FC Astra vs AZ Alkmaar Betting Tips

Romania’s FC Astra were a relative unknown heading into the year’s Europa League competition, at least to British fans anyway. However, they’ve catapulted themselves into the spotlight with a pair of Europa League wins over UK teams. In the second qualifying round, they secured victory over Scotland’s Inverness CT, before beating West Ham over two legs earlier this month.

The victory over West Ham ought to put a pretty good marker down from which to judge this side, but it’s worth noting that the Hammers didn’t field a full strength side in the second leg, with suggestions that the London club wasn’t interested in advancing.

Still, Budescu is a highly-skilled player working from the heart of this side and this is a cub that is very capable of scrapping and battling for a victory.

After a terrific 2014-15 season, AZ Alkmaar probably lost too many players to enjoy the same level of success in 2015-16. It’s the nature of Dutch football and there are some young players in Alkmaar’s squad, who will improve.

They beat Turkish side Istanbul Buyuks comfortably in the last round of Europa League play, but they haven’t looked particularly strong in Dutch Eredivisie play so far. They were thrashed by Ajax to open the season and then held 2-2 by Excelsior.

Defensive frailty and a little inexperience could count against them in Romania on Thursday night.

West Ham’s second string side is still a pretty useful unit and wouldn’t be a bad side in either the Romanian league or Eredivisie. FC Astra are not a side to under-estimated and they will prove to be a difficult tie for their Dutch opponents, who are the on-paper favourites.

Our betting tips anticipate FC Astra to steal this game, based on the way they handled the games against West Ham and on AZ Alkmaar’s difficult start to this year’s campaign. On the positive side for Alkmaar, we do think that they will score a goal to keep the tie open and give themselves a decent chance of qualifying for the next round. Henrikssen has two goals already this season and AZ do have some quality players going forward.