Swansea, West Ham and Stoke stars to prevail for Euros hipsters
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While football bettors everywhere prepare for the summer extravaganza that is Euro 2016, the hipsters make use of the increased number of teams to find a niche.
Forget the obligatory flutter on the outright winner or tournament top scorer, it’s whether or not Albania will score a goal during the tournament or some intriguing player match bets that catch these folks’ eyes.
In the latter arena, Ladbrokes must be their bookmaker of choice, with a number of players pitted against each other in the goalscoring stakes.
Here, Ladbrokes News delve into three of them:
After being named in Wales’ squad for the Euros, Ramsey unveiled a new bleached-blonde hairdo. So quiet has he been this season, it was almost as if the Arsenal man was crying out to be noticed amid a lot of Gareth Bale-focussed hysteria.
The Welsh midfielder notched just five times for the Gunners in 31 Premier League games this term and will undoubtedly be under instruction to feed his Real Madrid countryman at every opportunity in France.
Those tactics were in full effect during qualifying, as Ramsey scored twice to Bale’s haul of seven goals.
By comparison, Sigurdsson, who is the 7/4 favourite to win this tussle with 3/1-rated Ramsey – is very much cast in the Bale role for Iceland. He led qualifying-Group A with six strikes, 35 per cent of his country’s tally, to send Iceland to France.
That form aside, the Swansea man has also netted nine top-flight goals in 2016 and could feast on a Hungarian defence that was among the four most leaky in reaching the tournament of qualified sides.
Ladbrokes give slight favouritism to the Frenchman, at 2/1, in what appears an even match-up on paper.
Payet scored nine times in 30 league games during an impressive debut season with West Ham, while 11/5-shot Alli scooped the Young Player of the Year award thanks to 10 strikes in 33 Spurs outings.
Both of their respective nations are expected to breeze through the group too, meaning this battle could come down to the pair’s position on the pitch.
Payet has been operating in a wide forward role for Didier Deschamps in warm-up friendlies, while Alli looked marginalised when pushed wide in Roy Hodgson’s diamond set up against Portugal.
The West Ham man’s dead-ball prowess also gives him the edge here.
Host nation poster boy Pogba is 6/4 to score more goals than Shaqiri during the tournament, but isn’t as central to his team’s goalscoring hopes as the 11/5 Swiss winger.
Stoke’s stocky Shaqiri was Switzerland’s top scorer at the 2014 World Cup and claimed silver in that tournament’s qualifying campaign.
He was back to leading the way when netting four times in qualifying for this tournament and bagged more than his teammates in Euro 2012 qualifiers too.
In total he has 17 international goals to Pogba’s five.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.
