The Europa League is a competition famed for being one that
teams don’t care about, making it very much the Carling Cup of the European football
sphere, but there’s a good reason to think that Tottenham will be taking it
very seriously on their way to a daunting Premier League trip to Manchester
United on Monday night.
Spurs are also very good travellers. In the Champions League
they won at the San Siro against AC Milan, struck three times against Inter
with ten men and held Werder Bremen and Twente – While a domestic total of 26
points saw them come fourth in the away table.
Thanks to the abandonment of their seasonal opener against
Everton it’s likely that Harry Redknapp will use this as a prep for the season
which means that we could see the likes of Van Der Vaart, Bale, Kranjcar,
Lennon and Corulka, all of whom bolster Spurs significantly and their attacking
[hilopshy should see no problems here.
Hearts should be boosted by their 3-0 win against Aberdeen
on Saturday but this is a whole different proposition and their other games had
reaped only one positive result, against a rusty Rangers on the opening day.
Spurs may be a short price but for good reason and they can be backed to win
tonight, with a simple outright win making more appeal than HT/FT in Spurs
favour (only 8 of those results last season in their favour) and over 2.5 not
making the appeal it usually does once a look at Europa League stats tells that
eight of their last nine in the Europa League produced two goals or fewer.
Elsewhere, Birmingham’s away record in the Premier League
did not make for good reading, with only 2 wins all season and with the same
problems evident in a loss to Derby on the road already this season they look
vulnerable at progressive Nacional.
The home side were a decent sixth in the Liga Sagres last
season and have already shown some prowess in landing beat FH 2-0 and Hacken
3-0 at home to reach this stage – Compare with Birmingham whose priority is undoubtedly
a return to the Premiership at the first time of asking, so how strong a side
will be sent to Portugal is a doubt and in any case Jordan Mutch, Cameron
Jerome, Marlon King, and Nikola Zigic will all be absent through injury, in
which case the value lies with the hosts.
And last but no least Slovenian League Leaders NK Maribor might
have the edge on Rangers, who seem injury hit and go into the game without
David Weir, Kyle Bartley, Sasa Papac and Steven Whittaker, with Kyle Lafferty unlikely
to feature.
While Rangers very much threw things away against Malmo,
Maribor went down to a good side in Maccabi Haifa who went onto beat Racing
Genk, widely known as one of the most improved teams in Belgium, 2-1 in their
opening leg of the Champions League Playoffs. The 15/8 about a home win looks
fair, as does 11/10 draw no bet, but evens about the home side winning either
half is the bet.
Regarding the other ties of the night, Celtic will want to
make it the Europa Group stage and do go into the game in great form, should be
taking a win at Celtic Park, That said, Sion have made a solid start to their
league season and are unbeaten on the road, having also scored in every game,
so the game’s best left.
The same advice goes to Fulham’s home tie vs Dinipro,
although the Cottagers were unlucky not to have beaten Villa on the opening
day, but the away side are more than useful and a few injuries, along with a likely
weakened team given that they have a tough trip to Wolves on the way.
Advice
3 pts Nacional (6/5 Stan James)
2 pts Tottenham (4/6 general)
1 pt Maribor to win either half (evs Coral)
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