Finland Cup Quarter-finals

Eight teams left to fight for cup glory.

On Wednesday 1.10.09 third-division

City Stars meet FC Honka,

City Stars is quality-wise a second division (Kakkonen) team and will also be promoted after this season. The bad news for them is that the gap between top of Veikkausliiga and Kakkonen is huge. The only upset I can remember when a second division team won a Veikkausliiga club was last round, when Jazz won poor and injury-riddled VPS 0-2.

Espoo lost to HJK only narrowly though and Gnistan made Lahti work until extra time in some other tight Kakkonen - Liiga encounters lately, but here a surprise would be the biggest ever as Honka is in form and arguably the best team in the country right now.. Honka will rotate strongly, but it has no effect whatsoever as the bench is full of quality guys.

Prediction: 0-3,4,5, probably not worth a bet.

EDIT: FT 0-3 by the third hat-trick this week for Jami Puustinen. A good week I must say for this ex Man Utd - trainee. Honka had 9 different players from the league team line-up so the players are pretty well rested against RoPS next Sunday.



On Thursday 2.10.09

KuPs - Inter

KuPS + 0,25 @ 2.17? I might be tempted, and then again not. I will wait for live action, as KuPS are still fighting for the survival in the league and waiting for the news whether the 3 points they lost in the cabinet against RoPS are to be returned.


EDIT: KuPs rested some key players and so did also Inter in the form of Furuholm. FT: 0-2.

Haka - TamU

Two weeks ago I would had gone for TamU with maximum stakes, or at least against Haka. Then, suddenly something has happened. I still do not believe it is permanent and can not really reason it, but I am not going to lose big money third time in a row if it happens to be true that Haka is a useful team again, and TamU do have some suspended and injured players and no one on the bench. LIVE.

FT:1-3. A well-deserved away win in this cup-derby.

FC Lahti - FC Jazz

I took my time in the waiting game and the odds for Lahti - 2.25 have dropped beyond acceptable level. Lahti will win, there is no question about that, but they struggled a bit against another 2nd division team and had to play extra time. I want to see who they are fielding, but Lahti -2.25 @ 1.81 is not acceptable, and I am not prepared to take Jazz either. I wait for live action here too.

EDIT: FT 4-0. Comfortable, could had been also a bit more narrow. It shows the difference of the quality quite well.