Republic of Ireland vs Latvia Predictions

• Four of Ireland’s last six friendlies have seen them shutout their opponents.
• Five of Latvia’s last seven games have had under 2.5 goals.
• Ireland have scored at least twice in all five historical H2H encounters.

Euro preparations begin here

Ireland are preparing for a tough Euro qualifying group featuring both Netherlands and France, so they have an opportunity to build some confidence in this friendly against Latvia. In five historical meetings between the nations, Ireland have won every time whilst scoring multi-goal hauls in every such encounter.

Latvia themselves have been rock solid of late, losing within 90 minutes just once across their last 12 internationals. However facing the likes of Liechtenstein, Andorra and Azerbaijan is a much easier proposition on paper than taking on the Irish.

In truth, the hosts should get the win here but may have to be patient to score against the improving Latvians. Despite the improvement of the visitors, Latvia are still without a clean sheet in three of their last five away internationals against much lesser opponents to boot.

Squeezing some value from the Irish

There’s simply no price about backing an Ireland win at around 2/7, so we’re going to push the price out to a slightly more palatable, yet still very short 4/9 by backing Ireland to score at least twice in this game.

That’s something they’ve done in every H2H so far and with big qualification games on the horizon, a confidence-boosting win by at least a couple of goals will go a long way to help the team’s morale.

However, given the fact Ireland have kept clean sheets in four of their last six friendly encounters and the fact that five of Latvia’s last seven friendlies resulted in under 2.5 goals, a slender 2-0 correct score for the hosts could be the way to play this for smaller stakes.