Soccer Picks & Predictions · Friday, January 12
For the remainder of the 2023-24 club soccer season, Action Network's soccer betting experts bring you odds, picks and predictions for a variety of games, including those across leagues that may not be frequently covered as extensively as the Champions League or Premier League.
Read on for Unexpected Goals, our daily soccer betting roundup.
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Sevilla vs Alaves
Sevilla are going through another transition period, being on their fifth manager since the start of last season.
There has been one thing that has reigned true throughout all of their different managers – they’re a below average defense. The biggest problem has always been defending in transition. Although they aren’t great in rest defense either, they haven’t been dominating teams in the lower half of the La Liga table because most of those teams primarily play direct.
Sevilla are allowing 1.29 npxG per 90 minutes, which is 14th in La Liga, but most importantly they are dead last in the final third to box entry conversion rate allowed, meaning 34% of the time teams are getting into their final third, they are getting into the penalty area.
The offensive numbers aren’t great either for Sevilla, as they are averaging only 1.03 npxG per 90 minutes and they are heavily reliant on crosses to create most of their chances. That is a problem in this match because Alaves are second in La Liga in crosses allowed into their penalty area.
Outside of Celta Vigo, nobody has underperformed their expected goals more in La Liga than Alaves. They have been incredibly unlucky in front of net, scoring only 11 non-penalty goals off of 20.5 npxG. What is surprising is they actually have a really good striker in Samuel Omorodion, who is on loan from Atletico Madrid and has a 0.61 xG per 90 minute scoring rate this season.
Alaves also are the best defensive team in Spain right now from a non-penalty perspective, as they are allowing only 0.91 npxG per 90 minutes. They’ve just had terrible penalty luck already conceding six on the season. Otherwise they are allowing the second-fewest shots per 90 minutes, the fewest big scoring chances and are first in final third to box entry conversion rate allowed.
Alaves beat Sevilla earlier in the season 4-3 and on xG 1.8 to 0.6, so I think Sevilla are a little overvalued here as I only have them projected at +137.
Pick: Alaves +0.5 (-110 via bet365)
Qatar vs Lebanon
The Asian Cup kicks off Friday with the host nation Qatar hosting Lebanon in Group A.
Qatar are a very interesting case because since they were the host nation for the World Cup in 2022, they did not have to qualify, so they have only played three matches over the last two years against Asian countries.
They played in the CONCACAF Gold Cup this summer, but it was a really bad showing. They played four matches against Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and Panama, failing to create over one expected goal in any of them and they had a -3.95 xGD overall. They destroyed Afghanistan and India in World Cup Qualifying in November, but those are two teams near the bottom of the Asian continent.
Qatar recently played Jordan in a friendly on January 5th and got completely dominated, losing 2-1 and got out shot 15 to 5. They are now under a new manager in Tintín Márquez, which means they are no longer playing the 5-3-2 low block that we saw in the World Cup. Instead, because Qatar are now playing a lot of lower tier sides, they are playing more on the front foot in a 4-3-3.
In this match though they will be tasked with breaking down Lebanon’s low block. Lebanon recently hired Miodrag Radulovic, who managed them from 2015-2019 and recently was let go by Montenegro after failing to qualify for the Euros. Raduloivc’s Montenegro team was actually pretty good in a group with Serbia and Hungary having a +0.3 xGD overall in their eight matches.
Radulovic is a low block counterattacking type of manager. He prefers a 4-4-2 or 3-5-2, valuing defensive solidity over everything. He is also taking over a Lebanon team that is better than the market indicates. Over the last two years in Asia they have played both South Korea and Iran twice and still only had a -0.4 xGD per 90 minutes.
The talent level between these two squads also really isn’t as drastic as the market indicates. Per transfermarkt.com, Qatar’s total squad value is $15.9 million, while Lebanon are $7.4 million.
I only have Qatar projected at -148, so I like the value on Lebanon +1.5 at -130.
