Football Bet of the Day: More goals in the East

Beijing Guoan v Chongqing Lifan
Thursday 12:30

Shimizu’s come-from-behind win over Yokohama FM gave us the goals we needed in Japan yesterday. The visitors’ 2-1 success makes today’s alarm call much easier to take.

Today we’re making another early start in the East. We’ve crossed the Yellow Sea from Japan to China and are in Beijing for this lunchtime’s Chinese Super League match between Beijing Guoan and Chongqing Lifan.

When they met in April, the reverse fixture finished 3-3 and we have found a compelling reason to believe today’s meeting will also produce goals at both ends. Beijing are riding high in second place, despite both teams scoring in each of their most recent 10 home matches. And the Imperial Guards have not just been conceding the odd goal in these games: across their 10 appearances at the Workers Stadium, Roger Schmidt’s men have leaked 18 times.

Chongqing Lifan are second bottom of the 16-team league and, last month, poor results finally cost Paulo Bento his job. But there is hope for his replacement, Jordi Cruyff: Chongqing are averaging a goal a game on their travels (10 in 10 so far). They’ve scored at least once in seven of their last nine on the road and, even as [23.0] underdogs today, we fancy they can get on the score-sheet again.