Inter Milan and Roma

For those who can stomach just the one night of Carling Cup football, there is some welcome relief on Wednesday evening with a live Serie A clash between Inter Milan and Roma. The match will be shown on Bravo (124 for Sky Digital viewers).

Inter cannot afford any further dropped points if they are to maintain their pursuit of Juventus at the top of the division. They are third, six points behind the leaders.

Unfortunately for the hosts, they are without Adriano who is out injured after falling on his shoulder during the victory over Udinese at the weekend. While losing a player of his quality is a blow, Inter proved they can cope without the Brazilian when thumping five past Livorno the week before without their star striker.

In stark contrast to the home side, Roma are languishing rather dangerously near the relegation zone. A 1-1 draw against Lazio at the weekend gave them only their second point in four games. Winning the title four years ago is now only a distant memory.

Looking back at the past few years, and there is a history of goals when these two meet. The past six meetings have produced no fewer than 23 goals, including a 3-3 thriller just over twelve months ago in Rome.

What is also noticeable about these two teams is how busy the referee can be at times. Their most recent game saw six players booked and one sent off. In charge of proceedings on Wednesday evening is Roberto Rosetti, who in his three Serie A matches has booked a total of 6 players and shown 1 red.

Don’t be mislead too much by these numbers as in his 24 games last term, he found space in his notepad to caution 115 players and give 8 their marching orders. If there is any bad feeling leftover from last time, and Rosseti is in one his for stricter moods, don’t be surprised to see a fair few cards flying around the place.

As always with pretty much any live game on television these days, Sporting Index appear to be the only firm (Bravo to them) offering a full quota of spreads markets. They have pitched their bookings quote at the 46-50 mark.

On the fixed odds, it is hard to look past an Inter victory although odds of 7/10 do look a little prohibitive. What is worth a decent investment is Julio Cruz to find the back of the net. In the absence of Adriano recently, the Argentinian has scored in the last two matches to go with his three strikes from earlier in the campaign.

Bet365 offer a very tempting 6/4 for Cruz to breach a struggling Roma side.