Italian Serie A
2012-03-09 - Napoli vs Cagliari
A Sports Betting Pick by ROzsolt
Football : Italy : Seria A
Venue: Stadio Sao Paolo, Napoli
Friday 9th February – Kickoff time: 20:45 GMT+1
Napoli (5th W-11 D-10 L-5)
With four consecutive victories behind them, Napoli is now in a good position to take on Udinese for the last CL position, as the Friulani have shown some signs of weakness lately.
Napoli had their poor periods this season, but it seems like they rediscovered their form from the previous season, recording some impressive victories on the road (3-0 v Fiorentina, 2-1 v Parma).
On their last game here at San Paolo, Napoli got the better of Inter (1-0), causing their 7th defeat in eight games. Lavezzi’s top effort from the second half was enough for the Azzuri to secure all points, despite Inter missing some good chances in the dying minutes of the game, especially Pazzini’s header.
Mazzari’s team will go into this match without the suspended Blerim Dzemaili, but Inler should do a fine job replacing him, while Miguel Britos and Gianluca Grava have been ruled out because of injuries.
Probable Napoli line-up :
Campagnaro, Cannavaro, Aronica
Maggio, Inler, Gargano, Dossena
Hamsik
Pandev, Lavezzi
Cagliari (15th W-7 D-10 L-9)
Cagliari is coming into this match after losing two consecutive games and their lately performances on the road have also been quite poor, only winning one of their last 7 away games.
The Rossoblu should be worried by Lecce’s excellent form, the 15th place is not looking very comfortable at the moment, only 6 points above the danger zone, especially after just losing to both Lecce and Siena.
Coach Ballardini urged his players to forget the match against Siena at the end of which they’ve suffered one of the most severe defeats of the season (3-0). Cagliari lost two other games with the same score but they were against Lazio and Milan.
Cagliari will travel to Naples without Mauricio Pinilla who is recovering from an injury and El Kabir will also miss out with a muscle strain.
Probable Cagliari line-up :
Dessena, Ariaudo, Astori, Pisano
Ekdal, Conti, Nainggolan
Sammarco
Ibarbo, Ribeiro
The Betting Verdict
Mazzari declared that he will rest Edinson Cavani in view of next week’s CL encounter against Chelsea. Goran Pandev will replace the Uruguayan and play alongside Lavezzi in Napoli’s attack.
I’m not sure how will affect Napoli’s performance, their outfit still looks strong, but after all Cavani scored 16 goals in Seria A this season. However, I still think they should do enough to get the win here, especially looking at Cagliari’s form.
Cagliari only scored 10 goals in 13 away games and failed to find the goal in 5 of their last 6 matches on the road, while Napoli kept a clean sheet in their last 3 home games.
It shouldn’t be an easy match for the hosts, Cagliari could be tough to break sometimes, let’s not forget that they held Udinese and Juventus to a draw recently, but Napoli should edge this one and extend their winning run to 5 games.
The Pick :
Napoli 1-0 Cagliari
FIXED ODDS BETTING TIP :
Take Under 2.5 goals at 1.91 at BetVictorConfidence: 7/10
