Slavia Praha vs Anderlecht Predictions, Betting Tips, & Match Preview

Slavia Praha are, unfortunately, a club in decline. Seven years have passed since Slavia Praha last won the Czech First League, and eight years have passed since they qualified for the UEFA Champions League group stage for the first time. Praha’s fifth place finish last season represents their best finish since said monumental title win in 2009, and their performances in the Europa League so far have been far from impressive. Praha have qualified through the second and third qualifying rounds due only to the away goal rule, drawing 3-3 against Levadia and 1-1 against Rio Ave FC on aggregate respectively. Coming into this off the back of four consecutive draws certainly raises questions to whether the Czech side will be able to progress much further in this competition.

In contrast,Anderlecht are a thriving team who are the most successful team in Belgium, not just domestically,but also in European competition. Though all of their European silverware comes from the late 1970’s, Anderlecht continue to be a prominent name in European football today. Whether it’s in the Champions League or the Europa League, they are always intimidating competition. Anderlecht find themselves this time around in the Europa League playoffs after a disappointing 4-2 aggregate defeat to Russian side Rostov in the Champions League. The visitors look to replicate and improve upon their 2015/2016 Europa League round of 16 run.

Anderlecht are three matches into their domestic league campaign and, unlike their opponents, seem to be on track for another season as a title challenging side. Slavia Praha have barely shown that they are capable of Europa League football by scraping through the earlier stages and, as such, we find Anderlecht a really decent price to take a win away from this first leg match. Even though Anderlecht have kept just one clean sheet from all five of their competitive matches so far this season, they have been scoring the goals to keep them one step ahead, for example beating fellow Belgian side Kortrijk 5-1 just last weekend. Meanwhile, although Slavia Praha have been quite average, they have scored at least one goal in each of their last three matches.

Hence, we feel that Anderlecht to win at 11/8 and Anderlecht to win 2-1 at 9/1 are both decent priced bets for this match.