Russia v Romania Betting Tips

Russia have lined themselves up with European opposition (Romania) this Tuesday in preparation for the different styles of teams they will face at World Cup 2018.

After the embarrassment of their Euro 2016 campaign, Russia looked to wipe the slate clean with new coach Stanislav Cherchesov. Things looked good in the first couple of matches and their loss against Costa Rica at least showed they have the ability to score goals. However, all of that early optimism has seemingly now disappeared as they lost 2-1 to fellow future World Cup hosts Qatar on Thursday.

This was embarrassing for a country that considers itself streets ahead of Qatar in football development and, although Russia do have injury problems, it perhaps shows the gap is not so wide and that the Russians have not done anything constructive since the European Championship debacle.

Another thing you can put it down to is complacency – not at all rare in Russian football. The Russian team clearly thought they could just stroll over the minnow opponents, but were left on the end of a shock.

They will have to play a lot better if they want to get a result against fellow Euro 2016 finalists Romania, although they will take confidence from the fact that the match is on home soil.

Romania had a rather disappointing European campaign in the summer with just one draw in three group games. Despite playing well in their opening loss against France, they suffered a poor loss in the final match against Albania, in which Anghel Iordănescu’s side were considered favourites. If they had won that match then they may have qualified for the knockout rounds as one of the best third-place teams.

In fact, Romania have had some poor result in recent months without a win against any meaningful opposition, bar a 5-1 victory against Georgia in a friendly in June. They may have achieved some draws against big nations such as Spain, but generally it has been poor.

Romania continued this recent poor form in an defeat away in Poland on Friday.

Additionally, Prior to their 3-0 loss against the Polish, the Romanians had won just one of their three matches under new manager Christoph Daum. Most embarrassingly they could only manage a draw away at Kazakhstan during the October international break.

Overall I think this is a match between two very poor sides and we will likely see a bit of a lame duck here.

Neither side have any confidence and so are hardly likely to play out the most attractive of football matches. A draw is certainly the most likely result here which is offered at a more-than doubling 11/5.

See more tips here.