Steaua Bucuresti v Brasov
Football: Romanian Liga 1
Venue: "National Areana", Bucharest
Saturday 26th November - Kickoff time: 20:00 GMT+2

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Steaua (8th W-6 D-4 L-4)

After losing their previous game against Ceahlaul Piatra Neamt, Steaua is on the edge of another scandal. The owner publicly criticized his strikers, which threatened to leave the club at the end of December.

In the media there are a lot of articles about who may be Steaua’s next coach, which means that the current one, Ilie Stan will be sacked soon. If Becali appoints a new coach, it would be the third this season. In fact, since 2006 when Steaua reached the semi-finals of the Uefa Cup, 11 coaches worked at Steaua, which is an average of more than 2 coaches per season.

That’s probably the reason why they haven’t won a title since 2006 and it looks like they won’t in the near future. Steaua is currently 8th, eleven points behind rivals Dinamo Bucuresti.

Trying to focus on the Europa League where they are 3rd in the group and will have to face Shalke 04 in Gelsenkirchen, Ilie Stan decided to rest striker Tatu and offensive midfielder Cristian Tanase who are recovering from injuries. Steaua will also be without midfielder Prepelita, defenders Gardos and Matei.

Geraldo, Bicfalvi, Tibi Balan and Rusescu all collected 3 yellows until now, so if they’ll be booked they’ll miss the derby against Dinamo.

Steaua’s home form:

06.11.2011 Liga 1 Etapa 13 Steaua 2 - 1 Concordia Chiajna
24.10.2011 Liga 1 Etapa 11 Steaua 0 - 0 Rapid
02.10.2011 Liga 1 Etapa 9 Steaua 2 - 1 Otelul Galati
18.09.2011 Liga 1 Etapa 7 Steaua 1 - 2 Pandurii Tg. Jiu
28.08.2011 Liga 1 Etapa 5 Steaua 2 - 0 FCM Târgu-Mureş

Brasov (12th W-4 D-3 L-7)

Ex-Rapid coach Marius Sumudica obtained his first victory since the recently took over FC Brasov, winning the home game against CS Mioveni with 4-0. This was Brasov’s most convincing victory this season, but it has to be said that the opponent was rather modest.

Despite not having a great experience as a coach and didn’t had the time to make substantial changes in Brasov's game, Sumudica is great at motivating his players and the enthusiasm he passed over to the team was obvious in their victory against Mioveni.

Now that they collected three points and put some distance between them and the danger zone, Brasov will travel to Bucharest without great pressure and will try to repeat the performance from the previous season when they humiliated Steaua with an impressive 3-0 victory.

The problem is that Brasov has been so poor on their travels this season, which is surprising to me because they have some players that can make the difference in a game. Under 21 international Alexandru Chipciu already scored 5 goals this season and is the subject of a move in the transfer period to a major club.

Brasov’s away form:

05.11.2011 Liga 1 Etapa 13 Vointa Sibiu 2 - 1 FC Brasov
23.10.2011 Liga 1 Etapa 11 Dinamo 0 - 0 FC Brasov
16.10.2011 Liga 1 Etapa 10 U Cluj 1 - 0 FC Brasov
23.09.2011 Liga 1 Etapa 8 Concordia Chiajna 2 - 1 FC Brasov
10.09.2011 Liga 1 Etapa 6 Rapid 1 - 1 FC Brasov

The Betting Verdict

Brasov came home undefeated from Bucharest twice, managing to hold first and second placed Dinamo and Rapid, but surprisingly lost against newly promoted teams like Concordia or Vointa Sibiu.

Steaua has a decent home record, but only beat one team from top 6 this season. With so many injuries and the pressure around the team it’s quite risky to back Steaua at these prices.

The bookies opened at 1.44 for a home win and instead of going down, the prices rise to above 1.5 at most of them. Everyone sees that Steaua is in a difficult situation at the moment, not only because of the injuries, but their game is not working out, they seemed helpless in the previous stage against Ceahlaul, even when they were down 1-0.

Despite starting this season rather poor, the new coach and the morale boosting 4-0 victory from the last stage could be incentives for another performance like the one in the previous season, when Brasov pulled off an impressive win in Bucharest against Steaua (3-0). In their previous 5 meetings, Steaua only scored twice and won once against Brasov.

On their previous home game i backed Steaua because they were playing against Concordia, a team that has no perspectives whatsoever. Brasov however, despite registering some poor results this season, they do show quality and potential. I am not saying that Steaua are not favorites to win this game, but under these conditions the value may be on laying them or in my case backing Brasov, low stakes of course.

The Pick :

Steaua Bucuresti 1-2 Brasov

FIXED ODDS BETTING :

Take Brasov to win at 6.93 Pinnacle