clubgowi sample "Saturday" previews

Jul 25, 2015

There were six previews sent to clubgowi newsletter subscribers yesterday for matches taking place early today, one from the MLS and five from J-League, you can view two of them below as samples of what the service provides . Real Salt Lake have just beaten Sporting KC 2-1 and the games in Japan start in four hours time.

Subscribers will also receive two further emails today, one covering Brazilian and MLS fixtures, the other looking at this afternoon's friendly games.

MLS: Real Salt Lake- Sporting KC

Big rivalry between these two and recent encounters have been "spicy" and are always very physical. To that end alone, I feel that SKC are at a disadvantage given that they have played Saturday-Tuesday- Friday over the last week and due to injury and international call ups, could barely rotate for the midweek US Open Cup game and 13 of the 14 who played against Houston in the last league game, also featured on Tuesday when they took almost an hour to get on top of the ten men of Houston, in what was an incredibly hard fought encounter. The way the match played out meant that head coach Peter Vermes felt unable to make two substitutions until injury time and this must be a team running on empty right now and I doubt a battle against a bitter rival just three days later and on the road is going to suit them. Having said that, there is nothing wrong with the form of Sporting and their only loss in 14 starts was here in Salt Lake just five weeks ago, but nine of those fixtures were at home and of the five on the road they are 1-3-1 and that sole victory aside, it is over a year since they won on the road without a goal from Zusi or Opara who are both absent this evening.

RSL are missing key players too, with Olave, Beckerman and Rimando unavailable, but they have had a free midweek to prepare solely for this and have only left Salt Lake once, for the short hop to play Colorado, in the last month and will clearly be the fresher of the two squads. They felt they played their best football of the season in the first half of the last meeting, when they really took the game to SKC and could have been 2-3 up at the break, we might well see a similarly flying start from them this evening and to be honest, I do not feel that the visitors should be favourites for this. Hosts are very strong at home and have lost just once in 26 home starts since early June last year, they pride themselves on the Rio Tinto Stadium (pictured) being a fortress and with two road games up next and already six points adrift of a post season spot they see as theirs by right, this is a fixture they have to get something from.

1.5 units Real Salt Lake level ball 2.02 asian line/Sportmarket.

J-League:

J-League matches lend themselves to "in play" betting, they tend to be very consistent in how they play out and trends, once established are certainly worth following and we have done so with good success in recent seasons and are now at that stage of the campaign when patterns have been set and enough games played for the basic data to be reliable.

Sagan Tosu- Shonan Bellmare

Sagan will be very pleased (me, less so) with a share of the points in midweek away to Gamba Osaka, who blew a lead for the third match running, ahead of which I wrote ........

Of course, it is all relative and Sagan are in far worse shape and have conceded an average of 1.8 league goals per game in 2015 and 2.3 across their last ten. Their problems were not dissimilar to Gamba, as Tosu were making a habit of being very strong before the break and then seemingly running out of steam. At the weekend I wrote ......."We again discussed how solid Sagan had been in the first half and leaky in the second in midweek. They stopped the second period rot with a clean sheet at home to Kawasaki Frontale , but had to settle for a share of the points after going in at the break 1-1, they need to find a balance between undoing all their first half hard work and completely going into their shell and if they do, will be tough to beat. Anyway, they are now 7-12-0 before the break and only Sanfrecce have scored more first half goals ." There kept a second clean sheet after the break, but it did them little good as they went in at half time losing 1-0 which was the final score and it seems they they can either keep things tight and not score themselves, or go gung-ho and concede freely.

Last two h2h meetings here in Osaka have been high scoring, with both on the scoresheet and five goals in each and something similar would not totally surprise me. However, the visitors arrive seemingly without top scorer Yohei Toyoda, he has 14 goals in 20 starts this year and when he doesn't score, Tosu are 1-1-6 , they are 5-5-2 when he does, which is 1.17 points per game more, also looking set to miss out is keeper Akihiro Hayashi, with replacement Taku Akahoshi between the sticks they have a 16.7% win rate in the last three seasons ( 4 in 24) and that drops to 8.3% on the road ( 1 in 12). I said "seemingly" as that news is a day or two old, but I think the pair are sidelined.

Gamba had several chances to extend their lead before Tosu found a way back, the visitors were indeed without both Hayashi and Toyoda (see above) and the pair again look set to be sidelined for the visit of Bellmare, who arrive with a fully fit squad , with four points from their last two away starts and buoyed by a 4-2 defeat of Sagan in the reverse fixture.They have had a free midweek to prepare solely for this and will be much the fresher with an injury hit Sagan having not only played the extra 90 minutes against a team as comfortable with the ball as Gamba , but also making the lengthy trip to Osaka and back, after already having been all the way up to Niigata last Sunday, that is a tough seven days and Sunday- Wednesday-Saturday is not usual in J-league.

1.5 units Shonan Bellmare level ball 2.26 asian line/Sportmarket.

Good Luck.

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