Slovenia vs England Predictions & Betting Tips, Match Previews

This is the first real test of Gareth Southgate’s credentials of becoming the next permanent England manager. He was onto a hiding to nothing really on Saturday as England beat Malta 2-0 in a game they could easily have scored more goals in were it not for some heroic goalkeeping. This will be a tougher test, but having beaten Slovenia twice in qualifying for Euro 2016, England should head to the Balkans in confident mood and searching for 3 points.

Victory would put England in a very commanding position in what is a weak group and they’d have got 2 of their 3 trickiest away games out of the way. They should have little trouble making the World Cup in Russia, with the other sides in the group all looking like they will take points off each other.

Slovenia saw off Slovakia 1-0 on Saturday to move on to 4 points after a 2-2 draw in Lithuania in their first group game. It was a significant win for them and any kind of result here would leave them well placed to at least strongly contend for 2nd place in this group. They have qualified for 3 major tournaments since the turn of the century, including 2 World Cups, so they do have some pedigree but they haven’t played a major tournament match since losing 1-0 to England in South Africa 6 years ago.

They’ve regressed as a side since then and unlike Slovakia don’t possess the sort of players who are going to be particularly well suited to just sitting deep and trying to frustrate England for 90 minutes. England are available at around 4/6 to win this, which looks perhaps a little short, although the bookies aren’t expecting many goals.

However, England did score twice or more in all but one of their Euro 2016 qualifiers and prior to that tournament all the talk was of how good they looked going forward with the problems being at the back. The manager may have changed twice since but the team hasn’t really changed considerably, and the fact England managed to score 3 goals in both games against Slovenia in the last qualifying campaign, suggests they should have some joy here in the final third. Therefore, backing England to score over 1.5 goals at Evens looks to offer value.

At 8/1 a 2-1 correct score prediction looks like a good bet. We’re expecting England to score two goals for the above reasons but they are prone to leak goals at the back and conceded two against Slovenia during their Euro 2016 qualifying campaign.