Brisbane Roar can be disappointed with their performance in the FFA Cup, as they were knocked out in 1/16 finals by Melbourne City. The disappointing part was not so much the fact they were defeated by Melbourne City, nor the fact that they were knocked out of FFA cup in the opening round, but more so the way the match went. The match was scoreless for 90 minutes, so the match went into the extra time, where once again we did not see a goal for 30 minutes until Fornaroli scored a goal in 120′.
Besides the disappointing defeat, Brisbane Roar have seen some improvement under John Aloisi. In addition, the team has added a younger striker Adam Taggart as well as excellent Spanish player Alex Lopez in the midfield. We are looking forward to seeing how Brisbane Roars will play this season, as we expect them to be an improved version of last years Roars with all the positive additions.
The hosts, Central Coast Mariners have had their ups and downs, in fact, everything except their defeat in FFA Cup against Adeline United (3:0) is going well. Central Coast Mariners are known around the world due to a huge but on the other side unusual new signing. And that is no other than Usain Bolt and yes THE Usain Bolt. He has expressed he wishes to play in a professional football team before retiring and his wish came true when he got offered a contract by Central Coast. Looking at how they performer in recent matches, Mariners have won quite a few of their trial matches, which is a huge accomplishment from a team that won only 4 games in the last campaign.
We expect this to be a match with plenty of attacking from both sides, which just might result in a high scoring match. On one side we have got Adam Taggart, Tobias Mikkelsen, Bautheac and Henrique and on the other McCormack, Oar, Simon and Murray. They all are more than capable of causing some trouble in opponents defense and we do expect that will be the case in this fixture. If we combine a strong attack from both sides with a poor defense it makes just the right recipe for an entertaining high scoring match. On the paper the Brisbane are favorites, but in a match like that, it could easily go both ways. In that regard, we will be backing Central Coast Marines to surprise Brisbane and win their 1st match of the season and end their 2 games losing streak in H2H matches.
Prediction: Central Coast Mariners +0.50 Asian Handicap
Odds: 1.90 SBOBET
