Sangju Sangmu vs. Gangwon FC Betting Preview With Pick – K League 1, May 16

The second week of the new K League 1 season kicks off with Sangju Sangmu taking on one of the most entertaining sides in South Korea in Gangwon.

There were very mixed fortunes for these teams on the opening weekend of the campaign, so both clubs have their own reasons for wanting to take all three points from this one on Saturday.

BetOnline has looked at Sangju Sangmu’s less-than-impressive start to the season last week and decided that the army team will be no match for the free-flowing play of Gangwon. That’s probably a little unfair considering what happened before the home side’s game last week. This could be an even affair, and the price for the draw looks interesting.

Sangju Sangmu kicked off its new season in the worst possible way — by falling to Ulsan Hyundai by four goals to nil. That fixture would have been difficult enough, but the army squad was reduced in number due to a motor vehicle accident involving a number of its players before the game. With that in mind, the defeat doesn’t seem to be all that bad.

There are some very good players turning out for Sangju Sangmu due to military service commitments, so I don’t think that opening game scoreline is indicative of how the season will go.

But even if Sangju Sangmu is at full strength this weekend, it will face a stern test against a Gangwon team that has been lauded for its exciting, passing brand of soccer. A style that saw it convincingly beat FC Seoul last weekend. Although Gangwon dominated the first half, it went 1-0 down before coming back strongly in the second half.

Gangwon looked very good in the second period and scored an extremely early contender for goal of the season when Cho Jae-wan finished off a lovely flowing passage of play with a cheeky back heel drag back on the move. The level of skill throughout the Gangwon side will cause some problems for more than a few other clubs this season.

Although I don’t think that Sangju Sangmu will capitulate here in the same way that it did against Ulsan last weekend, there might well still be some uneasiness within the squad after that shocking pre-game accident. Gangwon is not a team that will allow an opponent to play around with the ball, so I feel that the visitors will, once again, enjoy the majority of the possession and convert that into goals.