Sheffield Wednesday vs Middlesbrough Betting Tips

The visitors are very strong at the back and mostly for this reason they have been made favourites for the title despite a shock 1-0 defeat at home to Bristol City last time out. They had the best defence in the league last year while Wednesday had the 4th best despite finishing in the bottom half so the indicators here point towards a low scoring game.

The hosts are perhaps a little more attacking this season under Carlos Carvalhal but there has not been a radical change in the way they play yet. Since the start of last season, only 5 of 25 Championship games at Hillsborough have seen more than 2 goals and Wednesday are highly unlikely to display a cavalier attitude when faced with the title favourites on Saturday.

Boro aren’t a free scoring side though and they scored 30 fewer goals than champions Bournemouth last season and 20 less than the other promoted clubs. They will need to improve on that if there is to be a different ending this time but they demonstrated the same problems last time out when they couldn’t break down newly promoted Bristol City and they also failed to score when they visited another of the newboys, Preston on the opening day.

Without the talented Patrick Bamford arguably they offer even less going forward this season so there is plenty of reason to believe there will be 2 or fewer goals in this game and you can back that to be the case at 4/6.

The hosts would certainly take a draw here and perhaps even Middlesbrough wouldn’t be devastated with a point as it would give both sides a solid platform to build from although both coaches may need to bring in a few players during the final days of the window.

The result could be a drab encounter that more resembles a chess match than a football game and there is certainly value in backing a 0-0 draw at 8/1.