By Pete Kaenmaki

Brisbane Roar started the season as title-holders and one of the biggest favorites. Season has started quite oppositely – Roar has lost five out of their six matches. On Saturday Roar are hosting in-form Perth Glory, who have won six out of their seven league matches, proceeded to FFA Cup final and are topping the table. Roar have had some injury worries as well and have been without their regular goalkeeper Michael Theoklitos and right midfield Adam Sarota all fall. On top of that they’ll miss full back Shane Stefanutto and his stunt Jack Hingert on Saturday as well. Let’s see how big of an impact these absences actually have on Brisbane’s probabilities to success on Saturday.

Reminder: For every A-League match, AccuScore has A-League Betting Picks and updated Odds

Brisbane – status quo

After 10,000 simulations Accuscore’s computer came to a conclusion that the Vegas market doesn’t have it quite right at the moment, when it comes to pricing up Brisbane. Market’s got Roar as a 45.0 percent favorite, whilst we at Accuscore claim that Brisbane’s probability to win on Saturday is just 38.3 percent and that they’ll net 1.11 goals. According to our beloved computer total goals will be 2.05 goals.

Brisbane – with full strength

Now what would be the situation, if Roar would have all their injured players available – is there any difference? Well, in this scenario Accuscore’s computer says that with full strength Roar would first of all score just 0.91 goals, but more remarkably, they would also allow clearly less. Putting that all together Brisbane would surprisingly be marginally smaller favorites with best players available with a 36.3 percent probability. In this case our magical machine calculates that total goals for the match would be 1.64 goals, which is good 0.41 goals less than with status quo.

In conclusion, Brisbane’s chances to win wouldn’t get bigger even though they’d get the injured players back in action. But what actually changes, is that with full strength this clash would be more low-scoring affair, which also would directly increase the probability for a draw. All in all, Perth clearly benefits from Brisbane’s poor situation.