I had to take a couple of glances to check that this match was priced up correctly.

Blackpool, second bottom of the table after suffering another 1-0 defeat, are being priced up as favourites against Barnsley, currently third after three wins in a row.

There is home and away form to consider here of course, and Blackpool have won all four of their points at home, whereas Barnsley’s only defeat was away from home, but they did win their other two away matches in the league.

However, the odds discrepancy suggests that, if this match was played on a neutral pitch, Blackpool would still be slight favourites. I could not disagree more with that at this stage of the season.

Blackpool are under a lot of pressure, and their manager may be a bad result here away from the sack, and the truth is that they haven’t really been unlucky at the beginning of this season, the performance data suggests that they are generally getting the results they deserve.

If the trend of Blackpool and Barnsley performances continue into this match then Barnsley have to be considered a real value price at the moment. I can’t see a way that they are stable at 3.0, unless Blackpool make a managerial change before the weekend.

The good ship Wednesday is soon going to have vanished without trace from the EFL Championship waters if it keeps taking on water at the rate that they are doing.

A 0-3 defeat to Bristol City at the weekend made it four consecutive defeats by at least two goals in the Championship, and whatever “backs to the wall” spirit was being deployed by Henrik Pedersen’s men looks to have given way to a lack of on-pitch quality.

The more that the one sided results and performances stack up, the more concern there will be in the lack of confidence that Wednesday will be able to bring next time.

This is a tough away trip to a team that haven’t conceded many, or given up too many chances. Portsmouth haven’t scored many either, which is a slight concern for this bet, but their data shows an underperformance where Pompey may have expected to score over 6 goals, they have only 4 to their name so far.

Whilst Portsmouth are already quite short in the match price market, the opportunity to go for the -1 handicap appealed as it allows us to potentially capitalise on a trend against Sheffield Wednesday, and take advantage of the variance of the Portsmouth lack of goals to be reversed in this match.

This current Bristol Rovers price looks to be something of a relic based upon the starts of the season that the two clubs here had to begin with, but something has changed on both sides to make me think that this price will get backed in before kick-off.

Starting with Rovers, they are on a recovery mission from a slack start, but now, undoubtedly, things are starting to click for Darrell Clarke. Their win on Saturday at home to Barrow was their fourth in a row in the league, so they are in a real groove right now, and they are way above Colchester for xG created, 12.2 vs 7.7 across eight matches so far.

Colchester haven’t won in the league in five matches, and despite the Cowleys signing a new contract recently, they don’t seem to be getting as much of a tune out of their players as they have been doing consistently.

Rovers are being priced here as the inferior team, but that looks something of a fallacy based on what we are seeing play out in the recent form. There was a piece of me that wanted to back double chance here for Rovers, given the tight nature of both their own victories and the way that Colchester tend to play, but the value is there in the outright prices to make it sensible to just back the Rovers victory.