St. Patrick's Athletic vs Shamrock Rovers

St. Patrick's Athletic host Shamrock Rovers for this Irish Premier division round 19 clash at Richmond Park in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, early Tuesday morning Beijing time. This not very high-level league by European standards, but offers lucrative betting opportunities and there is a strong football culture in Ireland.. Indeed, we have won four of the most recent five picks on this league and also won both picks last Friday with two home underdogs! Most teams in The Premier Division are quite limited offensively but defend in a pretty organized way and fight for every ball and never give up. Laziness is not tolerated by any of the managers in this league. Both of these two teams are among the best teams in this league and are - on a good day - definitely capable of fine offensive football.

The hosts often aim to playing aggressive football in front of their enthusiastic fans but today the opponent is strong – Shamrock actually top the standings with 45 points in the bank and a good goal difference of 34:13. I expect the hosts promising manager Tim Clanxy,38, to choose a more cautious strategy for this particular clash.. Indeed, I see the match as more low scoring than the betting market does, and a draw would surely be a somewhat satisfactory result for both teams..This would be enough to bring as yet another winner with the St. Patrick’s +0.5 goals handicap option. The chance of winning is 58%. Yes, the visitors have played well but not as well as the standings indicate and are undoubtedly over-valued by the bookies here! They have not been very convincing on the road and have won just four of the ten matches away from home. The home advantage here is not as big as in some European top leagues but still substantial!

I wrote on my previous analysis that St. Patrick’s are on average not strong on the road - this is still true - but did play better than I would have expected against Finn Harps last Friday they were clearly the better team with around 60% ball possession and more shots on target, goal attempts, completed passes, attacks and dangerous attacks. They lost all three points in the dying minutes of the match as Doyle made it 2-2 90+6 mins. I have to admit that we were a bit lucky to win the bet that time! On the other hand, sometimes very good picks are lost due to bad luck. Finn Harps, of course, are not a pretty limited team though so I will not give the promising performance too much emphasis. At home St. Patrick’s have indeed been strong losing just three and winning five of the latest matches at their stadium. They must be annoyed and motivated after the latest match, which they were, in fact, leading 2-0 in the 87th minute.. Shamrock are the better team by raw class but the difference is not that big after. The visitors would have to improve their offensive football - especially in terms of structure and creativity - to win here. They have scored just two goals in their most four most recent games! Moreover, they did not convince me at all in their most recent match at home against Bohemians last Friday - as very clear favorites. Yes, they were the better team but often looked sluggish and too predictable when trying to break the visitors’ defense.