Derry City vs Shamrock Rovers

Derry City host Shamrock Rovers for this Irish Premier League round clash at Brandywell Stadium in Derry early Saturday morning Beijing time. This is the first tier of Irish football, but the level is not high by European standards. Most promising young Irish players leave the country early in their career to play in UK or elsewhere in Europe. However, both Derry City and Shamrock Rovers are top teams in this league and a decent match is on the cards here. By raw class, the visitor are the best team in this league. They currently top the standing with a total of 52 points to their account. Their goal difference is also good – 38:15. However, the difference in raw class compared to Dundalk in the second place with 46 points and Derry City with 44 points is in my view smaller than the league table would suggest.. Especially in terms of offensive quality today’s hosts are actually even a little better than Shamrock! Derry City have scored a respectable 41 goals and allowed 23. They currently the third place in the standings. We must remember that Shamrock have grabbed around three more points this season than they would have deserved in terms of expected goals. They have also conceded less goals than expected in terms of expected goal allowed statistic. Both statistics are commonly used by the best professional football bettors nowadays. The hosts, on the other hand have been slightly unlucky in term of expected points.

Both teams are in fine form at the moment. The hosts have gone four matches without a loss winning three of these. In their most recent match, they faced Dundalk away from home and were forced to defend quite a lot. However, they were the underdogs in this match according to the bookies. However, they had a great defensive structure, and the hosts did not manage to create too many dangerous scoring chances and recorded just three shots on target. Derry City had two. Before this they totally crushed a small team Oliver Bond FC 7-0 at home in a FAI cup 1/16-finals match. Shamrock, on the other hand, have not lost any of their latest matches and did beat Shkupi in Macedonia three days ago 2-1 in a Conference League qualification match and did qualify 5-2 on aggregate. Shkupi were the clearly the better team in the second leg though with 55% ball possession and creating 20 scoring attempts. The visitors had seven. Shkupi also recorded much more dangerous attacks (82-40) The two matches were a fine but tiring effort I would not be surprised to see their coach Bradley to rotate his squad here. Shamrock are definitely over-valued by the bookies today. However,odds on the hosts have understandably been coming down in the market on Friday as smart money is piling up on them but I think Derry City should be even bigger favorites and the recommended +0.5 goals handicap bet has a very high chance of winning.