August 12th Finnish Football Newsletter

Aug 12th 2015  Veikkausliiga so far has been strangely low scoring, and even if the teams right now are more or less where they should be and the 1x2-distribution seems relatively normal (46-33-21) the general feeling is that always the teams always win and lose the wrong matches. The amount of draws is higher than expected, but it is easily explained by the low 2.24 total goals per match average, and 63% of the matches so far have ended in under 2.5 goals. Usually the goals per game should increase as the season goes on but there is no sign of it yet and the total lines are 0.25/0.5 lower than usually at this time of the year. There have been transfers into the league, but as most of the new faces are unknown, and based on experience of these mid-season transfers the new faces are mediocre at best unless known otherwise they should not have much impact unless otherwise stated. Odds & market moves MIFK is the biggest mover. Why? To put it simply they are strong at home, class-wise several steps ahead their poor visitor, and despite the loss last round at VPS they performed a good game and the 1-0 ft loss is very misleading, and KTP have three important suspensions to add up to the injury list. Finland : Veikkausliiga - Odds From 188bet.com Time GMT+0 Betting event  Current Open Total Line Over/Under spread odds spread odds current open type current open Finland : Veikkausliiga - 12/08/2015 16:30  HJK Helsinki -0.75 2.020 -0.75 1.950 2.25 2.25 over 2.060 1.920 FC Lahti +0.75 1.900 +0.75 1.950 under 1.840 1.980 16:30  IFK Mariehamn -1.25 1.890 -0.75 1.860 2.5 2.25 over 1.860 1.920 FC KTP +1.25 2.030 +0.75 2.040 under 2.040 1.980 16:30  Inter Turku -0.75 1.930 -1 1.990 2.75 2.5 over 2.060 1.950 Ilves Tampere +0.75 1.990 +1 1.910 under 1.840 1.950 16:30  RoPS Rovaniemi +0.25 1.790 0 1.910 2 2.25 over 1.900 2.080 SJK Seinajoki -0.25 2.140 0 1.990 under 2.000 1.820 16:30  VPS Vaasa -0.25 2.070 -0.25 1.990 2.25 2.25 over 2.070 2.080 KuPS +0.25 1.850 +0.25 1.910 under 1.830 1.820 Team news for today's matches All lineups available now at ftfinland.com for some time. Will delete them as unnecessary at some point. HJK Out: Alho, Savage, Kandji, Lampi, Ojala.  Havenaar sold to Holland finally as he was a waste of space and biggest single reason for poor HJK start of the season.  2nd gk change; Sahlgren to KTP, Dähne in from RB Leipzig. Returning "new" signings Kandji & cb Ojala but both out. Rotating to bench Sorsa & Schuller & Moussi and with Toni Kolehmainen now as a playmaker I can not expect too much from HJK. Lahti Out: Gela, Länsitalo. Lagerblom on the bench a bit missed but he may enter the field at some point. MIFK Full squad available but they rotate quite strongly. Orgill, Kojola, Assis on the bench from the important ones. KTP Pyhäranta, Van Gelderen, Gruborovics suspended. Järviniemi, Anttilainen, Kaivonurmi injured. New keeper Sahlgren starts and he is a lot better than the one who was expected to start earlier, the 18yo kid Kilpeläinen. Inter Out: Hämäläinen, N`Gal. Several returning but not most important players from injury list. Top attacking duo Ojala & Hambo sold abroad already earlier. Some confusion going on with the foreign defenders Kanakoudis, Matokou and Belica. Ilves Unimportant mf Mäkijärvi transfer to Ger lower leagues, new striker Diouf starts upfront. RoPS Out: top scorer Kokko and cb Jammeh suspended. Saksela injured.  Mf Yaghoubi and Cb Obilor return from suspension. Gk Ricardo also injured now, but the other gk Chensiski returning from long-term injury and he has a couple Kakkonen matches in his belt already with hugely praised performances. RoPS bench not useful apart from the new signing striker William John who is a question mark. SJK New striker Riski should/might improve the goal-scoring department. SJK widest material in the league, their style of attacking has just been to slow and predictable. VPS New midfielder Lähde from SJK and American df Schäfer. Only new face on injury list is mf Abdulahi. KuPS top mf Pennanen has been out most of the season and his absence has been the biggest factor for failing in the attack. DF Hatakka suspended in my papers but he is marked to be on the bench. Cb Diallo - the best of the CBs, missing and defending midfielder Sohna on the bench is a big worry for the defense line. Other important factors like fixtures HJK will have 6 matches during next 18 days time Cup semi-finals on Sat, Inter - KuPS & MIFK - HJK which already shows as rotation in today's lineups. What does the local public (and sports media, bettors) in general think? MIFK has been a popular pick but it was before the confirmed lineups. KTP exactly as weak as expected but MIFK do rotate.  HJK has gotten some recommendations but can not really follow that idea, they have injuries, added rotation and 6 matches in the following 18 days, two of them the most important of the season. (Krasnodar in EL-ql). The cup semi-finals on Sat make things a bit harder to predict. (Inter-KuPS, MIFK-HJK). Everyone is pretty  much expecting a 0-0 for the VPS-KuPS as always, same applies to RoPS-SJK. The only match where goals are more or less expected from both sides is Inter-Ilves. What bets to consider? In case you really like HJK after all their failures this season and ignoring the heavy schedule the wisest thing with HJK might be to wait for 2nd half. So far this season their ht score in total has been 9-11 but for 2nd half a hugely better 23-7, and with only half of the hc to cover!  Lahti to get something out of first half is not perhaps the most stupid idea? +0.25 @ 1.98 available. MIFK naturally was thinkable even if the markets have already strongly reacted. There was a reason to it. However the hugely dropped odds and rotated lineup does not make it too interesting anymore. If they are still at draw at ht live bet for MIFK might be worth it, -0.5 or -0.75 available then. KTP unlikely to score. The best teams after the ht break have been SJK, HJK and Lahti. Inter is the one who starts strongest, especially at home. RoPS look weakened with 3 important missings and also the gk change was not scheduled to happen just yet so I will keep an eye on SJK as I do not see RoPS scoring chances too high without Kokko. What happened yesterday? There was only Women's Champions League. PK-35 won Slovakian Champions Nove Zemky 9-0 in a funny game where the visitors were not prepared for the watered artificial pitch and simply could not run and play on the pitch. 6-0 first half did the trick and the 2nd half was a lot more even. Opening hc -2.25 seems low now, but it was well understandable as a few years ago at same venue Slovan Bratislava gave a good fight. CL continues on Thu and another trashing to follow vs Riga. Hc must be -8 or so! Crazy. Detail of the Day KTP and KuPS are the biggest losers in the final 10 minutes of the matches. If they could had held longer the table might look a lot different from their part. KTP score for the minutes 81-90 is 1-9, for KuPS it is not much better at 1-8. Inter on the other hand would be the easy champion if the matches lasted only 10 or 20 minutes, they tend to start very strongly and have a 12-2 record after 20 minutes of the match! Anything else worth mentioning? Finland got a new national team head coach today. Swedish Hans Backe. He will start in January 2016 and the rest of the 2015 will be covered by Finnish trio/quartet of ex-players.