The weekends domestic Premier League and EFL football action kicks off to night with the now traditional Friday night Championship match and tonight’s looks set to be a real cracker between two of the big promotion favourites Middlesbrough and West Brom at the Riverside. After drawing their opening Championship match 2-2 at Millwall, Boro have won three on the trot against Sheffield Utd, Birmingham and Bristol City and they impressively kept a clean sheet in all three games. West Brom had a similar slow start losing their opening match, drawing their second but since then they won three in a row including the League Cup against Norwich, Luton and QPR who they thrashed 7-1 last weekend.

This will be the eighth time they met at the Riverside in all competitions and the Boro don’t have a great record winning only two, the last in the Premier League back in 2005 and since then they’ve drawn three and lost two. This fixture has historically produced goals with five of the seven matches ending with 3 or more goals and with both teams scoring freely so far this season this trend is likely to continue tonight.

Saturday’s action kicks-off with the traditional Premier League lunchtime match and today’s is between Wolves and reigning champions Manchester City at Molineux. This will be Wolves first big test since so far this season and it will be interesting to see how they approach the game and if they can maintain their technical composure under intense pressure. This will be the eighth meeting between the two at Molineux in all competitions and not surprisingly City have experienced the most success winning four, including the last two back in 2011 and 2012 in the League Cup and Premier League.

Goals are usually guaranteed in City’s matches but they also face stiffer opposition more regularly away from home and thus they score less goals on average compared to at the Etihad. Wolves are likely to put up stiff opposition and provide City with a good test but I expect the reigning champions will emerge victorious and win by a goal or two margin. Saturday’s Premier League tea-time kick-off features Liverpool and Brighton at Anfield and I expect another dominant Liverpool performance like last season’s comfortable 4-0 win for the Reds.

From a betting perspective I think Hull and Wigan are good enough teams and playing well enough to upset the struggling Stoke and QPR respectively, and past statistics suggest there will be at least a few goals in both Blackburn’s match against Brentford at Ewood Park and Plymouth and Peterborough at Home Park.

Selections:

Double (3.60)

Blackburn vs. Brentford Over 2.5 Goals

Plymouth vs. Peterborough Over 2.5 Goals

Hull Win vs Stoke (17/5)

Wigan to beat QPR (13/10)