Roma vs Lille Prediction: Get on 5/2 & 7/2 bets in a slow burner

Having already faced – and beaten – French opposition in their Uefa Europa League campaign, Roma take on Lille at the Stadio Olimpico on Thursday night with both teams looking to extend winning starts to their European season (18:45 local, 17:45 BST, live on TNT Sports 4).

LOSC were 2-1 winners over Brann on matchday one, with the Giallorossi recording the same result in Nice. My Roma vs Lille predictions follow below, along with the latest team news and Betfred’s full match odds.

Team News

Roma boss Gian Piero Gasperini is still having to do without Leon Bailey and Paulo Dybala, with the former Juventus and Palermo star’s hamstring trouble limiting him to just 106 minutes of action so far this season.

Evan Ferguson looks set to be given the nod over Artem Dovbyk to lead the line for the Giallorossi, with Matias Soule and Stephan El Shaarawy in support.

Devyne Rensch and Kostas Tsimikas are among those likely to be drafted in to the starting XI.

For Lille, coach Bruno Genesio could rotate his squad once more.

He started with Olivier Giroud as his sole striker in the 1-0 loss to Lyon on Sunday, but Matias Fernandez-Pardo and Hamza Iganame could be favoured to spearhead the attack on Thursday.

The Belgian should be largely played in support of Iganame if that’s the way Genesio goes, with the boss having already shown his reluctance to send out his ‘A’ lineup for the opening Europa League win over Brann.

Marc-Aurele Callard (elbow), Ousmane Toure (ligament), Alexsandro (dead leg) and Thomas Meunier (groin) are not among his options, with all four still considered unfit to return.

Roma vs Lille Odds

Roma’s strong start to the season has helped the oddsmakers to fall in their favour for Thursday’s clash in the Citta Eterna.

The Lupi are 7/10 for the win, implying a 58.8% probability, with Lille out at 4/1.

The draw is an 11/4 shot, with Dovbyk and Ferguson neck-and-neck in the first-goalscorer market. The Roma attacking pair are both 4/1 as they vie for the starting shirt.

Under 1.5 Total Goals @ 5/2

Bringing in Gasperini from Atalanta was a masterstroke by the Roma board.

The leader of a swashbuckling Orobici was seen as the man to bring back some success to Trigoria, with a certain amount of style too.

But so far we have seen little of the head coach who oversaw that 4-3 knockout win in Valencia in 2020, and the titanic tussles with Villarreal and Manchester United as part of a 25-goal group-stage campaign 18 months later.

Instead, Roma have built a solid foundation and done just about enough in the opponents’ half. Their first four Serie A games all finished 1-0 (three wins, one defeat), and they only broke that run with a 2-0 success over Verona at the weekend.

Meanwhile, Lille have been part of some extraordinary games, including a 7-1 win at Lorient which was locked at 0-0 at half-time and was heavily influenced by five goals in the final 15 minutes as the Dogues made hay against 10 men.

I see this being another tight contest featuring Roma, with the Giallorossi most likely to break the deadlock later on in the match.

Under 1.5 goals has come in four times out of six in their games, so I’m siding with that happening again at 5/2 and an implied 28.6% chance.

Half-Time/Full-Time: Draw/Roma @ 7/2

The fact that Dovbyk’s early goal against Verona was only the second to come in the first half of any Roma game this season says a lot about how Gasperini has set his stall out so far.

While they have held some supremacy over their opponents for the most part, it generally takes time for them to make that count on the scoresheet.

Even Lorenzo Pellegrini’s winning goal in the Derby della Capitale against Lazio came just seven minutes shy of the break, and I don’t see a massive change in trend here.

So the 7/2 (implied 22.2% probability) available for the clash to be tied at the break and Roma to convert that into three points is very much on the side of the punter.

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