Against All Odds: Keen as mustard for goals at Dijon

18Mar 2013

Ligue 2

Dijon and Nantes meet tonight in France's Ligue Two and while the Betfair market is cautious about the chances of there being goals, Paul Robinson thinks we could be in for at least three.

Dijon are seventh in the table after 28 games played and that must be considered a slight disappointment for a club who were relegated from the top flight last year. They are now eight points off the promotion places - although they do have a game in hand - and that's largely thanks to the fact that they've picked up just three points from a possible 12 recently.

While Olivier Dall'Oglio's team only lost one of those games, three draws in a row isn't good enough, especially the two against Niort and Clermont who are both battling relegation. It's goals that we're more interested in here though and Dijon's matches have been averaging dead on 2.5 goals this term, with 13 of their 28 having had three or more, including three of their last five at home.

Nantes are flying this season and they find themselves in second place, just four points behind leaders Monaco with a game in hand. They are the third top scorers in the division and have the joint best defensive record so it's easy to see why they're doing so well. They come into this match on the back of three successive victories and with Monaco dropping points again on Friday, their incentive to win has got even bigger.

As far as the goals go, five of their last seven have gone over 2.5, with their last three scorelines on the road reading 0-3, 2-1, 1-2. Michel Der Zakarian's team may only have had 11 of their 28 fixtures go over this season, but as you can see, that is becoming a much more common trend in recent weeks.

Both of these two sides have huge motivation to win this game so I'm hopeful that they won't settle for a draw, especially if the scores are tied going into the final 20 minutes as happens in many French matches. I'd argue that the recent stats show that there could be goals in this game, so with under 2.5 trading as low as 1.68 I have to make it my lay of the day.