Winterthur vs St Gallen Prediction: Pair to provide more Swiss Super League excitement

St Gallen kick off their 2024/25 Swiss Super League campaign with a trip to Winterthur on Saturday (19:30). Just a single point separated these sides at the end of the regular 2023/24 season before St Gallen pulled away in the Championship group, finishing eight points clear in fifth.

Ahead of this first-round clash at Stadion Schutzenwiese, you can check out my Winterthur vs St Gallen prediction below, as well as all the latest team news and match odds.

Football Odds

Team News

Both teams will be starting the season with a new head coach; Winterthur with Ognjen Zaric, St Gallen with Enrico Maassen.

Zaric won't be able to call upon Sayf Ltaief and Adrian Gantenbein, key players last season who have since departed for FC Twente and Schalke respectively.

There have been new signings, though, notably midfielders Fabian Rohner and Elias Maluvunu, and forwards Christian Gomis and Albin Krasniqi, all of who will be looking to make their competitive debuts on Saturday.

St Gallen strengthened their backline on Tuesday with the signing of Cameroonian Noah Yannick, who has signed a two-year deal with the club.

Other summer arrivals include defenders Stephan Ambrosius and Konrad Faber, both of who played in Germany last season with Hamburg and Regensburg respectively.

The 2023/24 Swiss Super League top scorer, Chadrac Akolo, has remained at St Gallen and will be looking to replicate last season's feats.

Winterthur vs St Gallen Odds

*Please click on the link above to be taken to the main Winterthur vs St Gallen page on betfred.com (or app) for all the live betting prices on this match.

Despite home advantage, Winterthur are underdogs on Saturday, with odds of 11/5 giving them an implied win probability of 31.3% compared to St Gallen's 51.3% (19/20). The draw, meanwhile, is available at 13/5.

Both teams to score is 2/5 and over 2.5 goals is 4/9.

Over 3.5 total goals @ 11/10

This is a fixture that produced plenty of goals last season, with 17 scored across four meetings - only on one of those occasions, a 2-1 victory for Winterthur last October, did the match see fewer than 3.5 strikes.

The last three head-to-heads have all seen at least four goals, which goes a long way to explaining the relatively short odds above. However, I still think there is some value in this selection, with Winterthur's matches last season providing more goals per game (3.45) than any other side in the Swiss Super League.

St Gallen ranked fifth for that particular statistic in the 12-team league, as theirs averaged 2.92 goals.

At the start of the season, I'm banking on more excitement with neither side up to full speed, meaning we could see a greater number of errors.

Double chance & both teams to score - Winterthur or Draw & Yes @ 11/8

St Gallen won this fixture twice last season, once at home and once away, while Winterthur's only victory came at home last October.

Winterthur ended the 2023/24 campaign horrifically, losing their final regular season game and all five in the Championship group, but they are starting afresh this month and should be taking on St Gallen with more confidence than they did in May.

Both teams have scored in the last five meetings between these sides, while Winterthur were well out in front in last season's Swiss Super League BTTS table, with 79% of their 38 games finishing with at least a strike on either side.

That gives me great confidence we will see both teams score on Saturday, and we can up the odds by backing the double chance result on Winterthur.

St Gallen are expected to finish above this weekend's hosts but at the start of the season there is usually much less between teams, and I think Winterthur can at least avoid defeat in another highly-entertaining contest.

Offers

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