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Chelsea can't be trusted when the pressure is on
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Leeds can revel in 'free shot' enviroment - back them
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Add Conor Gallagher SOT to your staking plan
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Read Betfair's new 90 Minute Payout offer here
Chelsea v Leeds, FA Cup
Wednesday February 28, 19:30
Live on ITV4
More pain for the blue billion pound bottle jobs?
When expectation levels are low, Chelsea's players tend to relax and show up.
In other words they are a side to back when priced up as the outsiders.
That was on show in the last round at Aston Villa where they went off at 3.3512/5 on the Betfair Exchange and wiped the floor with Unai Emery's side. They've drawn with Manchester City twice this season, held Arsenal, beat Tottenham - and really should have put away Liverpool in normal time at the weekend.
That 120 minutes epitomised how flaky and inconsistent this Chelsea are.
As soon as the expectation levels ramped up when Jurgen Klopp threw the Liverpool kids on, Chelsea crumbled. There have been 10 occasions this season across all competitions where Chelsea have failed to deliver when going off as the favourite at kick-off on the Betfair Exchange, that includes when heavy odds-on at 1.548/15 v Wolves, 1.654/6 v Brentford and 1.402/5 v Forest.
All home games. All ended in defeats.
And here they are now, in a home game, going to go off 1.558/15 on the Exchange whilst playing in front of a home crowd that won't be in a very supportive mood following their team's woefully timid tactics in extra-time at Wembley.
This is a free shot for Leeds. That makes them dangerous.
Confidence is flowing and the travelling fans will be making all the noise having equalled their club record of nine successive league wins last Friday night against Leicester.
They can boast the most impressive underlying numbers in 2024 across those nine games of any team in the Championship, racking up a league-high 18.74 worth of expected goals for and a league-best 6.18 expected goals against.
This is a Premier League team playing in the second tier.
Yes, they'll have to make a few tweaks here and there in order to rest some legs but I'm expecting a full-throttle, nothing to lose, approach.
The evidence suggests laying the Chelsea win price or backing Leeds on the double chance at 6/42.50 with the Sportsbook should prove a financially beneficial move.
Go target shooting with 11/10 Gallagher
Conor Gallagher has never been a playmaking central midfielder. Never has. Never will.
His qualities revolve around his intensity and ability to find goalscoring opportunities in the final third - as shown when playing a whole season in an advanced role at Crystal Palace. He scored eight Premier League goals that year.
His tally of three this campaign considering the minutes he's played is disappointing based on the raw numbers. However, Mauricio Pochettino has been using him too deep for too long.
A switch in position in recent weeks has exploded Gallager's attacking output.
Those three goals all have come in his last four games, netting in the FA Cup win at Aston Villa and bagging a brace at Palace. He could've been the Chelsea hero on Sunday too, but he was so wasteful via three runs into the Liverpool penalty box that brought up three opportunities.
His flick that hit the post was unlucky, although he should've done better when denied by Caoimhin Kelleher and when firing over late on.
It's now 11 shots in his last five matches, and crucially, six of those have hit the target.
That equates to the 11/102.11 on offer from the Sportsbook on Gallagher registering at least one shot on target in a game where Chelsea are bound to have a huge chunk of the ball as a tasty slice of value to gobble up.
The market has Chelsea expecting to hit 6.5 shots on target in the game and Gallagher has been responsible for 18% of their total shots on target over their last five fixtures. The implied probability of 47.62% from that 11/10 of him hitting the target should be closer to 60% - it's an edge to exploit with confident stakes.