Date: 11th September 2015.
Time: 19:45
It looks like Inverness Caledonian Thistle and their manager, John Hughes, are paying for last years’ successes. The Scottish Cup champions find themselves languishing third from bottom in the Ladbrokes Scottish Premiership.
They lost a few key players in the summer transfer window with Graeme Shinnie departing for Aberdeen and Marley Watkins joining Barnsley.
They have failed to replace them adequately, particularly on the goals front with Ryan Christie their top scorer on two goals for the season.
Christie is of course now a Celtic player although he has been loaned back to ICT for the rest of the season. Will his head be turned now that he is earning 10/15x what his colleagues earn? That seems inevitable to me.
Ryan Christie will remain in ICT colours until January at least.
In fairness to the Inverness management team they have had no luck with injuries so far this season. Their injury list is extensive from number one goalkeeper Dean Brill to number two goalkeeper Ryan Esson.
Defensively they are short of Josh Meekins and Garry Warren while midfielders James Vincent, Aaron Doran and Richie Foran are yet to appear this season.
Add Ryan Christie and a striker into the mix and that’s virtually their entire first team.
Hearts are having no such problems with new striker Juanma Delgago scoring as many goals as the entire Inverness side. Osman Sow has also got in on the act as has Gavin Reilly in his first season since joining from Queen Of The South.
In fact the Gorgie Road side have been all about the goals with all but one of their eight matches seeing +2.5 match goals.
Even defender come midfielder come attacker Callum Patterson, who had his red card against Hamilton Accies rescinded, has got two goals to his name this year. That’s 50% of the Inverness total so it wouldn’t be surprising to see Patterson outscore ICT by himself on Friday evening.
Backing a Hearts win on Friday night is hard to argue with particularly at the price of 2.45(29/20) available with Coral and William Hill.
The extra cautious will see Draw No Bet as a good insurance option and that is best backed on the Asian Handicap market. Hearts +0.0 is 1.74(37/50) with McBookie.
But it’s virtually impossible to look past goals and with Hearts likely to do most of the scoring +1.5 Hearts goals at 2.5(6/4) with Coral is difficult to see past.
You can back +2.5 match goals at 2.1(11/10) with bet365 but considering ICT are yet to score in four home matches this season Hearts looks like the better bet.
Inverness v Hearts betting preview free football tips and betting tips.
Hearts +1.5 Team Goals @ 2.5 with Coral.
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