Sporting Lisbon vs Skenderbeu Betting Tips

The Albanian side have already made history by becoming the first side from their country to make it into the group stage of a European competition but it is very hard to see them progressing any further. They’ve lost both group games so far, going down 1-0 to Besiktas and 2-0 to Lokomotiv Moscow.

Sporting are only 1 point better off after a poor start to their campaign but are in good form domestically, where they are unbeaten this season and are level on points with Porto at the top of the league.

They are used to the challenge of playing much weaker sides in the Portuguese top flight and Skenderbeu are certainly not in Sporting’s class. They were perhaps a bit fortunate to get some pretty cushy draws in the Champions League qualifying rounds which enabled them to make the play-offs and their heavy defeat over 2 legs to Dinamo Zagreb has probably spared them the embarrassment of some real crushing losses in the Champions League.

They don’t really have enough quality to cope with sides in this competition either and it is hard to see them avoiding defeat here against a Sporting Lisbon side that have plenty of European experience, especially in the Europa League.

The only question really is what the margin of victory is likely to be. Skenderbeu have been very defensive so far and are likely to follow that path again here. Sporting don’t tend to win big in Europe and although their overall recent record is pretty good they’ve only scored more than 2 goals in 1 of their last 33 Europa League games and that was a qualifier against little known Horsens.

Therefore consider backing Sporting to win but there to be under 3.5 goals in the game at 10/11.

It should be a fairly routine performance and if they go a couple up they won’t need to break much sweat given Skenderbeu’s limited attacking options. Therefore consider backing it to finish in a 2-0 home win at 9/2.