TFT Issue 142!
FreeHowdy guys and girls!
Featured game
Banga Gargzdai vs Zalgiris Vilnius – under 2.5 goals at 9/10.
Today’s featured game is the A Lyga encounter between Banga Gargzdai and Zalgiris Vilnius.
Banga Gargzdai have had a bit of a strange campaign, really. They’ve gone from losing against everyone to beating everyone and considering the squad they have, that juxtaposition is quite possible. Although Banga Gargzdai do actually have some very talented players in their team, their biggest problem is that a lot of them are just kids. Coach Narbekovas gives them confidence and when they play well, they play really well but they’re always just a game away from a bad run because they’re terribly short on experience. Literally, there’s just Zelmikas, Kazlauskas, Choruzijus, Ostap, Grudys, and Ratkus that have any kind of experience in this team and some of those have barely played for Banga Gargzdai this season. Don’t get me wrong – Banga’s attacking talent is really quite good, especially with young hotshot Kulbis leading the line but you have to wonder just how well the likes of Lipskis, Kura, and Gailius will play against a good side rather than the usual mediocre A Lyga sides that Banga have faced lately. The hosts do have attacking power, as I’ve already said, but they tend to need the appropriate opponent for it to show and Zalgiris Vilnius are not the appropriate opponent for them, in my view.
Zalgiris Vilnius are only six points behind league leaders Ekranas Panevezys and two points behind Suduva Marijampole and that in itself is quite baffling to me. I’ve genuinely no idea how this side gets so many points! They’re a top five side and have a terrific history but they’re not a great side at all. Zalgiris barely manage to score goals in the A Lyga because they’re not very good at it and because they don’t try to score many – they play very defensive football. You can look at their home record and wrongly assume that they’re a goalscoring giant of terrifying proportion but their dominance at home comes from their artificial turf, which is quite an alien concept in Lithuania. Zalgiris have played fourteen A Lyga games this season and eleven of them have gone under 2.5 goals, which tells a story all by itself. Bear in mind that a vast quantity of Zalgiris’ home goals came against an Atlantas side that refused to train at the time due to personal problems within the club and you begin to see the truth behind Zalgiris Vilnius. Zalgiris’ away form is the biggest giveaway of how average this side can actually be in attack with only newly-promoted Dainava (outside of the bottom two) that have scored less away goals than they have. Zalgiris’ defence is very good; too good, sometimes, in fact – they can even keep out Ekranas and Suduva on good days, who are both better than Zalgiris. However, this side does not impress me in front of goal one bit and although young striker Matulevicius is in the form of his life with seven goals in ten games, it’s going to take more than him to convince me that Zalgiris will run riot today.
Unlike most of their recent displays, I actually expect a more composed display from the hosts here, and perhaps a tad more of a conservative display too. Why? Well, they host Azeri giants Qarabagh in six days time and although that doesn’t negate resting players for this encounter, it does mean the old “avoid injuries if possible” tactics should be enforced, especially as a lot of these boys are very young and want to play in Europe. Europe is a massive feat for the hosts and I believe that their attention will be fully on the game with Qarabagh. Additionally, Zalgiris are a very hard side to break through and I don’t think Banga will have the same amount of joy doing so here as they did against Atlantas or Klaipeda, for example. Zalgiris’ attention is solely on this game but on turf that they don’t excel on and with a side that doesn’t tend to score many goals at their disposal, I really fancy under 2.5 goals at 9/10 as it’s generously priced here.
Verdict: Under 2.5 goals at 9/10.