On Friday at 7.45pm, Turkey will host Armenia as the two bordering countries meant in a hotly-anticipated Group D encounter.

Team news

Altay Bayındır is targeting his sixth international cap after his move to Manchester United this summer, while Caglar Soyuncu is still involved with the squad having swapped Leicester for Atletico Madrid. Salih Ozcan is at Borussia Dortmund while Barış Alper Yılmaz has emerged a key player for Galatasaray. 

Varazdat Haroyan is the current Armenia captain and he and defensive partner Kamo Hovhannisyan play for Astana. Most of their other squad members play across Eastern Europe with a couple of forwards, in the form of Sargis Adamyan and young star Grant-Leon Ranos currently plying their trade in Germany.

Turkey -1 handicap

Turkey have begun this qualification campaign in impressive fashion, winning three of their four matches so far. They’ve already beaten Armenia away from home, 2-1 and in that game they scored an own goal. They proved on that day they were a better outfit and on home soil they can go one better and hand out a footballing lesson. 

Their only defeat so far has come away in Croatia, which is to be expected, but they have beaten Wales and Latvia as well as Armenia, and sit top of Group D. We can expect them to strengthen their position as group leaders here with another victory here, by at least one goal. 

Turkey to win and BTTS

If we believe the home side will win, we can add some spice to this pick by choosing BTTS Yes. Armenia have also been in decent form in this qualification period, and will go top of the group with a win in Turkey. They’ve won two of three, with their only defeat coming against Turkey, and found goalscoring relatively easy in the process. 

They’ve scored seven goals in those three games, including four away at Wales, so we can expect them to get on the scoresheet here. They could pull off a result, but we are backing them to find the net and come up short against strong opposition.