairly small squad , depth is not a strength of the visitors and with several long term injuries, options to freshen up the squad are limited.
Bilbao are pretty much at full strength and can have no excuses, they offer so much more offensively when Aritz Aduriz and Iker Muniain (pictured) are available as they now are and they could/should run away with this and I expect Elche to tire through the last quarter, or at least not end the match as stong as the hosts. Four of Athletic's last five wins have come by two or more goals, they have scored 67% of home goals before the break and Elche have conceded 58% of away goals in the first half and a league high nine goals between the 16th and 45th minute. Good chance for Athletic to get ahead early and then the visitors will have to gamble.
1.5 units Athletic Bilbao -1.25 goals 2.31 asian line /Sportmarket.
Bilbao : Iraizoz, Toquero, Laporte, San José, Beñat, Iturraspe, De Marcos, Ibai, Iago Herrerín, Susaeta, Iraola, X.Etxeita, Mikel Rico, Gurpegi, Muniain, Aduriz, Viguera, Balenziaga, Unai López.
Elche:Tyton , Pol. Damián, Lombán, Cisma, Albacar, Enzo, Pelegrín , José Ángel, Aarón, Adrián González, Fajr, Pasalic, Víctor , Fragapane. Coro, Jonathas , Cristian.
Ligue 1 :Olympique Lyonnais- Toulouse
This could turn out to be a very big weekend for the hosts, with Marseille and PSG having already tasted defeat , three points for OL will take them top of Ligue 1 and that is a mighty incentive. Scoring should certainly not be a problem as Lyon are averaging 2.10 goals per game this season , are easily the top scorers in Ligue 1 and Toulouse play a very open style nowadays, are 3-0-7 on the road, where they concede at the rate of 1.6 goals per game.
Both teams are missing important defenders today, but we did see with Bastia yesterday that teams can overcome these losses and in fairness, it is not like the ACN has sprung out of nowhere and everyone has had several months to prepare. I expect goals and do feel that Lyon are a little more vulnerable defensively, especially aerially, than perhaps results indicate, or we have seen so far, but.................
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Good Luck.
