FA Cup, 5th round, Monday, 03/03/2025 at 8:30 pm
If this duel were to take place in the Premier League, you could say that the third place is hosting the 18th, so it should be a clear-cut affair. However, my Nottingham Ipswich tip does not refer to the league, but rather to the FA Cup.
Of course, the home side are still favorites, and by a relatively clear margin. I agree with the bookmakers’ assessment and will now tell you in my analysis why I am going for tip 1 here.
A top team in crisis and a knockout competition? That has often been a very dangerous combination! Nottingham Forest are actually playing really well and are currently in a Champions League place.
However, the competition has been closing the gap in recent weeks, and the Tricky Trees only have themselves to blame. They have only won two of the last seven games, but there have been three quite heavy defeats from a defensive point of view.
0:5 against Bournemouth, 1:2 against Fulham and 3:4 against Newcastle, the defense had a pitch-black day three times. Nottingham concede almost two and a half times as many goals away from home as they do at home, which is why they also suffered these three defeats away from home.
They have not lost at home since the beginning of November, so their currently poor form is very location-dependent. The home games they have not won since that day in November were against Arsenal (0-0) and Liverpool (1-1).
So the form is not as bad as it looks at first glance. What I definitely want to mention: Of the ten goals conceded at home, there was only one before half-time!
Now I’ll switch over to the FA Cup, because the fifth round is on Monday. After the 2-0 opening win against Luton, the Tricky Trees continued to daze, and they almost got knocked out here!
Not all the stars were on the field against Exeter City, and it almost backfired. After a 2-2 draw, it went to penalties, where the favorite kept all seven senses.
Even substitute Chris Wood, top striker, took responsibility and scored. In the league, he has 18 goals and three assists, and also scored the winning goal in the 1-0 win against Ipswich in the first half of the season.
There’s no question about it, you should definitely have this man on your radar when it comes to betting on goals. At Betano, this tip brings you odds of 1.70, which shows how many expect Wood to score.
With Betano, the bet might even pay off twice, because with the Betano promotional code, you can get up to 100 euros. The FA Cup, I have to mention, is definitely not the Reds’ favorite competition.
Since 1997, Woden has only made it past the fifth round once. In 2022, it went to the round of the best eight, where it was knocked out by Liverpool. But this time, you can’t really imagine Nottingham failing.
If we look at the average odds of our PayPal bookmakers, we see values ranging from 1.75 to 4.50. Given that Ipswich are bottom of the Premier League, the value of the guests is actually quite good.
The Tractor Boys are five points behind the safety line, which, in theory, can still be caught. However, six of their last seven league games have been lost, and if things continue like this, they will probably be relegated to the Championship soon.
22 goals have been conceded during this period, only in the 1-1 draw against Aston Villa were there fewer than two. The cup is therefore a great opportunity to gain new self-confidence, as it just doesn’t work in the league.
3-0 against Bristol Rovers and 4-1 against Coventry City, the first two appearances in the FA Cup were worthy of respect. It is the first time since 2007 that Ipswich have appeared so far ahead in the current competition.
The last few years have been marked by failure, although opponents such as Maidstone, Barron and Accrington (to name just a few) are not really among the big names in the country.
Nottingham against Ipswich? Actually, it should be a very clear matter! The third-placed team in the Premier League is hosting a team in the relegation zone, but in a knockout game, the clocks are ticking differently, as we know.
Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that there is really no surprise in the air here. The guests are much too weak, concede a lot of goals and do not give the impression that they could succeed on Monday.
That’s why I decided to place an individual bet here. Nottingham is much better at home than away, so I’m predicting:
We see a home win!
