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The World Cup qualifying action continues into Sunday as England, who top Group F, face an easy-looking match against Lithuania, who are sitting on 5 points after 4 games.
Yes, England head into the game off the back of a 1-0 away defeat over Germany on Wednesday night, but most people will agree they actually played better than the Germans that day and were very unlucky to lose the game.
Confidence may well have taken a knock, but the players and boss – Gareth Southgate – will know they deserved to get something out of the game in midweek and with Lithuania much easier opponents they should be getting back to winning ways here – especially with home advantage.
So, how will Sunday’s match pan-out?
The two teams have only met twice before, with the most-recent of those coming in 2015 in a Euro 2016 qualifier. The Three Lions won that one 0-3 on the road, while the only other head-to-head saw England win 4-0 in the home leg of that same Euro 2015 qualifying period.
With home advantage, and their superior FIFA ranking, then it’s no surprise to see England as short at 1.11 in the match betting, with the draw 9.00 and Lithuania as big as 21.00 – However, there are bundles of other better value markets to get stuck into and still plenty of nice betting opportunities to be had.
So, what do the head-to-head stats say? We’ve already mentioned England’s 3-0 and 4-0 previous wins over Lithuania, so if you fancy a repeat of these score lines then 3-0 can be backed around 5.50, while 4-0 is on offer at 7.50 – both look decent calls and are sure to give you a run for your money.
Team news will be crucial and with England facing a bit of a striker crisis at the moment with the likes of Kane and Rooney on the sidelines then it goes without saying, if you fancy a punt in the scorer markets to hold-fire and see who’s playing.
Ross Barkley, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Wayne Rooney, Harry Kane, Danny Wellbeck and Raheem Sterling were all on the scoresheet when England have played Lithuania in the past so are worth considering if involved – with Sterling looking the most obvious of that bunch at 5.50 to net the first, or 2.10 to score at anytime.
Goals, Goals, Goals……………………………….
With an aggregate of seven goals scored vs Lithuania in their last two games then there is a good chance we’ll see plenty of goal-mouth action again in this game. Over 2.5 Goals, which has collected in the last two head-to-heads, can be backed at 1.47, while if you fancy a few more, then Over 3.5 is on offer at 2.20 and Over 4.5 at 3.75.
For us, we can expect the visitors to make it hard and Lithuania have notched 5 points in Group F so far, which sees them sitting above both Scotland and Malta. That said, with home advantage then it will be a huge shock if Gareth Southgate’s men can’t add three more points to the 10 they’ve already got in the group.
So, yes, we expect goals, but once England get a comfortable lead then they may well take their foot off the pedal at 2-0 or 3-0, so the safer call for us here is England to ‘win to nil’ at 1.53.
The visitors failed to score in their last two games vs the Three Lions, while so far in these recent World Cup Qualifiers, England are also yet to concede – winning 1-0 (Slovakia), 2-0 (Malta), 0-0 (Slovenia) and 3-0 (Scotland), which further backs-up the England ‘winning to nil’ shout.
Best Bet: ENGLAND TO WIN ‘TO NIL’ @1.53
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Sunday 26th March 2017
England V Lithuania 17:00
- Last played Oct 2015, Lithuania 0-3 England
- Met twice before, England 2, Draw 0, Lithuania 0
- Lithuania have NEVER scored vs England
- Both previous head-to-heads went OVER 2.5 GOALS
- England have won both previous head-to-heads ‘to nil’
- 4 of England’s last 6 games went UNDER 2.5 GOALS
- Both teams DIDN’T score in 5 of England’s last 6 games