Championship Predictions > Sep 17th

[StevieDay1983]

[StevieDay1983]

Check out the next round of Championship games with their odds and ratings listed above. Give us your predictions for these upcoming matches down below! 

[StevieDay1983]

Huddersfield vs Cardiff

The Championship action is here again after some intense midweek action. Lowly-placed Huddersfield will begin a new managerial era against a Cardiff team that are proving very unpredictable right now in this 3pm BST kick-off on Saturday afternoon from the John Smith's Stadium. Can the home team pick up a rare win against an away side that showed huge signs of improvements in midweek?

Huddersfield took the decision to sack head coach Danny Schofield after he managed just 1 win from his opening 9 league matches leaving the Yorkshire club down in 23rd place. The shift in form between Schofield's tenure and that of his predecessor Carlos Corberan could not have been larger. The Terriers have lost a number of key players over the summer after losing the play-off final last season but it's undoubtedly the departure of Corberan that has hit the club the most. Caretaker head coaches Paul Harsley and Narcis Pelach will take charge for this game. The team need a big improvement in performance having failed to win any of their last 4 league games with three of those coming at home and the last two home games ending in defeat.

Cardiff may well have been in the bottom three before their 3-2 win away to Middlesbrough in midweek but there wasn't a sense of panic amongst the players, staff, and fans at the club. Performances have warranted more on the whole and it's simply been a lack of finishing in the final third that has been holding the team back. That finishing wasn't an issue in midweek and, as expected, it resulted in a win for Steve Morison's side. The Bluebirds are now up to 15th position and just 3 points off the play-offs. Such is the madness of this division. The midweek win broke a lot of trends with it being Cardiff's first away win of the season, the first game they have scored more than 1 goal in a league this season, and a first victory in 6 league matches. There's still question marks over the lead striker role but if other players are stepping up with the goals then that issue becomes less damaging.

It was Huddersfield who prevailed as 2-1 winners when they last played Cardiff back in February. However, before that game, Huddersfield hadn't picked up a victory in the last 16 meetings between these two teams. I really can't put my finger on which Cardiff team will turn up. Even against Middlesbrough it was a very schizophrenic display with the first half simply glorious and the second half very negative. It's hard to tell how Huddersfield will be now Schofield has departed but I have faith that we'll see another decent Cardiff performance. Will we take our chances though? If we do, we'll win. If we don't, we'll be lucky to get a draw.

Cardiff Draw No Bet @ 2.00 with SBK

Total Goals Scored Under 2.5 @ 1.67 with VBet

[harry_rag]

I've gone for a header to be scored in Boro v Rotherham at 13/10 with Hills (6/5 Fred the only other price I'm aware of). You'll do well to make a profit betting on this market all things considered as only 2 firms seem to price it and their prices are usually rank bad value. Why might this game be an exception?

Well, the spread firms have priced this up as if they expect headed goals to represent just shy of 22% of all goals which is fairly high (the average is 17.7%). On that basis I get an indicative price of 2.19. 4 of Boro's 13 goals this season have been headed ones and, for the visitors, it's 5 out of 12. Overall that means 36% of the goals scored by the teams have been headers. If we took 36% at face value then 13/10 would be a huge price. We can assume it will reduce (regress to the mean) as the season unfolds but even so I think I'd be a lot closer to even money if I was a bookie pricing this one up.