* All prices are bang up to date with our snazzy widgets, while odds in copy are accurate at time of publishing but subject to change.
Northern Ireland welcome Bulgaria to Windsor Park on Wednesday night for their first home match of their World Cup Qualification campaign. Ian Baraclough’s team is in bad shape, they lost their opening match 0-2 away to Italy and haven’t won any of their last 11 games overall.
Bulgaria have lost both of their opening Group C matches and will be desperate for a positive result here. Let’s go through the stats and find the Three Best Bets for this World Cup Qualification match.
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Northern Ireland to Win
The market has certainly sided with the Ulstermen here. Their home form isn’t much better than their overall form but they have, at least, been regularly scoring on home soil. They’ve scored at least one in 11 of their last 14 at home and looking at Bulgaria’s form you can see exactly why the market is siding with Northern Ireland here.
The Bulgarians have scored one goal over their last six away matches. Two of those matches were against the Republic of Ireland. That’s a whopper of a red flag there.
Wednesday 7.45pm: Northern Ireland v Bulgaria
Sky Sports Football
If you play Ireland twice and only score one goal you know you’re in trouble. They did get on the scoresheet in their opening Group C match against Switzerland but they were already 0-3 down at the time and the goal didn’t exactly kickstart a deluge of attacking football from the home side.
We have to go with the home side here, their scoring record is far superior and that winless run should finally come to an end against a side who are very low on confidence. We’re backing Northern Ireland to finally Win here.
Bulgaria Under 0.5 Goals
Face some facts here, nobody likes betting on teams not scoring. It’s football and instinctively we all want to watch matches where there are going to be loads of goals.
It’s fairly safe to say this won’t be one of them. Bulgaria have scored a grand total of eight goals over their last 15 matches in all competitions. Three of those were against Gibraltar so we can’t count those; that makes it five goals over 14 matches.
They’ve scored in four away matches over their last 10 matches on the road but failed to find the back of the net in any of their last four. Northern Ireland’s defence hasn’t been as squeaky clean as normal, but in facing a side who haven’t scored in almost 400 minutes on their travels they should be able to keep a clean sheet here with Under 0.5 Away Team Goals.
Under 0.5 First Half Goals
Over their 10 most recent matches Northern Ireland have scored one first half goal. The honours go to Middlesbrough’s Paddy McNair, it was a 1-5 loss to Norway if you’re wondering.
At home the record is slightly better, they’ve scored a total of three First Half goals over their last 10 matches played at Windsor Park, one was an own goal though. We’ve written enough about Bulgaria’s woes in front of goal so there’s no point adding more salt to that wound.
Both teams are incredibly slow to start and struggle for goals and we’re getting a nice price here for the first half to end 0-0 for two teams that find it hard to get on the scoresheet.
Tips for Northern Ireland v Bulgaria
Northern Ireland to Win
Under 0.5 Bulgaria Goals
Under 0.5 First Half Goals
* All prices are bang up to date with our snazzy widgets, while odds in copy are accurate at time of publishing but subject to change.
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