Football – England – League Two Play-Off Semi Final 1st Leg
Sunday 11th May 2014 – Kickoff: 1200hrs
High noon on Sunday brings us the second of the play-off semi finals between hosts Burton Albion and Southend United at the Pirelli Stadium with the hosts looking to take a lead to Roots Hall next Saturday.
However, Burton Albion finished the season with a whimper rather than a bang as they suffered back-to-back defeats at home to Chesterfield 0-2 and tonight’s opponents Southend United 0-1 away in a dress rehearsal for today’s clash. In fact, Burton registered just three league wins from their last eleven matches which may well come back and haunt manager Gary Rowett and his players with momentum and confidence playing a big part in these situations.
Burton’s overall home record finished the regular season on 11-6-6 27/22 which doesn’t appear to be too bad upon face value but if you dig a bit deeper you’ll find that The Brewers won just three matches against top half opposition all season with a record of 3-4-4 11/15 including defeats to Southend United (again), Fleetwood Town and Chesterfield.
By contrast, visitors Southend United ended their season on a high by beating tonight’s opponents Burton Albion 1-0 at Roots Hall which meant that the Essex outfit had lost just once from their last eleven league matches (which was a 0-1 home defeat to AFC Wimbledon), keeping seven clean sheets from their last ten matches overall.
Away from home, The Shrimps tightened things up in the run-in to the end of the campaign remaining unbeaten in their last five matches with wins away at Cheltenham and automatically promoted Rochdale 3-0 along with gaining points at League Two runners-up Scunthorpe United, Bristol Rovers and play-off rivals Fleetwood Town.
Southend then appear to be in good shape for this first leg of the play-offs particularly with a record away at top half teams of 3-6-2 14/10 going into tonight’s match, and they’ll be looking to keep things tight and on parity for the second leg at Roots Hall next week.
Burton have to lift for this first leg but this may be a bit harder than usual given the back-to-back defeats still in the backs of their minds, while visitors Southend United had the wood over their opponents during the regular season. I’ll back The Shrimps to get at least a draw here today, with a view to finishing the job at Roots Hall – could be a 1-1 draw or perhaps a 1-0 win for Southend United.
Pick: Southend United AH+0.5 @ 1.63 Bet Victor
