Seeley’s Selections – Norwich v Ipswich

The biggest game this weekend is without doubt Saturday’s Championship play-off semi-final second leg between local rivals Norwich and Ipswich at Carrow Road.

This tie is finely poised after they shared the spoils with a 1-1 draw in the first leg and a place at Wembley is awaiting the winner.

If you are punting on the play-offs the rules for years have been simple ones: for the first legs, back the unders on the goals and the draw, and in the second legs, do exactly the opposite – that is sound advice ahead of this clash.

Norwich are BoyleSports 3/4 favourites to win this and I like their chances at those prices.

The Canaries have the best squad in the Championship, but it took the arrival of Alex Neil to get them firing on all cylinders and they’ve definitely done that recently.

Norwich were the top home goalscorers in the division banging in 50 goals in their 23 home games.

I believe that the extra fire power will be the difference in this one.

I believe that Mick McCarthy’s side missed their opportunity of making it to Wembley last week at Portman Road as they can’t be trusted on the road with anybody’s money.

The Tractor Boys ended their season with three successive away day defeats and even at what appears to be a rather large 17/4 with BoyleSports it does nothing for me.

The best they could hope for is a draw which is 14/5 – which is an industry best with BoyleSports – but if they decide to sit back and defend then they will be in all kinds of problems against this potent home attack.

Norwich won earlier in the season 2-0 at Carrow Road, doing the double over them in the domestic season.

They are also unbeaten in their last five matches against their opponents and the last time Ipswich won at Carrow Road was back in 2006 – I can’t see them doing so again.

Norwich’s extra fire-power will be the difference here and with 13 goals in their last five games against them I can see that goalscoring run continuing with a convincing 3-1 success at 12/1.

Jonny Howson has a habit of scoring important goals for Norwich, including the equaliser in the first leg. The skipper should lead by example in this one with the opening goal again at a very generous 10/1 with BoyleSports.

Seeley’s Selections:
Norwich To Win @ 3/4
Correct Score Norwich 3-1 @ 12/1
Jonny Howson First Goalscorer @ 10/1

B lucky.
Nigel