Preston, Hearts and RB Leipzig All to Win

Ladbrokes are again offering dismal odds on this Treble of 7.0 (6/1) boosted from 6.0 (5/1), If you must put money on these three winning go to Smarkets where you will get 8.2 (at the time of writing this) Preston are away to Blackburn Rovers in a derby with no fans. A win for Preston would see them level on points with Blackburn but Blackburn will still have a game in hand having played only 27 games so far to Preston’s 28. On form, the 2 teams are pretty even with Blackburn earning 11 points from the last 8 games to Preston’s 10 points. Preston doesn’t have a bad record when playing teams in the upper half of the league when playing away. A convincing 3-0 win against 5th place Reading and 3-2 win v 6th placed Bournemouth, however, are a little overshadowed by defeats at the hands (or feet) of 14th placed Luton Town (3-0), 12th placed Barnsley (2-1) and 19th Placed Rotherham (2-1) 6 days ago. Unfortunately, Preston seems to have a problem when they have conceded an early goal, and Blackburn has scored 15 – 1st half goals this season and can quite obviously administer the coup de gras by scoring the same number of goals in the last 15 minutes when the opposition heads are down. Blackburn on the other hand has drawn against teams in similar league positions and wins against league teams Barnsley down to QPR (13th to 16th). Ladbrokes themselves offer odds of 3.75 for Preston against odds of 1.87 for Blackburn.
Onto the Scottish Championship now, where league leaders Hearts take on Queen of the South. When these two met on the 12th Dec 2020 the score was 6-1 and was one of 12 wins so far from 15 games. They have scored in every match played this season but only have 4 clean sheets and these were against, in date order, Alloa, Greenock, Raith Rovers and Ayr Utd.
This, even though they are away tonight would undoubtably be the banker of the trio!
The Bundesliga’s Leipzig, currently 2nd in the league, are at home to Augsburg. A void of 19 points separate these two sides which isnt surprising as Leipzig have earned 14 points from the last 8 games compared to Augsburgs 6 points. If we look at just home games for Leipzig they have 25 points from 10 games played while Augsburg playing away 9 times have just 11 points to their name. Without doubt Leipzig are a strong home side having scored in every home game bar one which was againt Koln which ended in a 0-0 draw. Leipzigs odds of 1.25 to win make this another leg Ladbrokes expect to lose on. The big question therefore is are you willing to stake money on an out of form Preston beating a slightly more (not much) in form Blackburn away with no fans?

Better Not!