Friday Football Tips: Go back to basics with Moldova

Moldova v Latvia
Friday 10 June, 17:00
Live on BoxNation

Hopefully some of you backed Khvicha Kvaratskhelia to score at a tasty 4/1 on Thursday night - he duly did but the bet we put up missed by one corner.

After another near miss, I'm simply looking for a winner on Friday and so it's back to basics with two things Moldova are well known for - a lack of goals and plenty of cards.

Since the start of 2020, they've scored just 13 goals in 27 games with under 2.5 goals regularly landing (16 times out of 27).

Recently there have been less than three goals in meetings with fellow minnows Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein and Andorra, while during World Cup qualifying this landed twice against Scotland and once against Austria.

Looking further back, they even failed to go over 2.5 in two games with San Marino during the 2018/19 Nations League.

Their defensive nature will likely be on show again here against a Latvia side who have started the Nations League well, winning two out of two, although they did struggle at home to Liechtenstein on Monday, winning only 1-0 which is another nod to a low-scoring encounter here.

The Moldovans have also regularly picked up 20+ booking points (10 for a yellow, 25 for a red) in recent years.

In competitive matches, they've hit this mark in 25 of their last 30, including both matches in this competition so far.

Only Lithuania and Romania have averaged more than their 15 fouls per game so far so I'm happy to back over 1.5 Moldova cards.

Let's put those two data-driven legs together in a Bet Builder to get a shade of odds-against which can hopefully deliver before something more enticing appears on Saturday's coupon.

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