Royale Union Saint Gilloise welcome visitors from Ghent for this Belgium Jupiler Pro League round 21 clash at Stade Joseph Marien in Brussels. I expect a very tight match here and see the host as only very narrow favorites. I expect a pretty entertaining and more open and high-scoring match than the betting market and most analysts  - and perhaps the media in general. The level of the this league has been on the rise in recent year and whilst it is in general of course nowhere near the level of Spanish La Liga, English Premier League, Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga etc. but it is still pretty high level football with a lot of young, promising players the bigger clubs, in better leagues keep an eye on.. The league is also pretty balanced except for the worst team in the league, Beerschot.  Let's take a closer look at this very probably pretty interesting and probably pretty entertaining, but most importantly betting-wise interesting match..

The hosts  are, extremely surprisingly, in the first place in this league at the moment with 46 points in the bank. Club Brugge, a team that played in the Champions League this season, are in the second place with 40 points. The visitors are 5th place with and have earned 33 points so far. The hosts were promoted for this season and whilst having success in the past are not the best in this league, not even close by raw class! I expect them to clearly drop in the standings during the rest of the season. In fact, I rate Gent as better team than the hosts and the total market value of their players is also a lot bigger than that of the hosts - some 48 million euros. The hosts' squad's total market value is only about 20 million euros as listed on the well-respect German website, Transfermarkt.com. I must admit I did clearly underestimate them in my pre-season analysis -  but so did probably many other experts, professional bettors and the Royale Union players.. I would say a top-4 place would be a realistic goal -  and an awesome achievement indeed for a club with very limited resources and mostly unknown players.

To sum up, Gent +0.5 goals handicap is the smart here  - with over 60% chance of winning -  for my growing fan-base and myself!