UEFA Cup Final Betting
Glasgow Rangers meet Zenit St Petersburg in the City of Manchester Stadium tonight in a UEFA Cup Final featuring two teams with completely contrasting styles. It’s going to be hard to predict the outcome of this match as the likely winners will be the team who best overcomes the other’s style of play. Let’s look at how the two teams reached the Final to see if we can get any clues on how the match might go and what the best betting options on the match might be.
Rangers
Rangers have reached the Final basically because their defence just doesn’t concede goals and that makes them extremely difficult to beat. They play with a lone striker, flood the midfield and hassle and chase the opposition for the full 90 minutes, giving any creative players in the opposing teams very little space or time to do anything constructive with the ball. They try and play on the counter attack and if they get in front are almost impossible to peg back.
Walter Smith’s men have been beaten only once in the tournament 1-0 to Werder Bremen and have only conceded two goals in their eight UEFA Cup matches, but have only managed to score five times. Four of their eight games have ended in 0-0 scorelines and even although tonight’s match is a Final they are likely to employ the same defensively minded tactics that have served them so well up to now.
Zenit St Petersburg
Zenit are the complete opposite in style to Rangers. They are an exciting attacking team who utilise the abundance of pace they have in the side to great effect. They play a fast flowing passing game and are expert exponents of the counter attack.
Zenit have played 12 games in the tournament and have scored 20 goals. They have beaten some top European sides including Bayern Munich, Villareal and Marseille and look to be a side that can score goals in any game.
Best Bets
With the Rangers defence being so hard to break down even Zenit will find it hard to score. Zenit are also without striker Pavel Pogrebnyak for the final and he is the current joint top scorer in the tournament with 10 goals, so he is going to be sorely missed.
It may pay to have a bet on the under 2/2.5 goals at 7/10 (bet365) in what looks to be a low scoring affair. The half-time result of a draw 11/10 (Coral) could also be worth backing as European Finals are notoriously cagey affairs.
Who is going to win? Well to be honest this has got us in a bit of a dilemma. Football purists will want the team with attacking flair to win and Zenit at 5/4 (Skybet) have that in abundance. Rangers are extremely difficult to beat and if they were to score first the 29/10 (Betfair) for a win would be great value. The more likely outcome however is a draw and we’re going to sit on the fence and take the 9/4 (Coral) for the match to end all square.
It’s unlikely that there will be many goals and it is worth considering the possibility of the match being won on penalties. Both Zenit and Rangers are quoted at 10/1 (Ladbrokes) to win the match on penalties and if that’s the way the match is decided then our money would be on Rangers.
We do think that the 7/2 (Ladbrokes) on offer for Nacho Novo to score any time looks decent value and is definitely worth a small bet.