Mark Langdon's weekend tips & football accas | EFL & La Liga

Free football tips, bets and analysis.

Best bets

Plymouth +0.25 Asian handicap
1pt 7-8 bet365
Sunderland
1pt 11-10 general
Portsmouth
2pt 8-11 general
Espanyol
1pt 7-10 Sky Bet
Inter Milan
1pt Evs general

Colchester United v Plymouth Argyle

3pm Saturday

Liverpool are the only team in better form than Plymouth in English football, which will be of double delight to Argyle boss Ryan Lowe.

It has been a season of highs for Lowe and his beloved Reds - he was spotted on camera celebrating Liverpool's FA Cup winner at Anfield against Everton - but it has only been in recent months that Plymouth have started to put it all together.

Argyle are up to third in Sky Bet League Two, five points off leaders Swindon with a couple of games in hand, after scoring 15 league goals in 2020 - two more than Liverpool.

They have won eight, drawn one and lost once (against leaders Swindon) in their last ten league outings and are worth supporting as underdogs for their trip to sixth-placed Colchester.

Plymouth had done plenty right early in the season without finishing off some decent approach play, but the decision to recall Luke Jephcott from a loan spell at Truro City has paid dividends.

Jephcott has scored five times in six appearances this year and Argyle look capable of at least avoiding defeat at draw-specialists Colchester.

The Essex side suffered their first league defeat since October 19 last week as they went down 2-1 at Cambridge, however, Colchester have won only two of the last nine.

One of those was against lowly Macclesfield and the other against Swindon, who were missing loan aces Jerry Yates and Eoin Doyle.

Sunderland v Ipswich Town

3pm Saturday

Ipswich have not beaten a team in Sky Bet League One's top nine this season and following defeats to Rotherham and Peterborough the Tractor Boys' promotion bid could continue to stall at the Stadium of Light.

Town were horrendous in both of those losses and last week's 4-1 home hammering to Peterborough could quite easily have been the second successive thrashing with Ipswich fortunate to escape with just the 1-0 loss at Rotherham.

The Posh defeat was costly in more ways than the obvious.

Gwion Edwards is suspended after collecting his tenth yellow card of the season and set-piece ace Luke Garbutt went off injured early at Portman Road, while goalkeeper Will Norris's confidence will have taken another knock following a woeful error.

Sunderland had been going along quite nicely with four straight clean sheets prior to a 2-0 defeat at in-form Portsmouth and Phil Parkinson was able to strengthen his squad in January.

Tranmere Rovers v Portsmouth

3pm Saturday

Pompey made it eight straight successes in all competitions when defeating the Black Cats and victory number nine looks on the cards against a tired Tranmere team seemingly heading for relegation.

It was 8-1 to Doncaster in shots on target in Tuesday's 3-0 loss at Prenton Park and 23-8 to Bolton on the shot count in Saturday's 2-0 defeat, a performance which suggests a fixture backlog caused by their FA Cup run has played havoc with Tranny's league campaign.

The terrible playing surface shouldn't be a big deal for Pompey, who like to get it forward quickly and they are more than happy to make the most of Ronan Curtis's set-piece delivery anyway.

Espanyol v Mallorca

La Liga TV, 11am Sunday

This is a massive six-pointer towards the bottom of La Liga and Espanyol, who significantly improved their squad in January thanks to their wealthy Chinese owners, can justify odds-on favouritism.

Espanyol played well at Granada despite a 2-1 defeat and new signing Raul de Tomas scored for the fourth consecutive match. A similar level of performance should be enough against a Mallorca side who have made a big jump from the third tier in two years.

Inter Milan v AC Milan

Premier 1, 7.45pm Sunday

The derby factor understandably influences prices but Inter beat Milan 2-0 earlier this season and are 19 points ahead of them in Serie A so Antonio Conte's bunch of former Premier League misfits look value to continue their local supremacy.

Christian Eriksen, Victor Moses and Ashley Young all started last week's 2-0 win at Udinese while Romelu Lukaku scored twice. His second goal came from a penalty won by Alexis Sanchez.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic's arrival has perked up the Rossoneri, although that itself is a concern given the Swede is 38 and Milan's recent upturn has mainly come against poor opposition.

Weekend accumulators

Banker
Portsmouth 8-11
Pompey have had a free week to prepare for this game and are aiming for a ninth straight win in all competitions. This will be Tranmere's 13th match since Christmas and they have not scored in four outings.

Blowout
Colchester 7-5
Some bookmakers are as short as 6-5 Colchester which definitely looks on the short side given they are up against form team Plymouth. Argyle have lost one of their last ten.

Accumulator
Portsmouth 8-11, Doncaster 6-10, Espanyol 7-10, Bayern Munich 2-5. £1 accumulator returns £6.58 with Sky Bet.

Both teams to score
Games at Burton 20-23, Peterborough 20-31, Salford 20-29. £1 treble returns £5.19 with RedZone.

Thought for the week

Expected goals were put in the spotlight once again this week when a journalist tweeted "Tottenham's win a victory for football in that it (again) made a mockery of the xG claptrap" after Spurs beat Manchester City 2-0 on Sunday.

Whether you like, dislike or neither like nor dislike expected goals chat, one thing is for certain: Sunday's result absolutely showed the benefit of xG in helping to analyse games as City somehow contrived to lose a match they dominated.

Had you not seen that Spurs victory it would have been easy to label it as a Mourinho masterclass. It wasn't, unless the plan was to let City create loads of chances and hope they missed.

It would have been easy to say Guardiola's halo had slipped to reveal a fraud. That's not the case, unless his tactics involved City being wasteful.

There will be hundreds of football matches played this weekend and not all of them will be decided according to the balance of play, so being able to analyse games beyond just the score is absolutely essential.

Anything else is claptrap.

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