This is a Pirkanmaa (area in Finland) derby between teams who who know each other very well. The derby aspect and the fact that home advantage is smaller in general in Finland than in big football leagues makes this a more balanced match then odds suggest. Yes, Ilves are the better team but not by a wide margin. Neither team is in particularly good are bad form at the moment. I expect a physical battle with a lot of emotion. Haka have played slightly better than the table suggest and we already won a pick on them a few weeks ago. They challenged the dominating HJK Helsinki on the 10th of June despite despite losing 1-2 a very promising performance. They do struggle quite a bit in offense though and would indeed need a little more skill in that department. Having said that they often choose a pretty defensive strategy, especially for away matches like today. Haka would probably be pretty happy with a draw today which would mean we win the pick +0.5 goals on them. Goal expectancy is pretty low.

Before this match Haka played two back to back matches versus Honka, a big disappointment this season but who are slowly improving. I rate Honka's raw class slightly better than that of Ilves and these matches give us a reason to expect a pretty tight match today despite Honka being slightly the better team in both matches. Haka have a very good team spirit and and a pretty inexperienced but tactically good head coach, former Tottenham player Teemu Tainio. Ilves weakened a lot for this season. They started the season better than expected but lately they have performed as expected before the season. They have a very young team even by Finnish Veikkausliiga standards and their performances are not very solid to say the least. They did beat one the top3 teams Inter Turku two weeks ago but were pretty disappointing in their most recent match versus a poor team KTP which ended in 1-1 draw.

Good value available on Haka +0.5 goals.