Sunderland vs Cardiff prediction: ENGLAND: Championship betting tips on match 2023-09-23 14:00.
An impressive 3-1 win for Sunderland against Blackburn in the previous round ended both a 15-year wait for a win against Blackburn and made it three straight wins for the Black Cats, their finest run at this level since 2007. They were ultimately promoted to the Premier League as champions in that season, and that’s certainly the ambition once again in 2023/24.
The ever-present home faithful may have been worried at the beginning of the campaign after losing to Ipswich and suffering a home cup upset against Crewe in quick succession. Since then, they won both of their home games whilst scoring seven unanswered goals, arguably the perfect confidence booster ahead of this attempt to improve a rotten home H2H record across Cardiff City’s last four visits (W1, L3).
That will be easier said than done as the Bluebirds are building up a head of steam, with a 3-2 win over Coventry securing Cardiff’s third win across the last four rounds. Manager Erol Bulut joked that his players asked if he was a “prophet” due to his ethos of believing in themselves to breed success, although this will be a huge challenge as they haven’t put together a run of three league wins since February 2022.
Completing that feat will be even harder away from home as Cardiff are yet to win an away league game so far (D1, L2), despite scoring before half-time in all three. It’s little surprise that Cardiff will enter this game as the pre-match outsiders then, and that’s a tag they haven’t often coped well with, a point illustrated by their 79% winless rate in such league games since the start of last season (W7, D7, L19).
Players to watch: Each of Jack Clarke’s last four appearances (G4) have yielded continuous improvement in his Flashscore rating, giving stock to manager Tony Mowbray hailing him after his last game when saying: “What a footballer, what a talent!” Trying to better his efforts will be Cardiff’s Karlan Grant, who followed up a rather tepid four-game start to his time at the club with two goals and an assist across his four most recent appearances.
Hot stat: Cardiff have won three of their four league games this season when the match is level at half-time, yet failed to win either game when leading at the break (D1, L1).