DERBY COUNTY v FULHAM
Friday 11th May 2018 – Kickoff: 1945hrs
Football – England – Championship Betting Tips
We’re now at the business end of the Championship season and Friday night brings us the first of the first leg play-off ties with Derby County taking on Fulham at the iPro Stadium with the hosts seeming to have the advantage, and not just because it’s on home turf.
Derby finished off their season in style by handing out a 4-1 thrashing to Barnsley who were duly relegated after that crushing defeat, while Derby secured the last remaining play-off spot ahead of Preston North End.
Derby will therefore have first bite of the cherry on Friday night against Fulham, but The Rams will be wary of a Fulham back-lash after they got squeezed out of an automatic promotion berth after suffering a shock 3-1 loss away at Birmingham City.
Derby’s home record finished up on a reasonable looking 12-5-6 41/22 which included winning three of their last four with victories over Bolton Wanderers, promoted Cardiff City and Barnsley. Rams manager, Garry Rowett, has various attacking personnel at his disposal with strikers such as leading goalscorer, Vydra (21 goals), Nugent (9 goals), Winnall (6 goals) and Jerome (5 goals).
The hosts should therefore not be without options in the final third, as the hosts look to make the most of home advantage here, considering their rather ordinary record away from home which finished at 8-10-5 29/26 – the second worst away record in the top six behind Middlesbrough.
Onto Fulham and their preparations for a grand finale at the end of their campaign was torn to shreds as they found themselves on the end of a 3-1 loss at relegation threatened Birmingham City who desperately needed all three points to ensure their Championship safety.
That unexpected defeat ended an excellent run of 23 league matches without defeat which looked like lifting them back into the Premier League, but it’ll now be interesting to see how The Cottagers cope with narrowly missing out on automatic promotion as we head into the lottery of the play-offs.
Fulham manager, Slavia Jokanovic will need to pick his players back up again and remind them that they still possessed a fair away record which ended up on 12-5-6 39/29 which is not too dissimilar to Derby’s home record by the way.
In addition, Fulham recorded a 2-1 win against The Rams at the iPro Stadium recently in March, so they’ll have nothing to fear here I dare say. Newcastle United loanee, Aleksander Mitrovic (12 goals) has helped transform Fulham into genuine promotion contenders, and along with Kamara (7 goals) and Piazon (5 goals), as well as creative midfielders, Johansen (8 goals) and Cairney (5 goals) as well as the highly rated Sessegnon (15 goals), the visitors may well fancy their chances of setting the record straight on Friday night.
Pick: Both teams to score @ 1.78 Unibet
