Football Bet of the Day: Dull affair at Fratton Park?

Our Football Bet of the Day for Friday, October 25 takes us to the Championship where struggling Portsmouth host a Sheffield Wednesday side who can’t quite seem to drag themselves away from the drop zone. 

This is now a crunch game near the bottom of the Championship, with Pompey sitting 24th after QPR earned a 1-1 draw with Coventry on Tuesday night. Meanwhile, Sheff Wed failed to impress in their 0-0 draw with Swansea and Danny Rohl will hope for a positive result to take the Owls up the table. Below you will find our Football Bet of the Day and the reasoning behind it. 

There’s a fair amount of pressure on the shoulders of John Mousinho right now. Portsmouth won League 1 last season but have failed to make an impression on the second tier as the likes of Oxford United and Derby County continue to box above their weight. 

There will be a few green eyes of envy shooting the way of their fellow recently-promoted sides, but there’s a long way to go in the 2024/25 season, and a lot of points up for grabs. For Portsmouth, they have to follow the blueprint that Plymouth Argyle have set, and make sure they are picking up a decent number of points at home. 

However, so far they have failed to win a game at Fratton Park and have just two home points to their name. They face Sheffield Wednesday on Friday night under the lights and it feels like a decent chance to get their season up and running. However, I’m not particularly willing to pick a winner out of these two. More was expected of Rohl’s men this term with the play-offs a possibility given the form they showed at the end of the last campaign. 

Yet it hasn’t quite worked out, and expectations have dropped slightly since August. Wednesday have scored 11 and conceded 17 goals in the Championship so far, while Portsmouth have also scored 11, but have the leakiest defence in the league having conceded 23. So why am I backing there to be under 1.5 goals in this one?

Portsmouth vs Sheff Wed Odds

Well, Pompey’s defensive stats are slightly skewed by their 6-1 defeat at Stoke, while their form at Fratton Park is also worth delving into. Mousinho’s men have scored just twice, and conceded seven across their five home league games to date, so their home fixtures aren’t jam-packed full of goals. Meanwhile, Sheff Wed have only scored three away goals, and two of them came in their recent success against a timid Coventry outfit at the CBS Arena. 

In Wednesday’s last two matches, they have failed to score, losing 2-0 at home to Burnley before Swansea took a point from Hillsborough in a 0-0 stalemate. They only managed one shot on target against the Swans and while they were better against Scott Parker’s side, I think they are unlikely to pepper the Pompey goal on Friday. 

Portsmouth have created the lowest xG per 90 in the Championship this season at 1.07, and as the stats suggest, they don’t look particularly threatening. As a result, I’m happy to give us a bit of leeway and back there to be under 1.5 goals here, which means we aren’t that bothered about the result. The pressure the players are to get a result means we could see a tense Fratton Park, and I don’t think that will be conducive to an expansive game of football.  Under 1.5 goals in Portsmouth vs Sheff Wed is our Football Bet of the Day.