Football Tips: Alan Cawley's 3 bold best bets for Azerbaijan v Ireland

* 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.

It’s difficult to call because you look at the campaign, in terms of the qualification we’re obviously out of the World Cup, I always said there was going to be some short term pain for, hopefully, some long-term gain. That was always going to be the case.

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I’m not really all that surprised the way the group has turned out when you consider the turnover of players and the amount of new ones introduced and the transition that’s going on in Irish football. Of course people will argue, is 16 matches enough time? Should Stephen Kenny be doing better by now? Should we have more wins on the board?

You have to be beating the likes of Luxembourg and Azerbaijan and I think that’s what’s gone against him so far. The games where we’ve had encouraging performances are against countries that you’d expect us to lose to anyway. Those games that we’ve lost, those are the ones the fans look at and say, ‘We should be beating them.’

Saturday 5pm: Azerbaijan v Republic of Ireland
RTÉ2 and Sky Sports Football

Ireland to Win

Going into the game at the weekend, even though it’s not huge in terms of qualification, it’s massive for Stephen and the country and I think he has to get a victory at the weekend and I’d be confident that we’ll see and Ireland Win.

Ireland to Win 1-0

I think Under 2.5 Goals is a banker to be honest with you. In terms of us not scoring goals, everybody knows the record that’s there. I think, in terms of the victory, I think it will come by the odd goal so I’m going with 1-0 to Ireland. I would take that if someone offered it to me now, I think Stephen Kenney would take that. He’s absolutely snap your hand off for it.

Callum Robinson to Score First

Looking at the goal-scorer markets I think Adam Idah has been very encouraging with his performances in the last window that we had, even though he didn’t get much chance to score a goal. I think he’ll lead the line again.

I think Callum Robinson, who’s caused all sort of outrage this week with the press conference, I think he’ll start the game. He’s probably our best attacker in terms of who’s playing at the moment. I’ll go for Callum Robinson to Score First and I think there might be a bit of value in that as well.