Boro to conquer Hastings without spilling blood
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Football bet of the week - Boro to conquer Hastings without spilling blood
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Every week, bookmaker and former Racing Post chief sports betting writer Mark Worwood gives out his best football bet.
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As a bookmaker, I hate football matches in which there is a justifiably short-priced home favourite against what is, on paper, an away team with less chance of success than former British politician Ann Widdecombe at a beauty pageant.
As a punter, I love those very same games because they throw up opportunities to back vastly superior sides to win either to nil or by one of a specific group of scores. And often the odds available are much greater than they should be.
English Championship title contender Middlesbrough got the dream English FA Cup Third Round draw for a team with its aspirations when recent retirees Ledley King and Fabrice Muamba combined to grant it a home tie versus the lowest ranked side remaining in the competition, Hastings.
Currently the Arrows are in the bottom half of the Ryman League Premier Division, which feeds into Conference South. All this means that Middlesbrough and Hastings are separated by five levels of the English football league pyramid, which explains why bookmakers are quoting Boro at odds as short as 1-12 to win the tie on Teesside at the first time of asking.
English: Entrance to the Riverside Stadium of Middlesbrough F.C.. With the gates of the former Ayresome Park, and statues of George Hardwick and Wilf Mannion (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Hastings may be somewhat unfortunate to be languishing so low in the Ryman League Premier Division because it has been caught up in the romance of its best-ever English FA Cup run but it is impossible to get away from the fact that it has won less than a quarter of its league matches this season and struggled to find the back with great regularity.
Saturday’s English FA Cup Third Round tie really ought to be a stroll in the park for Middlesbrough, which possesses the English Championship’s second-best home record this term and has won four consecutive matches at its Riverside Stadium, three of them without conceding a goal. Hastings away to Tony Mowbray‘s Boro is a David versus Goliath encounter.
Ladbrokes, whose football odds compilers are among the best in the business, are really going out of their way to duck Middlesbrough, not only in match betting but also in the main exotics. The Magic Sign knows the look of a smart punt and it is doing everything it can to avoiding laying it.
Thankfully for punters, not every bookmaker is as switched on as Ladbrokes. In early markets, Paddy Power is offering odds of 5-6 that Middlesbrough beats Hastings and keeps a clean sheet in the process. Backing Boro to win to nil makes more appeal than attacking the likely one-sided game from a scores perspective. And 5-6 feels a long way over the odds.
Hastings is the lowest ranked team to reach the English FA Cup Third Round since Chasetown in the 2025-2025 season. A review of the recent English FA Cup Third Round ties played between sides separated by four or more pyramid levels at the home ground of the favoured team suggests that the Arrows will lose to Boro by around two or three goals.
But even dutching 2-0, 3-0 and 4-0 Middlesbrough wins gets odds of only around 6-4 so get stuck in to the 5-6 available about Boro winning to nil and do not stress about Mowbray’s men running riot if the opportunity presents itself.
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What are your best bets in the English FA Cup Third Round? Is it worth striking an ante-post bet at this stage of the world’s oldest football competition? Send me your comments.
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