PSV vs Sporting CP Prediction: Show some Dutch courage and back the 100/30 away clean sheet

It’s PSV v Sporting Lisbon on Tuesday, October 1 (20:00) in Eindhoven, with the hosts looking to recover from defeat at Juventus and Sporting looking to kick on after beating Lille. TNT Sports 8 will bring you all the action.

Portugal-based Jamie Pacheco showed a profit in Sporting’s first match a couple of weeks ago and has 13/10 and 100/30 selections for you in this one as he previews the action and takes you through his PSV vs Sporting CP Predictions...

PSV  

The Dutch champions have carried on from where they left off, winning their first seven games of the league campaign and scoring 24 goals in the process.  

No wonder they’re comfortably at the top of the Eredivisie and strongly fancied to defend their title.  

Still, a comprehensive 3-1 defeat away at Juventus in their opening Champions League match was a stark reminder that this is a level up from the Dutch league and that they’ll have to be at their absolute best if they’re going to progress to the next stage.  

Mailk Tillman (4), former Newcastle and Barcelona man Luuk de Jong (3) and Hirving Lozana (4) have all been among the goals this season. 

Possible Starting line-up: Drommel, Flamingo, Boscagli, Dams, Ledzema, Til, Schouten, Veerman, Tillman, De Jong, Bakayoko.  

Sporting Lisbon 

Sporting Lisbon (SCP) delivered us a good winner last time out against Lille, winning to nil at odds of 15/8. It could have been even better with our 13/2 pick Pedro Goncalves having a great chance to be first goalscorer, only to be denied by an excellent save, although he really should have scored.  

SCP are one of Europe’s in-form teams with seven wins from seven in the league and that victory against Lille we were referring to. The only match they haven’t won this season was the Super Cup against Porto, going down 4-3.  

That seventh win came courtesy of a comfortable 3-0 win at Estoril on Friday night.  

Viktor Gyokeres, a favourite of mine in the anytime goalscorer market over at my 3-3-3 column, missed out for a change but still has 11 in eight games for the campaign.  

If they can keep him (not just fit but also just at the club!) they could go pretty far in this competition.  

Possible Starting line-up: Israel, Reis, Debast, Inacio, Santos, Morita, Hjumland, Quenda, Pote, Gyokeres, Trincao.  

PSV vs Sporting CP Odds

These two played each other in the Europa League four years ago with PSV winning 3-2. A certain Bruno Fernandes scored from the spot for Sporting in that one.  Sporting responded by thrashing them 4-0 in Lisbon a couple of months later.  

PSV are 6/4 to win and that doesn’t look quite right to me. Sure, they’ve been bossing the Eredivisie but with all due respect, that’s not saying much. So far, they haven’t played any of Feyenoord, Twente, AZ or Ajax in the league, the sides who finished in the places directly below them last season, so haven’t really been tested. When they played Feyenoord in the Dutch Super Cup, they drew 4-4 and as we know, found Juve far too good for them.  

Sporting were a bit fortunate to have seen Lille have a man sent off before half-time in their only CL outing to date but were the better side at the time anyway and have been pretty much flawless throughout the season.  

The 13/8 on them looks a considerably better option. The draw is 13/5.  

*You can check out all of the Football Odds we offer over at betfred.com

Sporting Clean Sheet  

Going in yet again on Sporting to win to nil (this time at 9/2) is tempting but I prefer a slightly more conservative option, which is that they keep a clean sheet, instead, at 100/30. 

The difference is that in the first scenario 0-0 would be a loser and in the second a winner and I’d rather take the safety net of the latter, albeit at a shorter price. It’s now six clean sheets in a row for Sporting CP and in the other two matches before that, they only conceded once in each of them, so their defence has been outstanding.  

Sure, PSV have been scoring plenty in their domestic league, but they’ll have to up their game to get one here.