Super single

AZ vs PAS Giannina Over 2.5

Head To Head:
The sides have never previously met.

Stats: AZ have won all of their last 12 games including friendlies with over 2.5 goals in all of those games. PAS Giannina's last 3 matches have also all featured over 2.5 goals.

Reason: PAS Giannina caused a bit of an upset in the last round when they saw off Odd of Norway over two very contrasting legs. The Greeks, who are playing in Europe for the first time won the 1st Leg 3-0 in Ioannina but nearly contrived to make a mess of things in Scandinavia last Thursday. They were beaten 3-0 inside 90 minutes but Leonardo Koutris popped up in Extra Time to fire them into the next round with a 4-3 aggregate victory. They were 8 matches undefeated prior to that match having staged a late season charge last term to qualify for Europe.

AZ meanwhile are almost European veterans now having regularly participated in this competition over the past decade or so and once in the Champions League. Given they don’t have the resources of an Ajax or PSV their record is excellent and they’ve played in Europe 10 times since the 2004-05 season and only failed to make the group phase once. They did finish bottom of their group in this competition last year but still secured a creditable 4th place in the Eredivisie, where they scored over 2 goals per game on average.

They’ve been in stunning form in pre-season winning all 8 of their friendlies by at least 3 goals or more. Some of their opponents haven’t been that great but it is certainly worth noting they beat Hertha Berlin, who are also in this competition, 3-0 at the weekend. Goals certainly seem highly likely here with the Greeks looking very shaky at the back last week in Norway. Including those friendlies there have been over 2.5 goals in all of AZ’s last 15 matches and there were over 3.5 goals in 12 of them.

Given that there is plenty of reason to back there to be over 2.5 goals at 1.7+ here and it looks like a cracking bet.