Azerbaijan U21's welcome Belgium U21's to the Dalga Arena this afternoon in the UEFA U21's Championship.
The game this afternoon will be the reverse fixture of the game that was played out just 4 weeks ago.
In that game played in Belgium the hosts ran out 4-1 winners and I am expecting a similar sort of scoreline today.
Why? well the hosts simply cannot defend.
Amazingly they have won just 1 game in the last 7 years! Which was a 3-2 win at home to Albania, nothing to make a song and dance about but still the only celebration the side have had in all those years.
Recently they have lost 4 on the bounce, they were well beat 0-2 by Norway in their last home game, a game where their performance did not reflect the scoreline and the hosts could count themselves lucky not to lose by a bigger deficit.
Other games have included a 1-0 loss to Belarus, a crushing 6-0 defeat at the hands of England and of the course the 4-1 defeat as mentioned to their opponents today Belgium.
As of many of these smaller footballing nations, they have weak senior squads as it is, so when ever a handful of decent youth players show their faces in the ranks, more often then not they are snapped up straight away and bought straight through to the senior squads, this of course leaves the U21's etc with very little talent and very inexperienced squads throughout.
When they come up against an experienced side at an international level it is usually one way traffic.
Belgium U21's whilst certainly not the best U21 squad in Europe, are still a lot more experienced then the hosts.
They have lost just 2 games out of their last 12.
Recently they went to Slovenia and held them to a 2-2 draw and they visited France and won 0-1.
Belgium's strongest ability is their attack, they have the likes of Liolo of Genk and De Pauw of Lokeren who have linked up well together recently aswell as El Ghanassy of Gent who is looking good in the Belgium league so far this season.
I feel Belgium should run out easy winners in this game although if Azerbaijan do offer any problems they could get on the scoresheet so the Asian handicap does not interest me and at a best price of 1.36 the outright win doesn't either.
What I like the look of is Belgium to score in both halves of football in this game, in the last meeting they scored twice in both halves.
With the odds for a Belgium win as low as 1.28 with some bookmakers, there is some great value on offer at evens with Paddy Power for them to get on the score sheet in both halves and that's where my money is going.
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