It’s just a matter of days until the World Cup and the club season is well and truly behind us, with several international friendlies the mainstay of our football diet until the real action begins in Brazil. We’ve got three great accas, with a level of risk to suit all tastes this weekend, so why not check out the teams’ final preparations for the 2014 World Cup and make a tidy profit too?
Easy Winner – 13/8 (Sky Bet)
- England to Beat Peru (3/10) – Peru are poor and whilst England recently lost at Wembley to both Chile and Germany they are usually very strong at Wembley and should have enough to make this a comfortable home win.
- Spain to beat Bolivia (1/8) – Bolivia have been known to cause some upsets but always at their high-altitude haven in La Paz and the world and European kings will be far too good for them here.
- Uruguay to beat Northern Ireland to nil (5/6) – Northern Ireland are without many of the best attacking players for this match and given even at their best much of their squad is drawn from England’s lower leagues we doubt they’ll be able to trouble Uruguay at all here. The South Americans are without Luis Suarez but even so, this should prove an easy win to nil.
Medium Risk – 10/1 (Sky Bet)
- Uruguay to beat Northern Ireland to Nil (5/6) – For all the reasons above this is how we start our medium risk accumulator this weekend as we think odds not far shy of evens are a great and safe way to get the ball rolling here.
- Austria to beat Iceland to Nil (7/4) – Iceland just missed out on qualification for Brazil 2014 and they have some decent players but now qualification is over they will try out some youngsters and will lack the determination and pride that made them so tough to play against in qualification. Of course, the position is similar for Austria but they have some really promising players coming through at the moment and on home soil we can see them winning this quite easily.
- Portugal v Greece Both Teams to Score (5/4) – Portugal are big favourites here but they are defensively poor and given Greece have little to play for we expect them to perform without fear and they will certainly have enough to nick a goal, albeit in a losing cause.
Long Shot – 38/1 (Betfred)
- Daniel Sturridge to Score at Anytime (Evens) – Sturridge has had a great season for Liverpool and is full of confidence. We fancy he can do the business here and at odds of around evens he is good value to get this acca off to a winning start.
- Norway v Russia Draw (9/4) – Fabio Capello’s Russia will want to build momentum as they target a strong performance in Brazil but Norway are no mugs and backing a draw looks a very solid prospect here.
- Germany v Cameroon Draw (5/1) – Both of these sides will feature in Brazil and whilst Germany are one of the favourites, Cameroon will have a tough task getting out of Group A with Brazil, Croatia and Mexico. They have some talented players though and we fancy they can battle their way to a draw here.