Leeds vs. West Brom Betting Tips: Back Ajayi to hit the target
Leeds welcome West Brom to Elland Road on Friday evening in The Championship. We’ve got Anthony Eadson on hand to provide us with a preview of the action and his best bets.
It has not been a great start to the season for Leeds United with several injuries to key players and others trying to engineer moves away from the club. Daniel Farke’s side are yet to register a win after their relegation down to the second tier, after an opening weekend draw with Cardiff, before a disappointing 1-0 defeat on the road at Birmingham City.
West Brom have not been able to strengthen their squad the way they would have liked to this summer due to their poor finances. Carlos Corberan remains in charge, with the Baggies following up their defeat to Blackburn Rovers on matchday 1, with a 3-2 home victory over Swansea City last weekend.
The last time these two teams played each other was in the Premier League in 2020/2021 when Leeds won both matches with scores of 5-0 and 3-1. You have to go back to five meetings to 2018 for the last time West Brom came out on top with Leeds winning four of the last five.
The West Yorkshire club are still the favourites to collect three points on Friday night, despite their shaky start to the season, priced at 19/20 with most betting sites. The draw is on offer at 13/5, while an away win for West Brom is also chalked-up at 13/5.
Leeds vs West Brom Tips
First up I’ve picked out a double from the player fouls market on Paddy Power consisting of both Luke Ayling and Semi Ajayi to commit one or more fouls in the match. At the time of writing this can be backed at 29/20 via the Bet Builder feature.
Let’s start with Luke Ayling. A player who has been promoted out of this division before with Leeds and one who should be a key figure if his side are to have a successful campaign and make it back to the top-tier of English football.
When it comes to fouls, Ayling has given away at least one in nine of his last 12 league appearances for Leeds United. With odds of 8/13 available on this selection as a single, I feel we are getting a nice bit of value here with this one.
Semi Ajayi is the other player I’m targeting to give away one or more fouls. In West Brom’s opener against Blackburn, the Nigerian centre-back gave away two fouls and then gave away one in the 3-2 defeat to Swansea last weekend. He also cleared this line in six of his final nine matches last season and combining with him Luke Ayling takes us up to very backable 29/20.
At odds of 5/1, I also think it could be worth having a small wager on Semi Ajayi to record Over 0.5 shots on target in the match. William Hill are the current top-priced betting site on this one, compared to just 2/1 over at Sky Bet.
Ajayi can be a real handful at set-pieces and has now scored three goals in his last nine league appearances for The Baggies when taking a longer sample size into the back end of last season. This bet has landed in three of his last four league matches and at 6ft 3, he could be a menace for the Leeds defence which have looked fragile at times so far this term.
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