📊 Form Guide

Crusaders

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Crusaders will be hoping to bounce back here after the 1-2 Premiership loss in their previous game against Linfield.

For Crusaders, the scorers were Jordan Owens (56') and Jonny Tuffey (93' Own goal). Joel Cooper (32') was the scorer for Linfield.

Crusaders haven’t had any problems with scoring, netting in one hundred percent of their last 6 games.

They’ve hit an aggregate of 10 during that period and have conceded a total of 5. That sort of pattern isn’t assured to be sustained here, of course.

Their past results show that Crusaders:

• have not registered a win against Cliftonville in their last 5 league games.
• are without a win at home for the past 2 league matches.

Cliftonville

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After suffering a loss in their previous game against Larne in Premiership competition, Cliftonville and their fans will hope to get a better result this time.

The only player to score from Cliftonville was Ben Wilson (60'). Lee Bonis (10'), Aaron Donnelly (19'), Andy Ryan (40', 45', 54'), Leroy Millar (72'), Joe Thomson (74') and Chris Gallagher (92') scored for Larne.

Showing their partiality to fruitful matches, we’ve had goals 24 times in the prior six matches in which Cliftonville have taken to the pitch, giving a mean average of 4 goals each meeting. Opposing teams have got 14 from this total.

Looking at the pre-match facts, Cliftonville:

• have not lost to Crusaders in games played away from home for the previous 2 league games.
• are without an away win for the past 2 league matches.

↔️ Head to head

A review of their past head to head clashes going back to 26/12/2022 shows us that Crusaders have won 1 of these games & Cliftonville 3, with the tally of draws standing at 2.

There were also goals galore in those games, with 22 overall which averages out at 3.67 goals per meeting.

The previous league meeting featuring these sides was Premiership match day 23 on 26/12/2023 which ended up with the score at Cliftonville 2-1 Crusaders.

The match was refereed by Shane Andrews.

ℹ️ Team News: Crusaders

Adam Lecky (Knee injury), Jimmy Callacher (Cruciate ligament tear), Lewis Barr (Knee injury) and Josh Robinson (Cruciate ligament injury) won’t be available for Crusaders gaffer Stephen Baxter.

📋 Team News: Cliftonville

Thanks to a mainly healthy group of players, there’s only the sole fitness issue for the Cliftonville manager Jim Magilton to be concerned with. Ryan Curran (Groin injury) won’t be playing here.

⚡ Prediction

Our thinking is that Cliftonville and Crusaders could both find goals hard to come by here.

Let’s see what happens, but it could well be that we end up with scores level and two clean sheets. Our tip is therefore for a very even match with a 0-0 scoreline at the end of this game.

Our expert partners are tipping under 3.5 goals for this match. Check out their VIP predictions here.

Peter Guest, 18:04 16/04/2024