Romania vs Finland Predictions

• Finland have won four of their last seven competitive (non-friendly) away games.
• Romania have lost three of their last four games and failed to score in each defeat.
• Joel Pohjanpalo has scored ten goals in his last 15 appearances for club and country, including a brace against Montenegro on Tuesday.

Finns represent value after impressive win

Finland will visit Bucharest on Saturday as Nations League B group 3 leaders and with some serious momentum building that could sweep them to victory against Romania. Markku Kanerva’s men deserved their 2-0 home win over Montenegro on Tuesday and appear to have found a potential new national hero too in Joel Pohjanpalo.

The Bayer Leverkusen striker, who scored 16 goals in 33 games on loan at Rizespor this past season, hit a memorable brace that included a superb team goal and an acrobatic individual effort. It’s fait to say confidence in the Finnish cap is pretty high right now and they look to be great value at around 12/5 to record another victory.

Kanerva will set his side up in a familiar 5-3-2 formation that should allow him to deploy Pohjanpalo alongside Teemu Pukki up top. The coach has so far managed his resources very well across the two previous group games, giving 22 players minutes, so there should still be some freshness about the visitors’ play.

Tricolours’ finishing has been spotty of late

Romania have had a nightmare start to the group with back-to-back away losses to Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The latter – a 1-0 defeat in Zenica – was probably a bit harsh on Edi Iordanescu’s men, who fluffed two very good chances to open the scoring in the first half.

Scoring goals has become a problem for the Tricolours, who have failed to find the net in three of their last four games, so we cannot bring ourselves to support them at a very short 5/4 quote to take all three points. Finland have our money this time and with more away wins than losses on their record in the last two years, we feel justified in taking them in the draw no bet market.

A 2-1 Finnish victory resonates with us as Romania are at least creating chances and could get on the scoresheet here against a defence unused to keeping back-to-back clean sheets.