West Brom can expose Cardiff’s Achilles’ heel with vital victory
Published:West Brom manager Pepe Mel is under no illusion that this game at home to Cardiff falls firmly under the tag “must win”, with the Spaniard labelling it the Baggies’ “final”.
No pressure on the Baggies then or on visiting Cardiff for that matter, whose own helmsman, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, has deemed this Premier League relegation showdown as “non negotiable” for his Bluebirds.
If only Cardiff had gone about negotiating a few more points on their travels than the lowly half-dozen they’ve mustered away from Wales this season, then they probably wouldn’t be so deep in the sticky stuff.
The Welsh side arrive on a truly torrid run of eight consecutive league losses on their travels and for this reason alone the 17/20 on the home win looks more than justifiable, over the 16/5 for a Cardiff victory.
The reasons for Cardiff’s vulnerability home and away are numerous, but Solskjaer’s side have shown a particular weakness for conceding late goals all season.
Cardiff have conceded successive 90th-minute goals during their last two league fixtures, and lead the way in terms of leaking in the last 15 minutes of matches across the top divsion.
Therefore, the west Midlands outfit to find a way past Cardiff between the 75th and full-time at 17/10 looks one of the plumpest punts on this game.
In what’s likely to be a tense and tight affair, it could well be that this six-pointer is settled by the odd goal, especially as the hosts last scored more than once at The Hawthorns in a league match at the start of December.
A West Brom win by the margin of a single goal holds attraction as a result at 11/4 as does the far juicier price of 13/2 on the 1-0 home win.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.
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