Good Morning ☀️,

It’s Lucas here, your Chief Predictions Officer at What Are the Odds?

We’ve got a busy few days ahead of us. The Nations League’s still running today; the Europa Leagues (both of ‘em) are kicking off tomorrow. And then, we’ve still got a full schedule of top-flight football this weekend across Europe’s top domestic leagues. But more on that in our next edition. Today’s strictly about Europa.

What’s ahead in today’s edition of What Are the Odds?:

• Europa League and Europa Conference League match schedules. 🗓️

• Our top three Europa picks for this week. ✅

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Tomorrow, we’ve got a massive lineup of matches as both the Europa League and Europa Conference League drop a full round of 18 matches each. (Note: all dates and times are in CEST)

🇪🇺 Europa League (Round 2)

Thursday 15 October

• 18:45 — AZ Alkmaar vs Hapoel Beer Sheva

• 18:45 — Lech Poznan vs Bayer Leverkusen

• 18:45 — NK Celje vs AC Omonia

• 18:45 — Lyon vs Crystal Palace

• 18:45 — Red Bull Salzburg vs AC Milan

• 18:45 — Royal Union Saint-Gilloise vs Real Sociedad

• 18:45 — Sparta Prague vs Lillestrom

• 18:45 — Uniao Torreense vs Sunderland

• 21:00 — Benfica vs Celtic

• 21:00 — Bournemouth vs Sturm Graz

• 21:00 — Celta Vigo vs Juventus

• 21:00 — Dinamo Zagreb vs Anderlecht

• 21:00 — Ferencvarosi TC vs Viktoria Plzen

• 21:00 — Hoffenheim vs Besiktas

• 21:00 — Jagiellonia Bialystok vs Ararat Armenia

• 21:00 — NEC Nijmegen vs Levski

• 21:00 — Marseille vs Olympiacos

• 21:00 — Rennes vs OFI Crete

🇪🇺 Europa Conference League (Round 1)

Thursday 15 October

• 18:45 — CS Universitatea Craiova vs Getafe

• 18:45 — CSKA vs Monaco

• 18:45 — FK Egnatia vs FC Midtjylland

• 18:45 — Gent vs AGF Aarhus

• 18:45 — HNK Hadjuk Split vs Ajax

• 18:45 — Kuopio PS vs Trabzonspor

• 18:45 — Lugano vs Red Star Belgrade

• 18:45 — Mjallby vs Inter Club d’Escaldes

• 18:45 — Panathinaikos vs FK Borac Banja Luka

• 18:45 — Riga FC vs Kairat

• 21:00 — Atalanta vs Pafos

• 21:00 — Brann vs Lincoln Red Imps

• 21:00 — Brighton vs Kauno Zalgiris

• 21:00 — Copenhagen vs Braga

• 21:00 — Freiburg vs Baumit Jablonec

• 21:00 — Hearts vs FC Nordsjaelland

• 21:00 — Sint Truiden vs Iberia 1999

• 21:00 — Twente vs FC Thun

Want to get the best odds on these matches?

⚽ Bournemouth vs Sturm Graz
🏟️ Europa League
📅 Thursday 15 October; 21:00 (CEST)

• Top 3 Stats:

  • Sturm Graz haven’t scored in their last three European games, including a home draw against Rennes in which their chances were worth only 0.83.

  • Over a larger sample of matches, Sturm Graz’s attack is still below average, even at home — they averaged 1.25 goals per league game against an Austrian average of 1.49.

  • Bournemouth’s defensive record looks worse than it actually is — 5 of their 13 goals conceded in the Premier League this year came in one afternoon at Chelsea (who’ve scored 15 in six games).

• CXSports says: Bournemouth will win this, and they’ll probably win it without even really trying. How so? Because the only real weakness they seem to have (keeping goals out) is both the one thing Sturm Graz are worst at exploiting, while also being not as much of a weakness as it first seems.
  
  Let’s start with Sturm, who’ve gone three straight European games without scoring so much as a single goal. Even their one home game in that run — a game versus Rennes — they only created chances worth 0.83 goals and only escaped with a draw because their goalkeeper somehow saved more than he should have. And things don’t look much better over a large sample of games — their domestic league scoring record shows an average of 1.25 goals scored per game, while the Austrian average sits up at 1.49. In other words, Strum’s attack is below average.
  
  As for Bournemouth, they look bad on paper — they’re 18th in the Premier League with no wins and 13 goals conceded. However, that 18th place doesn’t mean much here (the Austrian league is a decent step down from the English Premier League). Meanwhile, those 13 goals conceded look worse than they probably are — 5 of them were conceded to Chelsea, who’s currently averaging 2.5 goals a game (in the Premier League). So if we only look at the other five games, Bournemouth’s defensive record looks a little less catastrophic — 8 conceded in 5 games. That works out to 1.6 per game, which isn’t actually too bad when you consider that the league average is currently 1.48 conceded per game.
  
  Now consider that Bournemouth’s also won their only European game so far, 2-1 away at Real Sociedad, which is already more promising than anything Sturm’s produced this season. And now, they’re playing at home against an attack that is, to put it mildly, borderline hopeless on the European stage.
  
  As such, we fully expect Bournemouth to score once or twice here while Sturm will likely struggle to even generate chances, much less score a goal.

• Score prediction: 2-0 for Bournemouth

Bet Option #1

• Bet: Bournemouth Victory

• Odds Range: 1.11-1.22

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Both Teams to Score (No)

• Odds Range: 1.71-1.91

⚽ Brann vs Lincoln Red Imps
🏟️ Europa Conference League
📅 Thursday 15 October; 21:00 (CEST)

• Top 3 Stats:

  • Lincoln lost all three away games of last season’s league phase with 12 goals conceded against just 2 scored (0-5, 1-3 and 1-4).

  • Lincoln failed to score in four of their eight European games this summer against clubs from Sweden, Cyprus and Northern Ireland.

  • Brann scored in five of six qualifiers — 13 goals at 2.2 a game, more than double Lincoln’s 1.0.

• CXSports says: Brann’s the obvious pick here for one simple reason — Lincoln have yet to show they can even play competitively, much less survive a European away game. To use last season for context here, they lost all three of their league-phase away games by a disasterous 12-2. And two of those defeats came against a Bosnian and a Maltese side… not exactly what you’d call “serious” competition. And more recently, things don’t look any better — against European competition this summer, they only scored 8 goals in 8 games while conceding 9, and drew blanks in half of those games. So while Lincoln might look impressive at home (League champs with 89 scored in 27 games last season), the reality is that the standard in Gibraltar is so far behind the European norm that Lincoln’s basically a strong amateur team being asked to play in the big leagues.
  
  As for Brann, they’re not exactly the most competitive team on the European circuit, and their recent league form isn’t great — they’ve lost three of their last four league games and scored three goals in their last five, including a 0-2 loss at home to Viking (joint league leaders) who played the last 50 minutes with just ten men. Still, for all their apparent woes, Brann does hold up much better on the European stage — they’ve scored in five of six qualifiers, including 4 at Apollon Limassol and 3 at home to PAOK. And they also spent last season one tier up in the Europa League and managed to reach its knockout play-offs, which is a lot more than Brann would’ve done with its Europa performance last season.
  
  So, how does this go down? Well, Brann isn’t the toughest of competition out there, so we wouldn’t be surprised if Lincoln manages to score a goal here. However, with Lincoln’s history on the road, we don’t see how that will be enough to offset what will likely be a multi-goal haul from Brann.

• Score prediction: 3-1 for Brann

Bet Option #1

• Bet: Brann Victory

• Odds Range: 1.08-1.17

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Over/Under (Over 2.5)

• Odds Range: 1.25-1.39

⚽ Brighton vs Kauno Zalgiris
🏟️ Europa Conference League
📅 Thursday 15 October; 21:00 (CEST)

• Top 3 Stats:

  • Brighton have the highest-scoring attack in the Premier League with 3.0 goals a game on average (and they’ve won their last three league games 5-0, 3-0 and 2-0).

  • Kauno have been thrashed with 8 conceded and zero scored in all their two away games this summer. (5-0 at Dinamo Zagreb and 3-0 at Besiktas).

  • Brighton has kept a clean sheet in 4 of 6 league games, and four of the five goals they conceded came in one game (a 4-3 loss at Chelsea).

• CXSports says: This one’s stacked so heavily in Brighton’s favor its hardly even worth writing this prediction. However, Kauno Zalgiris isn’t exactly the most well-known team, so, for the unfamiliar, the basic setup here is simple — Brighton’s got the best attack in England’s top division (which is basically Europe’s top division), while Kauno’s got weaker league numbers (0.71 goals conceded a game, 56 scored in 28) playing in a league that’s not exactly known for its high standard of competition (to give some context on the standard, Lithuania’s currently 148th in the FIFA rankings). And if those domestic league numbers weren’t enough to convince you that  Kauno Zalgiris is way out of its league here, then consider their European games so far against Dinamo Zagreb and Besiktas — they only scored twice in four games and conceded ten. And Brighton is better than either of those teams (and this game is at home).
  
  So just how bad will the damage Brighton’s about to inflict going to be? Well, their attack and their defence seem to be feeding off each other right now. Not only have they outscored the whole Premier League league with their 18 goals in six games, but they’ve also conceded just 5… and four of those came in a single 4-3 defeat at Chelsea (Sound familiar?? Exactly the same thing we just saw with Bournemouth). So once you ignore that Chelsea game, they’ve only let in one goal in five league matches while score 15. That’s crazy. And it could get even crazier than that in this game — Kauno Zalgiris is the weakest squad Brighton will face. With that said, we do have some reservations about the chances of this one turning into a full-blown smashfest. Brighton’s injury list is significant (six out, two doubtful). And, they’ve also got a league game coming up this Sunday against Crystal Palace, which means they’ll probably try to keep something in reserve and rotate a decent chunk of an already-rotated (due to injuries) squad.
  
  Still, even if Brighton only manages to perform at 50% of its usual standard, they’re still far and away the favorites here.

• Score prediction: 3-0 for Brighton

Bet Option #1

• Bet: Brighton Victory

• Odds Range: 1.01-1.04

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Both Teams to Score (No)

• Odds Range: 1.22-1.53

Make your sportsbook work for you!

That’s a wrap for today. But we’ll be back later in the week as we look ahead to all the upcoming action across the top European domestic leagues this weekend.

Until then, enjoy the football.