FIN football June 18th quick review

A few thoughts of what happened on Saturday in FIN top leagues.

At Veikkausliiga the BIG match was played at SJK 's new arena which does have the most stupid sponsor name ever - OmaSP - but which was otherwise highly praised.

SJK vs HJK 2-3

Entertaining match which could had also been the other way around. Both have their strenghts and weaknesses and balance seems to be hard to find. SJKExit and HJKExit to follow soon in the European cups.

Veikkausliiga highlights 18.6 here.

RoPS vs Ilves 1-0

RoPS missed a lot of players due rotation and injuries and the "wise money" was on Ilves +hc here. Not without a reason, but it still is the goals that count in the table and nothing else. A decent performance by Ilves, again.

HIFK vs Lahti 2-2

Last time HIFK won a match was 28.4 3-2 win over then under-performing KuPS and since then - and before - their play has looked like a mid-table Ykkönen club. HIFK will host AIK in a friendly on June 21st, and as both have promised to play with optimal squads there is no change coming soon to the that run anytime soon. 

Neither of them produced any winning moves and perhaps neither of them to win is very justified. Lahti have a cup match vs HJK next week. Good luck! Solovjev will be suspended, one of the pearls of the early season.

Asian odds for Sunday below. VPS vs PK-35 has been declared to be postponed days ago but it still remains on the list at most bookies. That tells quite a lot about how deeply they are interested in info of the single matches. That match is to be played in mid-July.

Ykkönen

One match at Ykkönen, JJK vs KTP 3-0 and the result tells it all. Added bad news for KTP is the extra time red card for key midfielder Shane McFaul. Two match ban for nothing after the match has been buried. No hope of promotion to KTP, and in all honesty JJK do not deserve it either and the biggest architect for the win was one single player, Mikko Manninen.

Kakkonen

Åland vs Klubi 4-1. Nothing surprising there even if also the home side is mediocre at best. Klubi-04 is a big failure, and the good idea of giving youth players valuable playing time at men's leagues has been ruined by - in my eyes at least - bad coaching and too idealistic tikitaka approach. The kids are simply not good enough to keep the ball 100% of the time, and they make massive defence errors and attack way too slowly and predictably.  Klubi-04 is the most boring club at home, they can keep the ball in their own half for minutes without anything happening, until the miss the ball in some easy sideways pass. Not blaming the kids for what they do, but the manager and the whole organization, this style does not prepare the kids to anything really and most of them will be buried in hobby leagues in a few years time.

FC Espoo vs Viikingit 0-1. I was there, and I wish I were not. Another very poor Espoo match but this time they got what they deserved which is absolutely nothing. Espoo being without a loss before yesterday was the biggest anomaly of the whole FIN season so far. Both will be fighting for survival for the rest of the season.

MPS vs KuFu got postponed. Nothing wrong there as the weather has been deadly poor for the last days, but there is something wrong in the way they handled it. KuFu drove half a day from Kuopio only to hear an hour before the match that it can not be played because the pitch is at unplayable condition, and it was already changed from their regular ground to an artificial one... hope that they play the postponed match in Kuopio. It would only be fair, wouldn't it?

VIFK vs MuSa 0-3. No reliable source to say anything about this, but the result is no big surprise. VIFK missed players, markets reacted by backing the visitors.

At women's league PK-35 lost their first match of the season at the abouts only place it could happen, away at TPS. TPS took an early 2-0 lead after 2 minutes! PK-35 did try some silly experiments last week defensively and obviously those have continued, but TPS have been in super form and I am happy to give them credit over this. At Honka vs TiPS the home side rotated key players and it took them 43 minutes to score the first goal and even that was an undeserved penalty. 4-0 FT is far from a surprise, the asian handicap was set at 3 goals.  HJK got a 0-2 away win at ONS in a 50/50 match, and Ilves with a -2.25 hc won NiceFutis more or less easily 2-0. One of the major betting ideas locally was Pallokissat to beat Åland Utd and local dropped odds to 1.65 during the afternoon, but home side won only the top chances 3-1 and both failed to score. Åland still missing Cynthia Uwak, god only knows why.

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