Wales v Albania betting tips: Dragons hope for Cardiff cheer
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Preview and odds for Saturday’s match
Wales will hope to avoid any pre-Euro 2020 problems and boost confidence by beating Albania in their final warm-up game in Cardiff.
An early red card for Neco Williams meant Robert Page had to alter his plans in terms of minutes on the pitch for his squad as Wales lost 3-0 to France on Wednesday but this will be an easier test.
Saturday’s match is live on Sky Sports and kicks off at 5pm as we highlight a few potential Wales v Albania betting tips.
Wales v Albania match odds
Wales will hope to quickly forget their midweek defeat and are 7/10 favourites to sign off for the European Championship on a high.
Williams’ controversial red card left them playing with 10 men for more than an hour and Kylian Mbappe, Antoine Griezmann and Ousmane Dembele made France’s numerical advantage count.
Wales went into damage limitation mode in Nice and will be grateful to have another fixture before their Euro 2020 campaign begins against Switzerland next Saturday.
The Dragons are back on home soil here where they have won their last four matches and kept clean sheets in six of their last seven.
A home win to nil is 29/20 while 17/4 is available for a 1-0 victory, which has been the outcome in three of their last four home matches.
Albania are in decent form, though, winning five of their last six games although they were all against limited opposition and they were beaten 2-0 by England in March.
Wales v Albania head-to-head
This is only the second meeting between the two nations and Wales will hope for a better outcome than the first in November 2018 when they suffered a 1-0 defeat in Elbasan.
Albania were ranked 42 spots below 18th-placed Wales in the FIFA rankings at the time, had scored only twice in their previous eight games and were fresh from losing 4-0 at home to Scotland in the Nations League.
But Bekim Balaj’s 59th-minute penalty condemned Wales to a shock defeat and not even the presence of Gareth Bale, sent on as a substitute on the hour mark, could make any difference with the forward’s unhappy appearance compounded by a late booking.
Previous XI
Albania: Strakosha, Lenjani, Hysaj, Veseli, Djimsiti, Ajeti, Bare, Laci, Ramadani, Manaj, Broja.
Key battles
The result went against them in France but Wales were boosted by the return from injury of Aaron Ramsey, Ben Davies and Joe Allen.
Ramsey and Davies both came on as second-half substitutes while Allen, who had not played for over two months after calf and hamstring problems, started and managed nearly an hour.
The trio will all be out to improve their fitness again and Ramsey is 7/2 in the anytime goalscorer odds but Wales must find a way past Atalanta’s solid centre-back Berat Djimsiti, who is Albania’s captain.
All odds and markets correct as of date of publication
