Football betting tips: Europa League
2pts Both Teams To Score at 19/20 (General)
'Distraction' is seemingly the word of the moment when it comes to the Premier League's relegation picture.
Leeds now have the 'distraction' of an FA Cup semi-final to play. If it wasn't them it was West Ham burdened with it. Spurs don't have a 'distraction' to sit alongside their managerial change so now, of course, they're safe apparently.
And Nottingham Forest have the ridiculous 'distraction' of European football. A quarter-final at that as well. You assume Vítor Pereira will be doing all he can to get his side eliminated here - we don't need the 'distraction'.
Because that's what football is, isn't it? Oh, sorry, you actually want to watch your team win a major trophy? What's wrong with you? It's all about finishing below 16 teams but crucially above the other three.
You'll only see ten wins or so in a 38-game season but that's the most important thing you can do in football. Why? So you earn the right to do that all over again next season!
The majority of teams don't win major trophies, they don't even come near that. So why would you want to be different? It's all about becoming, if you're lucky, approximately the 13th-best team in the country.
Should I rise to political power one day, there will be some sort of prison sentence for those who seriously believe it's better to finish 17th than win an actual trophy - the same applies to those who refer to that competition as the 'Premiership' (it became the Premier League in 2007 ffs).
That's the rant over...maybe. I've opened with it because it both genuinely annoys me and this is actually a fairly tricky game to predict.
Porto are unbeaten in their last 13 at home in all competitions. In fact, the 3-1 League Cup defeat to Guimaraes the only time they've been beaten in front of their own supporters.
And then there's Forest who have demonstrated clear signs of life under Pereira's guidance. The former Porto boss, who guided them to two league titles, has made them look like a side more than capable of survival.
That's even with the 'distr...actually we'll leave it. In attack, they have been finding ways through against some good opponents and it's partly why I'm happy enough to settle on the 19/20 general price for BOTH TEAMS TO SCORE.
Six of Pereira's nine at the helm have seen his side scoring at least once which includes all five of those games on the road - they netted twice in the second leg of their encounter with Midtjylland in the last round.
As you'd expect given Porto's established position in the Portuguese footballing pyramid, BTTS isn't a regular winner in their league home games.
Yet focus on the Europa League contests and it's a slightly different story. Crvena zvezda, Malmo and Rangers have all struck in games where this selection was a winner.
You can't really focus on the League Stage encounter between these two in October given the managerial situation at the Premier League club, but Forest were 2-0 winners on that night.
Even with this being a first leg and the potential for both teams to play it safer, they each have enough in attack to strike.
Odds correct at 12:35 BST (08/04/26)
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