Kenley Ward
Dailysports's expert
Middlesbrough
Coventry
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On May 17, Riverside Stadium (Middlesbrough) will host the second leg of the 1/2 finals of the Championship play-offs for promotion into the English Premier League, in which Middlesbrough will compete with Coventry. The battle will start at 21:00 CET.
Middlesbrough
The previous time, when the team was promoted to the Premier League, was under the rule of Aitor Karanka in 2016. Still, the higher mentioned event was followed by the relegation to the Championship, where the results were getting worse, and the growth happened only over some periods of time. Its peak has been reached now, under the rule of Carrick. Despite the fact that Michael was appointed only in the autumn, when there had been a lot of failures at the start of the season, he was able to eventually climb to the final 4th place of the standings. The only embarrassing thing was that 1 point was taken in 3 previous matches. Perhaps, realizing that it was impossible to finish lower than the top 6 and, at the same time, to catch up with a couple of leaders, the team decided to save energy for a breakthrough in the play-offs – this is a popular practice before them. An away part of the confrontation resulted in a goalless draw – frankly speaking, the result makes the general success closer.
Coventry
The club at one time, until the beginning of this century, was a regular and a strong middle peasant in the Premier League. Still, the higher mentioned status turned into a deep fall. The “bottom” was reached in 2017/2018 when it played in the League Two, which is the fourth division of the country. It was the league where Mark Robins came to the coaching position. He quickly promoted his new wards – “the Sky Blues” came back to the Championship already in 2020 again. Moreover, it added in the game there, and the current season is considered to be a real breakthrough. An excellent finish when the team suffered only from 1 defeat since February (it managed to “fall apart” with a sudden 0-4 score in the match against Stoke City, was more than helpful. Nevertheless, it continued to score the points steadily, eventually reaching 70 points. The higher mentioned result was enough to climb to the 5th place. And Blackburn, which finished in the 7th position, had got only 1 point less. Speaking about the home match of the play-offs, the team didn’t score, but didn’t concede either.
The statistics of head-to-head matches
Coventry turned out to be stronger in the current season. It minimally won in the home battle and achieved a 1-1 draw at the away arena.
Predictions
Bookmakers consider Middlesbrough to be the favourite of the following match. Still, the result is at the forefront. Thus, we bet on “total: under 2.5” (odd: 1.96).
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