Udinese welcome visitors from Rome for this round 26 Italian Serie A clash early Monday morning Beijing time. China Lottery sees the visitors are favorites here but I disagree. Let’s take a closer look at the match..

Yes, Lazio are higher in the standings with and currently occupy 6th place in the standings of the 4th best football league in the World after The English Premier League, Spanish La Liga and German Bundesliga. They have 42 points in the bank at the moment. The hosts have grabbed 24 points and are currently in 16th place. We must realize that the table, however, does not reflect the true class of the teams which is probable the main reason for the over-valuation of the visitors and under-valuation of the hosts offering my fans and myself a chance to place a good bet with high chance of winning. 

Indeed, the hosts should have scored 6-7 points more than that actually have in the bank according to expected goals. Taking a look at expected goals we can see something extremely unusual for this level! Lazio have scored 16.75 more goals than they realistically would have deserved and allowed 6.4 goals less than they should have. For the hosts the numbers are something completely opposite. They have scored pretty much the goals they would have deserved but allowed almost 9 more goals than expected! Neither team have been particularly good form lately and have lost their most recent match. Lazio lost in Porto in the Europa League play offs first leg 1-2 and did not really deserve the more. They had over 50% ball possession but lacked creativity in offense. The host recorded 21 scoring attempts whereas the visitors had 6 attempts. Shots on goal were 4-2 for the hosts’ favor. Udinese suffered a heavy loss 0-4 to Verona in their most recent match but had close to 57% ball possession and recorded a lot more scoring attempts, attacks and completed passes and created much more in expected goals than Verona! The next match after a high stakes international match on Tuhursday away from home does lower Lazio’s chance of winning by about 2% compared to a situation where they had a week to prepare.