Chelsea v Southampton: Betting Preview

Match Analysis

Chelsea still didn’t win after the incredible winter transfer window spending. But I still find it interesting to follow them closely as some potential is becoming actual action on the pitch, especially when it comes to the way Mudryk and Enzo Fernandez are playing synergically.

Southampton is a side that lost the 4 of the last 5 games, as well as 4 out of the last 5 Premier League away games.

The visitors won only 4 games in the season, and are at the bottom of the table with just 15 points collected in 22 matches.

Chelsea is expected to have a similar line-up compared to the one of their last Champions League game on the road against Borussia Dortmund when they lost in Germany 1-0.

I believe some of the quality of the players that Chelsea brought to Stamford Bridge is still going to translate as results.

Whether they can reach the Champions League group stage in 2023/24 without having to win the UCL is another story, but the last 3 games certainly don’t show their full potential after the winter transfer window.

Betting Preview and Analysis: Chelsea v Southampton

Naturally, Chelsea are the big favourites in the betting markets. The recent form and stats of the visitors make it obvious that this is correct, but the betting markets require us to be right and tell the prices (odds) correctly.

Chelsea needs to prove that they spent money wisely and Graham Potter is under pressure. The market has stabilized with very low 1×2 odds for the victory of Chelsea and a big handicap.

The odds for the victory of Chelsea are now 1.44 and the handicap for the victory of Chelsea in AH is -1.25 @1.99.

I sincerely dislike big handicaps in the game of teams that tend to ‘be happy’ with a 1 goal victory. Of course, Southampton is fragile in theory at this moment, but big handicaps that contain value are only the case when a team truly tends to score lots of goals and their confidence levels are through the roof.

Not the case here at all.

But just because one side doesn’t look very full of value it doesn’t mean the other side is very tempting. Sometimes things are just hard to predict for sure, and as we have two teams under pressure this is precisely the case here.

Also, I don’t see anything special in the over/under AH lines of 2.75 with odds circa 2.0. No clear value.

I guess the best potential opportunity here is Chelsea when this handicap melts into something below -1 and the ‘1’ odds of the 1×2 market rise a lot to something closer to 2.0.

However this needs to happen between minute 30 and 60 for the bet to make sense otherwise the risk would be too big to a small potential return.