[Football- England 'EFL Cup'] 4.9/ 18:30 Middlesbrough- Shrewsbury
Posted: 04 Sep 2020 15:23
[Football- England 'EFL Cup'] 4.9/ 18:30 Middlesbrough- Shrewsbury
The 1st Round of the EFL Cup continues this week with the majority of fixtures taking place after some sporadic action last week. In this opening preview, we take a look at the 5:30pm BST kick-off on Friday evening between Championship side Middlesbrough and League One club Shrewsbury at the Riverside. The home side are heavy favourites but are the bookies under-estimating the away team?
Middlesbrough enter into this league season as one of the dark horses in the Championship. The team might not have changed much from last season with the only arrivals so far being striker Cole Kiernan signed from Sunderland for an undisclosed fee and centre back Grant Hall joining from QPR on a free. Ryan Shotton, George Friend, and Adam Clayton have all departed the club on free transfers with the latter two joining Birmingham. A 5-1 win against local rivals Newcastle in a pre-season game has given the club confidence and with Football League expert Neil Warnock at the helm you'd have to be a fool to rule them out of challenging for the play-offs at least. However, Warnock has always treated the EFL Cup with apathy at best so don't expect a full scale Boro assault here.
Shrewsbury finished in a safe mid-table position of 15th last season when League One was curtailed early. Sam Ricketts remains as the man in charge and there is an enthusiasm to see the team change from its more pedestrian 3-5-2 to a more attack-minded 4-3-3. A few potentially shrewd additions in the mould of winger Josh Daniels from Glenavon and Rekeil Pyke from Huddersfield along with the loan signings of Scott High from Huddersfield, Marlon Fossey from Fulham, and Matija Sarkic from Wolves could be what is needed to aid that transition in philosophy. Pre-season has delivered mixed results so far so it's hard to tell how they'll be set up for this game.
The EFL Cup is always a chance to make some profit on an underdog. It's notoriously renowned that Warnock's sides usually bow out of this competition early as he fields a mixture of reserves and youth players to rest the senior players. Will he do that here or see it as an opportunity to get the first team players closer to full match fitness? Shrewsbury will no doubt be at full strength but is that strong enough to beat this Boro side in transition? A lot of questions but I probably have to back even a weakened Boro side to get something here.
1 @1,75 Bet365
FT 4:3
The 1st Round of the EFL Cup continues this week with the majority of fixtures taking place after some sporadic action last week. In this opening preview, we take a look at the 5:30pm BST kick-off on Friday evening between Championship side Middlesbrough and League One club Shrewsbury at the Riverside. The home side are heavy favourites but are the bookies under-estimating the away team?
Middlesbrough enter into this league season as one of the dark horses in the Championship. The team might not have changed much from last season with the only arrivals so far being striker Cole Kiernan signed from Sunderland for an undisclosed fee and centre back Grant Hall joining from QPR on a free. Ryan Shotton, George Friend, and Adam Clayton have all departed the club on free transfers with the latter two joining Birmingham. A 5-1 win against local rivals Newcastle in a pre-season game has given the club confidence and with Football League expert Neil Warnock at the helm you'd have to be a fool to rule them out of challenging for the play-offs at least. However, Warnock has always treated the EFL Cup with apathy at best so don't expect a full scale Boro assault here.
Shrewsbury finished in a safe mid-table position of 15th last season when League One was curtailed early. Sam Ricketts remains as the man in charge and there is an enthusiasm to see the team change from its more pedestrian 3-5-2 to a more attack-minded 4-3-3. A few potentially shrewd additions in the mould of winger Josh Daniels from Glenavon and Rekeil Pyke from Huddersfield along with the loan signings of Scott High from Huddersfield, Marlon Fossey from Fulham, and Matija Sarkic from Wolves could be what is needed to aid that transition in philosophy. Pre-season has delivered mixed results so far so it's hard to tell how they'll be set up for this game.
The EFL Cup is always a chance to make some profit on an underdog. It's notoriously renowned that Warnock's sides usually bow out of this competition early as he fields a mixture of reserves and youth players to rest the senior players. Will he do that here or see it as an opportunity to get the first team players closer to full match fitness? Shrewsbury will no doubt be at full strength but is that strong enough to beat this Boro side in transition? A lot of questions but I probably have to back even a weakened Boro side to get something here.
1 @1,75 Bet365
FT 4:3