Azerbaijan vs Croatia Predictions

After taking themselves to the top of Group E thanks to an easy win against Slovakia on Friday night, the Croats will be looking to remain on top by beating Azerbaijan on Monday. The hosts go in search of their first points of the campaign.

Qualifying certainly hasn’t gone well for Azerbaijan, who find themselves on zero points after four matches. First time out, it did look as though they competed when taking on Croatia away from home, though the fact that they both scored and lost by two goals to one masked the fact that they were easily second best.

Since losing to Croatia on match-day one, where they created only 0.67 expected goals and conceded 2.74, Azerbaijan have lost to Hungary, Slovakia and Wales. In those two games, they’ve conceded a total of eight goals, so it’s clear that they’re not up to much defensively. Having performed well against the Azerbaijanis earlier in the group and having seen Monday’s opponents go on to concede ten goals in three matches, the Croats will very much fancy themselves to do the business.

One positive for Azerbaijan is that they’ve made their presence felt going forward by scoring in each of their four Group E matches. If they can repeat the effort delivered at this venue against Hungary, then the side managed by Nikola Jurčević, who once played for Croatia, may just be capable of getting involved offensively on Monday evening.

On a much smaller scale than Monday’s hosts, Croatia have encountered defensive problems of their own in qualifying, conceding in each of their first three matches, though they did an excellent job to stop Slovakia from finding the net last time out, as they totally dominated, giving away just 0.37 expected goals.

In fact, apart from when taking on Hungary away, the Croats have generally given little away, as expected goals against figures of 0.67, 0.75 and 0.37 suggest. A repeat of their efforts against the Slovaks should be more than enough to make it three wins on the spin in Group E.

In the betting, ‘Over 2.5 Goals’ stands out as a viable option. For all Croatia’s underlying figures point towards a decent defence, they have kept just one clean sheet. Azerbaijan’s defensive issues are there for all to see, which doesn’t bode well ahead of a game against a Croatian attack that can be menacing and that is averaging 2.25 goals per game in Group E. Add in that 100% of Azerbaijan and Croatia’s games in qualifying have seen at least three goals go in and it’s not difficult to conclude that the price on offer is slightly generous.