March 21st

League Cup - 3 matches to go

Home advantage was crucial at quarters as all 4 home teams proceed to semifinals. HJK won KuPS far more easily than the FT score 4-3 suggests but their defenders had a day off and seemingly could not care less. Highlights from HJK TV here.  Unless you are bored I can not really recommend the link though, difficult weather conditions made it look even worse than usual.

Honka won Jaro 2-0 in the end, but despite keeping the clean sheet the problems in the center of the defense are far from solved. Honka miss one or two good defenders and it is a fact they have to deal with if they want to win something this season, but at least they are very overish club to follow at the moment.

TamU beat strikerless TPS 1-0. Even the last of the TPS strikers Mika Ääritalo was missing from the line-up, and there was no sign of the two test strikers mentioned in the preview. A boring and low-scoring encounter as expected.

JJK won Inter after a penalty shoot-out. Inter had their chances to finish the match off in the first half but scoring goals remains their problem number 1. They just do not know how to find the net, but all in all their performances are in good form. Highlights.

The first semifinal Honka - JJK will be played on Wed 23rd of March, the other one TamU - HJK on 2nd of April. The final will take place  April 23rd before the league season starts the following week.

The Finnish Cup

Both 4th and 5th round are under way and not too many shocking results have occurred so far. The league teams have the following schedule;

Clubs in the semifinals will join the Cup on 7th round.
Losing clubs from quarters will join the 6th round.
5th round:
Viikingit (1.div) - MIFK
LoPa  (2.) - Haka
NoPS (3.) - MyPa
RoPS - VPS
Riverball (2.) - AC Oulu

At the moment there are still 5 RoPS players under arrest, not the best way to prepare for a cup match in the weekend I suppose. Haka, MyPa and AC Oulu really have to underperform badly to get kicked out, but for MIFK it is no walk in the park though Viikingit were far from convincing in their 4th round win over 3rd div. AC Vantaa. Full Cup schedule here.

A preview for Wednesday´s Honka - JJK  at CET 15.00 to follow on match day. International match weekend means that probably the cup matches are also available for live betting during the weekend but more about them later. Finland national team will meet Turkey U23 and Portugal but they are not very interesting matches betting-wise. Finnish squad is on an experimental stage, but they did ok vs. Belgium last time around with  a same type of a squad. U21 team is away in Slovakia.

Have a nice week, back to you on Wednesday