I don’t really like to get involved in the Champions league but the prices this week look madness.
Barcelona v Chelsea (Champions League: Tuesday 8:45pm local time)
Barcelona are a best priced 1.73 in this game and Expekt offer the draw at 3.65 and Chelsea at 5.8. There is no doubt Barcelona are a very good team and have ripped some teams to shreds this year but they are not as good as most people give them credit for. On Saturday they needed a goalkeeping error to help them out and get a draw against Valencia and I believe in the Spanish league this has been one of their few tests this season. The Spanish league is weak and I think you can see this by the performance of the Spanish teams in Europe this season. Real Madrid beat 3rd placed Sevilla 4-2 on Sunday and that was essentially the same Real Madrid team beaten home and away by Liverpool 5-0 on aggregate. Huntelaar was the only real absentee and Liverpool absolutely crushed them. Real lie just 4 points behind Barcelona in the league with both of them meeting on Saturday. Barcelona are going to have their entire season, and possibly legacy, defined in the next 2 weeks. It’s very hard to draw a line between any European form but Liverpools drubbing of Real Madrid really was emphatic, and Arsenal beating Villarreal easily at home shows the strength of the English league.
Guardiola also has some selection difficulties as Xavi, Iniesta, Messi, Henry and Eto’o are almost impossible to leave out but if you play them you are left with just YaYa Toure as a defensive midfielder. Hiddink will no doubt be aware of any weaknesses and you have to fancy him over Pep, who last season was patrolling the dugout of Barcelona reserves and playing teams like Rapitenca who are from the place I lived previously with a population of just 10,000. Physically Chelsea are stonger and there is very little height in the Barcelona team and that is something that could be exploited.
I looked through some of the recent matchups between Barcelona and English teams in the Champions League.
2005 v Chelsea – Barcelona win 2-1 at Camp Nou (Chelsea win on aggregate)
2006 v Chelsea – Draw 1-1 at Camp Nou (Barca win on aggregate) *
2006 v Arsenal – Barcelona win final 2-1 *
2006 v Chelsea (group stage) – 2-2 at Camp Nou (Chelsea win at home)
2007 v Liverpool – Liverpool win 2-1 at Camp Nou (Liverpool win on aggregate)
2008 v Manchester United – 0-0 draw at Camp Nou (United win on aggregate)
* In both these crucial matches a player from the English team was sent off (Del Horno and Lehmann)
I think the sending offs are key and need to be factored in. Essentially there have been 6 clashes over the past 3 seasons with the English teams coming out on top 4 times. Of the 5 games in the Camp Nou Barca have won once, lost once and drawn 3 times. I could quite easily see a draw again. I cannot quite see how the prices have been done for this game. Real Madrid host Barcelona on Saturday and Madrid are favourites yet this Madrid team was thrashed by Liverpool, who themselves were the knocked out by Chelsea. Betfair offer 5.8 and 3.9 and I mentioned the Expekt prices before but I’ll use other bookies for my recommended bets.
++ Match Odds – Chelsea @ 5.5 on Bet365/Skybet (1pt) – more on Betfair
++ Match Odds – Draw @ 3.6 on Bet365/Boyles/Stan James (½pt) – more on Betfair
1½pts staked.