Preview:

Germany to thrash Gibraltar is a popular bet today. Reasons are, Gibraltar is very poor, even worse than San Marino and other teams from this range, and Germany will be interested to show who the boss is after a poor start in this campaign.

Is Gibraltar really that poor? Well yes, they are. They've lost 0-7 to Poland and Ireland and 0-3 to Georgia. The match against Poland I would say it was their worst performance, because it was their first official match ever and they lacked fitness and experience (to park the bus). They got better against Ireland and even if they've conceded seven goals as well, I would say they played somehow better this time, defensively at least. Against Georgia I would say they did it the best so far, because not only they didn't concede so many, but they actually had some chances up front and even scored a goal, which was mysteriously disallowed for a fault. Not so bad for a no chance team like Gibraltar.

Germany is not Georgia of course, not even Poland or Ireland. But the thing is, I see that as an advantage. It's an advantage because Gibraltar will at least not try to attack in numbers, like they tried to do against Poland, Ireland and Georgia and eventually got punished on the break, so they can park the bus more effectively, and their spread is also much much better. We are talking about a +8.5 handicap which is HUGE in football. Even if Germany played at 100% and with the risk to be wrong, I would say it would be 50/50% whether they cover the spread or not. But while I'm not denying Germany's desire to win and get back on track, I believe it is very hard to fully-concentrate when you play such teams as Gibraltar. A -8.5 spread means you ought to be scoring a goal every 10 minutes. I wouldn't say it's so easy. Not denying the fact Germany could score more than that. But from a probabilistic point of view, I would say we have some nice chances for Gibraltar to stay in this spread.