Icelandic Football
2011-06-26 - Valur vs Vikingur Reykjavik
A Sports Betting Pick by Cornholio
Football : Icelandic top league : Round 8
Sunday June 26 2011, 19:15 (GMT)
Two of Reykjavik's sides meet here. Their history is quite different with Valur taking 20 Icelandic champions titles and Vikingur only a single one.
Vikingur are new in the league after some years in League one but Valur have disappointed every year since they were champions in 2007.
This will be an excellent chance for Valur to take advantage of a team in trouble and to stay among the best in the league.
Valur
Valur went crashing out of the Cup losing the second time at home to IBV. IBV were 0-3 up after 30 mins and Valur's manager said his team didn't play football the first half hour. After that they improved a lot and managed to close in with 2-3 but that's the closest they came.
In the league Valur haven't played since May 29 when they beat Breidablik 2-0 at home. Before that they beat Fram 1-0 at home, lost 0-1 to IBV and beat FH 1-0. These scorlines show that their home games don't produce a lot of goals and actually their away games don't either as they lost 2-1 to Fylkir and beat Grindavik 0-2.
So you can see that the Valur defense is the strongest in the league conceding only in two games of six, a total of 3 goals, with all but one game being under 2.5. Still, the problem with their defense is that it's consisted of slow players meaning they have to sit back and can't move up with team when pressuring the opponent.
This is the reason (at least in some part) they have only scored 7 goals but because of their tight defense they have the third best goal difference and therefore sit all the way up in 4th place.
The Valur record so far is 4-0-2, where they have lost once at home and once away. Their home loss was quite lame since they played with a man up for the whole second half against IBV who scored in the last minute.
Valur's strikers have been showing some improvements lately after going on goaless in the first few rounds. They both scored in their victory over Breidablik and one of them scored against IBV in the cup.
A troubled Vikingur side will be a great opportunity for them to stay on track.
Vikingur Reykjavik
After a good start where the strong defense produced many points, Vikingur have been free falling lately and are now only one spot from the bottom with six points and a record of 1-3-3. The trouble began when one of their key defenders got injured and then one of two strikers also injured himself.
When their defender, Egill Atlason, came back it was obvious that he wasn't fit at all so it didn't help much. Earlier in the week they crashed out of the Cup losing 3-1 to Thor on the road. They have now lost their three last games conceding 8 goals in them and 6 goals in the last two. This is a complete turnover from the first rounds of the season where they only conceded 3 goals in the first five rounds.
What is even worse for Vikingur is that they simply can not produce the number of goals they need if they are to have any chance at all of staying in the league. Their scoreline is 4:8 and they have only scored in three games of seven. How those statistics are to get better against Valur's strong defense is hard to imagine. Keep in mind that they have only scored two goals in last six games.
The Vikingur midfield has been said to be too weak and doesn't provide the strikers with enough service. If they don't manage to fix that along with tightening their defense again they simply will not have a chance against Valur.
Head to head
2011: Valur - Vikingur 4-1 (Pre-season cup, neutral grounds)
2010: Vikingur - Valur 1-3 (Cup)
2010: Valur - Vikingur 4-0 (Pre-season cup, neutral grounds)
2007: Vikingur - Valur 1-5
2007: Valur - Vikingur 3-1
2006: Vikingur - Valur 3-1
2006: Valur - Vikingur 0-0
The Betting Verdict
There really isn't any other way than to classify this game as a home banker. Everything points to a secure win including the head to head stats.
Initially I was thinking that this game wouldn't produce many goals but now I'm not so sure. This could in fact well be the first game for Valur to offer some amount of goals and it wouldn't surprise me if they all came from Valur.
Valur's offense (mainly the strikers) have been improving while Vikingur's defense has been going down in flames. Vikingur will need some kind of a magic to get something out of this game.
BEST BETTING TIP :
Main bet :Take Valur to win at excellent odds of 1.75 (Bet365)
Side bet
Consider Over 2.5 Goals @ 1.75 (Bet365)
Long shot :
If you like to take things further why not try over 3.5 goals @ 3.00
