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England v Iceland
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Kick Off: Friday 7th June at 19:45
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Competition: International Friendly
Under usual circumstances Gareth Southgate has traditionally played a stronger team in the first pre-tournament friendly and has been able to ring the changes in the following match(es).
This is the final match before the tournament begins for England against Serbia on 16th June and given this fact, Southgate will be keen to see as many of his first choice XI start so that they can put into a match scenario some of the things that they will have been working on in training.
Harry Kane did get some minutes from the bench against Bosnia & Herzegovina and looked sharp and hungry, but many players were unavailable for Southgate on Monday that will now have to get their minutes in here.
This will mean potentially two things at once, the England team will be more cohesive than the one that spluttered throughout the first half against Bosnia & Herzegovina, but, also, that there will be a sense of caution from a physical perspective in terms of not wanting to pick up any injuries on the eve of the tournament.
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England v Iceland Best Bets
With the line-up for this match likely to be stronger than Monday, there is a temptation to expect a more polished performance. Also, looking across Europe at other results, many other top-tier nations are preparing in similar ways against the non-qualifiers of Europe and gathering fairly comfortable results.
Belgium won 2-0 against Montenegro, France 3-0 versus Luxembourg, Spain 5-0 vs Andorra, Croatia 3-0 vs North Macedonia and Switzerland 4-0 vs Estonia, the only exception to these clean-sheet victories is Portugal’s 4-2 against Finland, which perhaps says something about the Portuguese approach heading into this tournament.
Harry Kane will start this match, barring any injury doubts picked up in training. After Monday he is now on 63 England goals in 90 appearances. He has never scored against Iceland though, so will be keen to add them to the list of nations that he has bagged against. With some of his first-choice providers back in the starting lineup as well, there looks to be a strong chance of Kane getting on the scoresheet.
Combining Kane to score with an England (-1) handicap, emulating many of the other European friendlies and also the level that England will expect to hit with hopefully an improved first-half showing at Wembley than Monday, looks like the best way to attack the market for this match. This combination can be backed at 1.73.
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⚔️ England v Iceland Head-to-Head
There is one obvious match that will be brought up every time England play Iceland.
The Euro 2016 round of 16 match in which Iceland defeated England 2-1 to knock them out, and simultaneously end the tenure of Roy Hodgson as England manager. That Iceland team became heroes in the island country and raised the profile of Icelandic football to their highest-ever peak.
That peak was maintained for some time but it would be fair to say that it was always unsustainable, and England have beaten Iceland twice since then, 1-0 in Iceland and 4-0 at Wembley in the Nations League in 2020.
Many players from each side are likely to be involved tomorrow who were also playing in 2020. Jordan Pickford, Kyle Walker, Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden, and Harry Kane are likely to be repeat starters for England.
📊 England Form and Stats
England are back at Wembley after their trip to the North East on Monday, and their home record in friendlies, in particular, is exceptionally strong overall, the stats for this are shown in a separate section below.
Sticking to England’s recent matches there are a few trends to be aware of. England have won six of their last ten, losing only to Brazil in a March friendly.
Exactly half of the last ten matches have gone over 2.5 goals, with the same number of matches seeing both teams scoring.
📊 Iceland Form and Stats
Iceland play twice in four days, firstly against England and then on 10th June against the Netherlands.
Whilst England had already qualified and were playing friendlies in March, Iceland were attempting to qualify for the finals through the play-offs. They almost managed it as well, beating Israel 4-1 in Budapest, then taking the lead against Ukraine in the next round, before going down 2-1 to a late Mykhailo Mudryk goal.
Iceland were nowhere near automatic qualification for the Euro finals, winning only three matches in ten, two of which were against minnows Liechtenstein with the other coming at home to a team that England had just dismissed in Bosnia & Herzegovina. Indeed, Iceland lost all of their away matches comfortably in the group, except the 7-0 mauling of Liechtenstein.
They did take a little trip to the States in January though, and defeated Honduras and Guatemala without conceding a goal, which is a very good effort.
Similarly to England, Iceland have seen five of their last ten matches go over 2.5 goals, and again, five of the ten saw both teams scoring as well.
Looking back through Iceland’s record, the last time that they avoided defeat against a nation that would be around the Top 10 of the FIFA rankings was way back in 2018 when they managed a draw in France in the Nations League.
📊 England in home friendlies and pre-tournament matches
The addition of the Bosnia & Herzegovina friendly adds to the dominance of England in home friendlies, especially against lesser nations. England took 25 shots to Bosnia’s 1 in the friendly on Monday, and though 3-0 did feel like flattery when watching the match, it looks quite fair on the balance of play,
Two things to note after that match though is that the number of cards given in England home friendlies seems to be going up, England did have a run of six games in seven in which they didn’t collect a card at all, but they have received seven in their last four home friendlies.
Only half of the twelve home friendlies in the sample have seen a goal in the first half, this should put the heavy odds on prices for HT/FT markets in some doubt.
The table below shows all of England’s pre-tournament matches under Gareth Southgate.
As we learned ahead of the Bosnia & Herzegovina match, England won all of their pre-tournament friendlies in preparation for the 2016 Euros, the 2018 World Cup and the delayed Euro 2020 tournament, all by a narrow margin of one or two goals.
Indeed, the friendly on Monday looked all set to follow that trend until the stoppage time goal of Harry Kane.
* I recommend waiting for confirmed team line-ups before placing any bets.
* All odds displayed correct at the time of publishing.
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