GEORGE ELEK: A box office bet for League One’s prime time clash

On Monday night a team owned by a Hollywood A-lister and a TV Star travel to a side part-owned by the greatest NFL player of all time, who have just spent £20m on a player which pales into insignificance in comparison to the £3b that they are setting aside for a new stadium complex.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, the third tier of English football.

Birmingham vs Wrexham fittingly takes Sky’s MNF slot which is normally reserved for Premier League clashes between the richest clubs in the world. It is a demonstration of the American wealth that is now dominating much of English football, and will be sure to attract a global audience. The same cannot be said for Mansfield v Cambridge on Saturday, despite the two games taking place in the same league and the winner of both being awarded the same number of League One points.

At the time of writing, Birmingham are the Evs favs for the League One title, eye-wateringly short for any club in any league after just four games, but such is their financial muscle compared to the rest of the field you can see why they’re expected to win it. Wrexham are joint second-favs at 8/1 with Huddersfield, halving in price since opening weekend after a fantastic 13-point haul from their first five games.

Wrexham were the ‘Birmingham of non-league’ if you will – able to dominate the division due to a spending power that their opponents could only dream of. This was true to a certain extent last season in League Two, but this time around they’re going to have to rely on some smarts rather than just muscle if they are going to continue their merry dance up the EFL, and the early signs are good.

Phil Parkinson’s reputation was done some serious damage after a poor spell at Sunderland, that was broadcast to the world on Netflix, but at Wrexham he’s done a phenomenal job at building a side who are solid defensively and have no issue racking up the goals despite being relatively passive out of possession and not particularly interested in having the ball.

In many ways their style is a bit of a 5-3-2 throwback, with the width coming from attacking wing-backs and a little (Jack Marriott) and large (Ollie Palmer) partnership up front. Such is their form that EFL A-lister Paul Mullin can’t even force his way into the starting line-up after recovering from injury.

If Wrexham are old-school, then Birmingham are adopting every part of the modern day football handbook. Their new manager is Chris Davies, formerly Ange Postecoglu’s Assistant at Spurs, and they are adopting a heavy possession style which, as easy as it is on the eye at times, hasn’t really yet delivered the kind of dominance in both boxes that would justify their outright price.

In fact, I’d go as far as saying that if you stripped all of the noise out of the market on money spent and quality or reputation of the squad, and based outright prices purely on the performances up to this stage then Birmingham would be nowhere near Evs to win the title.

As such they’re 5/6 to win this game, when they’d likely be a lot shorter if a certain amount of improvement wasn’t being factored into the title-winning odds, and that’s understandable when you consider the quality at their disposal.

They’ve won three of their four games, all by a single goal margin, and last time out against Wigan needed a 98th minute winner to get all three points. The arrival of Jay Stansfield for the aforementioned sum will make this second league debut for the club a box office event on Monday night, but his first showing since returning didn’t go to plan as they limped to a 1-1 draw with Walsall in the EFL Trophy. I’m generally willing to ignore the form from that competition, but Birmingham put out a decent side and were, again, unable to find any real fluency.

When Wrexham travelled to Bolton a couple of weeks ago, the only game they haven’t won in the league this season, Parkinson set them up to frustrate, which they did successfully given they drew 0-0, although Bolton did miss a few good chances while Wrexham created little.

When you look a bit closer though, 1.26 of Bolton’s 1.62 xG were from corners, so Wrexham did a great job minimising the host’s threat in open play. Birmingham’s own proficiency from set-pieces hasn’t been great and I’d argue that Wrexham’s inability to defend them that day was an anomaly rather than a trademark of their play. Parkinson’s gameplan coming into this may again be to focus on stopping their opponent rather than throw caution to the wind in the search for three points.

Last season Wrexham drew seven of their away league matches, six of which finished 0-0 or 1-1. These six were against Mansfield who finished 3rd, MK Dons (4th), Barrow (8th), Bradford (9th), AFC Wimbledon (10th) and the anomaly Forest Green (24th). Their games against Doncaster (5th) and Crawley (7th) both finished 1-0, with Wrexham winning one and losing the other.

The cautious Parkinson is clearly good at driving the goal-line down and keeping things tight away from home against the better opposition in the league, which might have been a trend triggered by a 5-0 defeat at Stockport in September last year. He’s unlikely to divert off course here against a Birmingham side who will dominate the ball but have struggled to find their attacking groove so far this season. It might be a frustrating night for the hosts.

We can back under 1.5 goals and couple the 0-0 and 1-1 score lines here, which would give us a decent profit should this one follow the trends and finish Under 2.5, with a bumper payday if it’s goalless.

Selections:

1pt Under 1.5 goals @ 11/4

1pt Draw and Under 2.5 goals @ 4/1