Shelbourne VS Bohemians

Shelbourne host Bohemians for this Irish Premier League third round at Richmond Park Tolka Park in Dublin  early Saturday morning Beijing time. For the first tier in Europe this league is of surprisingly low level – even lower than my home country's Finland's Veikkausliiga for example.. Football fans and bettors should not expect a massively entertaining match here. However, my fans and I have done extremely well betting on this league. Our goal is, after all, to make money in the long run! The bookmakers seem to make a lot of mistakes with their odds on this league. The same is, in fact, true with other smaller leagues as well. The bookies understandably put more resources into big, popular leagues, such as the English Premier League, with the biggest betting limits. I cannot agree with the biggest, usually pretty smart bookmakers that accept the biggest bets from customers. Indeed, these bookmakers see Bohemians only as slim favorites offering them odds of around 2.50-2.60 to take all three points. With today's lineups I see Bohemians as solid favorites with a 44% chance to win. This means that my fans and I have an excellent chance of winning once again betting on this league with the recommended +0.5 goals handicap option on the visitors. Shelbourne have been very lame offensively so far this season and have failed to score so far. Their offense has lacked structure, creativity, passing accuracy and especially speed. On the other hand they have also allowed just one goal so far but should have conceded more in terms of expected goals allowed (xGA).

I believe the hosts will be pretty defensive here against a strong opponent. Their coach is a pragmatic guy and realizes that his team is somewhat limited offensively, especially in terms of individual skill. Being too aggressive – ie. Taking (too) big offensive risks would offer the Bohemians chances for deadly counter-attacks. This is something I expect Bohemians to be even better than last season. Bohemians did score twice in the opening round but are rarely all that aggressive offensively away from home Indeed, I see this clash as even more low-scoring than the bettingmarket does. Furthermore, odds on the draw are slightly too high – around 3.30. My estimation for the under 2.5 total goals being scored is 70% and 34% for the draw. Bohemians fully deserved the win over Cork City away from home – they had 59% ball possession and many more goal attempts, attacks, and especially dangerous attacks - 39-26- They also created much more in expected goals (xG). In their most recent match they also played well beating a pretty dangerous team, Dundalk 2-1 despite having 40% ball possession. They recorded more goal attempts (17-6), shots on goal and dangerous attacks - 77-39. They have an edge over Shelbourne in all areas of the game and were better than the hosts already last season finishing in 6th place with 46 points.