Saturday Football Accumulator Tips: 13/1 fourfold from the EFL matches

Last weekend was a rollercoaster for this particular column because at various points throughout the second-halves, every single result was coming in. Then Crewe threw away a two-goal lead at home to Morecambe and that as they say was that. Everton’s injury-time woes were just the icing on the cake of yet another miss.

For our Saturday Football Accumulator Tips column this week, we look to get back on track and pick out four matches from across the EFL, with a price of just over 13/1 as of the time of writing…

Leg 1 – Blackburn Rovers vs Plymouth Argyle – Home win @ 5/6

We start our quest for a straight-up Saturday Accumulator Tips column win at Ewood Park where the newly-appointed draw specialists of the EFL Championship entertain a woefully out-of-form Plymouth Argyle.

The home side have not won a match since a 3-1 victory in front of their own fans back on February 10. That is not a good run and begs the question of why I’ve plumped for them as the opening leg, despite not even being at evens. Well, all the signs are pointing towards Rovers being on the up.

They gave Newcastle all they could handle in the FA Cup, taking the Premier League side to penalties. That was followed by a tough loss at Swansea before being held to a point by Millwall, who scored with their only shot on target.

Newly-installed Blackburn boss John Eustace is widely-regarded as a good coach and a strong hire. He also has Sammie Szmodics to call upon. The attacking midfielder has been in fine form throughout this campaign and has scored in his past three.

Argyle come into the game in free-fall having only taken home four-points from the last 21 available. Although it must be said, three of them came in a very impressive victory at the Riverside. They lost on Tuesday night at Sheffield Wednesday, which is never great considering where the Owls have been all season.

The form probably points towards the draw but my gut-feel says that Blackburn are due a win and this is a good spot for John Eustace to get his first as boss.

Leg 2 – Charlton Athletic vs Carlisle United  – Home win @ 4/7

The shortest-price on the docket for us comes from the Valley, where Nathan Jones might just be starting to live up to his own hype of being one of the best managers in Europe. Well that is obviously total codswallop but you have to be fair to him, he’s had a good start to life in South London.

After defeat in his opening game at Reading, his side have enjoyed an unbeaten spell including holding league-leaders Portsmouth to a 0-0 draw in a game that could have gone either way and a win at promotion-chasing Derby County.

Carlisle actually arrested their seven-game losing streak with a shock 0-1 win at Burton at the end of February but normal service was renewed at the weekend when Reading beat them 1-3 up in Cumbria.

This game feels like one of the bankers that will appear on acca’s up and down the country. Charlton are playing much better under their new boss and it is seemingly only a matter of time until Carlisle’s relegation is made official. I like the home side here to win with relative ease.

Leg 3 – Accrington Stanley vs Bradford City – Away win @ 5/4

A couple of away wins now in the crazy EFL League 2, where you have to be a mad-man to keep going to that well. Well, put me in a straitjacket because even though the Crewe collapse from a week ago still stings, sometimes you just have to go with form and logic and hope that it all evens itself out.

It has been a trying week up at the Crown Ground, where John Coleman was given his marching orders despite being a club legend, with the club sitting in 16th position and in no realistic danger of dropping out of the football league.

The fall-out over his departure may not have been solely about the decision but the way it was handled. A 43-word statement did not go down well and club owner Andy Holt even deleted his social media profiles following the backlash.

I do not expect the fans to get behind the team on Saturday and rather they may well go after the owner, making the atmosphere a very strange one. The home side have not been in good form, whereas the visitors come in having not lost since January. In that period, they have beaten promotion-chasing Wrexham and MK Dons.

Usually I like to take the new-manager bounce but I’m going the other way with this one. Give me the away side and a strange afternoon up in Lancashire.

Leg 4 – Forest Green Rovers vs Walsall – Away win @ 5/4

If we are solely looking at form then this is an obvious play. Only three teams across the four professional English leagues have won their past five games. Arsenal in the Premier League, Ipswich Town in the Championship and Walsall down in League 2.

The Saddlers’ have been able to cut through the noise of the topsy-turvy division to haul themselves firmly into the play-off chase. They’ve done this despite losing out on 19-year-old star striker Freddie Draper, who excelled in the first-half of the season before being recalled by parent club Lincoln City.

Most people will have heard of the Troy Deeney experiment at Forest Green this season and how it went, shall we say, south pretty quickly.

The former Watford striker was appointed as the new boss on December 20 and couldn’t even last a month, as he was sacked on January 18 after publicly lambasting his squad, claiming that he would rather watch Antiques Roadshow than watch his team, which is sacrilegious because the aforementioned BBC One show is quality Sunday evening television.

Forest Green have steadied the ship somewhat since his departure but relegation to the National League is still on the cards, with the club five points away from safety. This is a tough game for the home side and I like the recent form of the visitors to hold sway here.

The overall price of just over 13/1 comes in as a 7% chance of winning once we convert the odds into percentages. Therefore, the traders think this set of results would happen about once in every 14 times these four matches took place under the current circumstances. We’ve had a poor run in this particular column of late, is this the one to get us back on track?

You can check out all of our Football Accumulator Tips on our Acca hub page…