Romania host Armenia at Stadionul Steaua for this FIFA World Cup qualifying battle with very high stakes. Both teams have a genuine chance to grab a ticket to World Cup in Qatar next year. Armenia are in the second place in the group with 12 points at the moment, whereas Romania are in fourth place with 10 points. North Macedonia also have 10 points. I expect Romania or North Macedonia to take the second place and a spot in the qualification play offs. Let's take a closer look.. 

Indeed, I rate Romania as a clearly better strong team than Armenia by raw class. They are a much bigger football country by any standard and on average their players play for much bigger teams than the Armenians. I do not think anyone - not even the visitors themselves would have believed to have taken so many points at this point.. Well, they have played better than I would have expected, not denying that, but they have had luck on their side in terms of expected goals and points. Most importantly for this match they have been in bad form lately - no wins in their latest six matches. A few days ago in Iceland they played a decent match  - it was a 1-1 draw after a balanced battle but let's not forget Iceland have been in pretty steep decline since their stunning run in the EURO 2016 where they for example shocked the football world beating England 2-1. However, they did not even qualify for the EURO 2020 despite the tournament having a record-high number of participants. Before this Armenia failed to win Liechenstein, one of the worst countries in Europe  - at home! Yes, they were the better team but still the 1-1 draw was huge disappointment as they were priced as close to 90% favorites on the betting market. This is a reminder that Armenia are not a good team by raw class and have a very limited offense at the moment. Before this they were brutally humiliated by Germany 6-0. They do have few good players -  like Henrikh Mkhitaryan - but overall are a very mediocre team and face a very big challenge today in Romania.

Romania, of course, are not a top country either but played pretty good game a few days in Germany despite losing 1-2, however, as written above Armenia lost 0-6 to Germany. They even lead the match at half-time after a fine goal by Ianis Hagi. Thomas Muller secured a hard-fought for the Germans late in the second half but Romania, despite being at times dominated by the hosts defended well and seemed to have great team spirit - which has not always been the case in recent years. They had several chances to score through fast counter attacks and similar performance would mean they have very good chance to beat Armenia tonight! Before this they played a solid match as underdogs versus North Macedonia, who even qualified for the EURO 2020, taking a point and once again defending very well. Today the bad Armenian defense will likely offer them quite a few scoring chances!

To sum up, Romania -0.5 goals handicap is a my pick here with a high chance of winning!