Bluebirds Value To Maintain Unbeaten Record

Saturday’s early Championship game sees Cardiff travel to Millwall where Russell Slade aims to maintain his winning start as Cardiff boss…

Form
Two wins in four days have quickly helped endear Russell Slade to the Cardiff fans following his slightly surprising appointment as manager of the Welsh club. First was a 2-1 victory against high-flying Nottingham Forest and that was then backed up on Tuesday night by a 3-1 win over Ipswich, despite going behind inside the opening half an hour of the game.

Peter Whittingham and Federico Macheda have each scored in both of the games since Slade has taken charge with both players doubling their tally for the season in that period. Kenwyne Jones remains the club’s top scorer for the campaign with five goals, but appears not to be strongly favoured by the new manager.

Millwall began their season with three straight league and cup wins and were unbeaten in their first four. The Lions have, however, now won just one of their last 12, but are also unbeaten in the last three after successive draws away to Derby and Wigan and at home against Wolves – all of which can be described as positive results.

Ricardo Fuller scored twice in the 3-3 draw against Wolves and in doing so became Millwall’s top scorer for the season with three goals, Mark Beavers and Lee Gregory each have two but are the only other players to have scored more than once this season.

Team News
Fuller’s brace against Wolves earned him a recall to the starting XI for the game against Wigan, and he is expected to retain his position in the side for this game. Alan Dunne picked up his fifth yellow card of the season last time out and will therefore serve a one-match suspension here and Andy Wilkinson will make his second start for the club after joining on a three-month loan deal from Stoke.

Russell Slade has the option to name the same starting XI as he did in midweek and is likely to exorcise that luxury in an attempt to make it three straight wins.

Head-to-Head
Cardiff won both meetings to nil when the teams met during the Bluebirds’ promotion campaign of 2012/13, while both games the season before ended goalless.

Therefore, the Lions have failed to score in each of the last four head-to-heads and are without a win against the Welsh club in eight meetings since 2005.

Recommended Bets
The new Cardiff manager faces a stiff task as he looks to maintain his 100% record, but at odds of 9/5 they look extremely good value to do so. Slade has a wealth of talent at his disposal and if he can get them playing to their potential, as he appears to have done in the past two games, then they’ll be genuine promotion contenders come the end of the season.

The hosts don’t deserve to be slight favourites (13/8) in my book, but if you want to take a more conservative approach to betting on the match result then odds of 20/21 are available on the visitors in the Draw No Bet market.

In the first goalscorer market there’s some value to be had in backing Peter Whittingham at odds of 12/1 with the former club captain scoring in each of the last two games and usually the man to take on set piece duties.