Tottenham v Basel Betting Preview

Tottenham v Basel Betting Preview 04/04/2013

The first leg of the Europa League quarter final sees Spurs host Basel this Thursday. The home side come into the match as strong favourites, but will they find it hard to score against their defensively-sound opponents?

Tottenham picked up their first win in four matches with a 2-1 victory at the Liberty Stadium of Saturday. Again, Gareth Bale was at the heart of the win; with an assist for the opening goal and a spectacular finish to continue his fine scoring run for the second. Bale has been in tremendous form in recent months and before that three game win-less run he was instrumental in Spurs’ 6 wins in 7 matches, scoring an incredible 9 goals. The Welsh winger is 3/1 to score first on Thursday and 8/11 to score any time in the match.

The bookies seem to have priced Bale (to score) at incredibly short odds for this match and in fact, have done for the Spurs win too. Tottenham are an astonishing 4/11 to win the match on Thursday, which we feel is far too short. Some people may argue that they deserve to be those odds, and maybe they do, but Spurs are a dodgy team at home and we certainly would not be backing them at that short odds. Spurs do have a fantastic home record this season, but they do often come unstuck against the weaker teams; they have lost to both Wigan (1-0) and Fulham (1-0) this season and failed to beat Stoke City (0-0).

Basel come into this game as 9/1 rank outsiders, who seem to have little chance according to the bookies. But, when you look at the stats, they may frustrate Spurs and nick a draw, which is still high at 10/3 and offers much better value that the home win. Either could be worth a punt. Basel are no push-overs. They are top of their league in Switzerland and have won 4 out of their last 5 matches, without conceding a goal in any of those (2-0, 3-0, 1-0 & 4-0).

In the last 6 away Europa League matches Basel have only conceded more than one goal on one occasion, when they went down to a 2-1 defeat to Videoton. The other games have all been low scoring (1-1, 0-0, 1-0, 0-0 & 1-1). Their defensive stability is clear to see and they are going to make it very difficult for Spurs to break them down. They would quite happily take a 0-0 draw and it looks like that’s what they may play for.

In the last round of this competition both teams showed great promise and beat two of the best sides in the competition.  Spurs beat Inter in convincing style at White Hart Lane (3-0) before throwing away their lead in Milan (3-0) with a poor performance, eventually winning in extra time. Basel’s victory was somewhat more simplistic, as they beat Zenit (2-0) at home and held on in Russia for a slight loss (1-0) to qualify for the next round. This shows us that both team’s strength is their home form and Spurs will be keen to win this match on Thursday so they don’t have to go looking for a result in Switzerland next week.

We do think Spurs will win the match, but it won’t be convincing and therefore at the odds of 4/11 we simply can’t be taking them. We would much rather look in the goals market and be backing under 2.5 goals at 23/20 or, at bigger odds, under 1.5 goals at 10/3. Another bet that may be worth considering would be backing the HT score to be 0-0 at 5/2. It is no secret that Spurs are much better in the second half and score most of their goals then, especially at home. Basel will be doing all they can to frustrate Spurs in the first half and they would be extremely happy going into the break at 0-0, Spurs wouldn’t be too disheartened either and won’t be going all out to win the match too early as they will be wary of conceding an all-important away goal. This looks the best bet of the night to us, but in this competition and with Spurs, anything can happen, so keep stakes low.

BEST BET: HT score 0-0 @ 5/2

Be Lucky.