Blue Moon over Madrid ..........
May 09, 2023
UEFA Champions League semi final first leg:
Just the one game today, but a potential classic with Real Madrid hosting Manchester City in an exact repeat of last season's Champions League semi final, which Real somehow won 6-5 on aggregate after extra time of the second leg.
Los Blancos rode their luck time and time again last season to win their 14th title and should have lost at each stage of the knockout rounds to PSG/ Chelsea/City and Liverpool, not only should they have been eliminated but comfortably in each, however, they turned up for a key 10-15 minutes in all of them when absolutely required to do, it was in equal measures astounding, unbelievable and I suppose impressive and this is a group who do not know when they are beaten in the competition which they love above all others.
Despite their La Liga position this season (third 14 points behind Barcelona), I made a case for them being stronger this season ahead of a 5-2 win at Anfield in February ( see below) and we also sided with them to win by 2+ at Stamford Bridge at big odds in the quarter finals , which means they can again do the same EPL treble this season, by edging past City once more.
Notes on City's 3-0 demolition of Bayern Munich in the last round are also reproduced below.
This game should have been the final, but at least over two legs, you usually get the better team progressing, it didn't happen last year as I have already said, but City have changed their makeup to win these games and want a first Champions League, more than they would another 3-4 EPL titles .
In between the two semi finals 12 months ago I wrote ........
City won 4-3 (First leg), to be honest, 5-2 would have been a truer reflection of what we witnessed , BC's were 6-2 with Real scoring both of theirs and the Sky Blues missing three. Real head coach Carlo Ancelotti was content to once again sit deep and play on the counter when they could break the City high press and when they did, the English champions backline was vulnerable to pace, especially from Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo. However, Kyle Walker is back in training after missing five games and has travelled to Spain and Joao Cancelo is available after missing the first leg with a suspension and despite the fact that City might have scored six in the first leg, it feels like a better matchup for them, at least defensively this evening. CB David Alaba is absent for Real this evening. The hosts do struggle with the press, we saw it against Chelsea (multiple times), PSG and in the first leg and we can expect City to be just as aggressive in this phase tonight and better able to handle Real on the counter with a natural right back.
In the second leg, they led 1-0 ( 5-3 on aggregate) as the game entered added time , then Real scored in the 91st and 92nd minute to tie things up and take the game into an extra 90 minutes. I guess the only comparable turnaround so late in a massive game was the Manchester United defeat of Bayern in the 98-99 final,when they trailed 1-0 in the first of three added minutes and won in normal time! I don't know how many times Pep Guardiola, his staff and the City players have replayed those 210 minutes of football in their heads, but know they should have progressed by 3-4 goals, instead, they had to watch the final on television like the rest of us!
Everything that City did last summer was designed to win this tournament, this season.There was a major shake up in the coaching team, defence and they signed Erling Haaland the No 9 that has been (too) long missing. The striker has 35 EPL goals (9 more than Kane and 15 more than anyone else) and 12 in the CL ( 4 more than anyone else and twice as many as any Real player). Defensively it is an odd one, they have conceded more goals than last season, but do look more solid and it is 23 games since they conceded more than a single goal (13 total) and through that sequence, they have conceded first just twice and only trailed for nine minutes in one of those. They seem to have settled on a back three now, which would have been Dias, Ake, Akanji, only one of whom played against Real last season and that in a four both times, but Ake is absent, so I assume Walker will step in. John Stones has been playing (with great success) in front of the back three alongside Rodri and impressed in that role against Bayern. All their "offensive" stars are shining brightly: Haaland, Silva, Grealish, De Bruyne, Gundogan are near the top of their game and scoring for fun (52 goals in 16 starts, scoring 2+ in 14). If they create as many chances as they did last season against Real ( 31 attempts, 22 ITB, 16 on target, 8 BC's), they should waltz home this time, The hosts are a great club and team, with a wonderful head coach, but you would struggle to convince me that there is improvement left in Alaba (30yo), Carvajal (31), Kroos (33), Benzema (35) and Modric (37), as fantastic as most have been. I also do not expect City to let this go to the wire and put themselves under pressure for the return leg and I favour them to get the hard work done this evening.
Having said all that, odds of 2.18 feel roughly correct and Real have scored in 22 straight CL home games and only failed to do so once in 70 , time before last was over 12 years ago (April 2011) ! Therefore I will suggest ........
1.75 units Manchester City to win and both teams to score 4.06 asian line.
Good luck!
UEFA Champions League: Manchester City- Bayern Munich
Thomas Tuchel has now taken charge of three games as head coach of Bayern Munich, two Bundesliga wins which have given them a two point advantage at the top of the table and a home defeat to Freiburg in the DFB-Pokal. I doubt anyone in Munich was happy about that, but if they win the Champions League that will soon be forgotten. The timing of the replacement of Julian Nagelsmann with Tuchel surprised the football world, but even with those two wins, Bayern have their smallest Bundesliga points total through 27 games since 2011/12 and have scored the fewest number of goals since 2018/19. It is hard to see this 22/23 version as a classic Bayern team and they have gone out of the Champions League at this stage of the competition in each of the last two seasons and the hat-trick feels firmly on the cards.
For City, the CL is the Holy Grail, the title they want above all others and the one which has eluded them, but they come into this tie at the top of their game, winning their last 8 and scoring 31 goals in the process, with Haaland, De Bruyne and Grealish all on fire. Bayern arrive without a natural striker, with a back up goalkeeper and Sadio Mane struggling to find his form since his return from injury and this feels like all the advantages are with City, who are looking for a third straight semi final appearance. The hosts have scored 2+ goals in 21/24 home CL starts and notched 3+ goals in 13 of those, also averaging 3.5 per game in the six against Bundesliga opposition in that sequence, although none were versus Bayern, whom they have not met in a competitive fixture since 2014, when the Sky Blues won 3-2 here in Manchester. I don't feel that either of these two sides are as good defensively as their records suggest and despite the magnitude of the fixture that this could develop into a mini shootout.
I prefer City and expect them to win and would not be surprised were they to do so by two goals and that is an attractively priced 2.95 and something they have done in 7 of their last 8 starts and last three CL home starts. However, I have opted for ..............2 units Manchester City to score "over" 2.5 goals 3.0 general quote, which they have done in 54.16% of those last 24 CL home starts and their last four games.
UEFA Champions League 22/23: Liverpool-Real Madrid
This is a rematch of last season's Champions League final which Real won 1-0, albeit riding their luck, but they did that round after round .
One (or two) swallow does not a summer make and I am still not a Liverpool believer, at least defensively, even after back to back 2-0 wins over Everton and Newcastle United. In the first they should have conceded 20 seconds before taking the lead and that knocked the Toffees for six and was a game changer , on Saturday, they were outplayed for lengthy periods by a team who played 73 minutes with 10 men, the Magpies creating 2.0 xG, 3 BC's, hitting the woodwork twice and 12 of their 14 attempts on goal were from ITB.
Pool are 8th in the EPL and even after those six points, are still 13 shy of their total at this stage of the campaign last season and have conceded 9 goals more, if that was not bad enough, a couple of XGA tables say they should have conceded between 8-10 additional goals and that tallies with what I have seen with my own eyes and good defensive teams do not concede from FOUR consecutive corners ( two disallowed , one a very marginal decision) as they did at Brentford.
Real are 16-3-3 with 51 points on board in La Liga, 8 behind Barcelona and a lot of talk about them having gone backwards. Well that's one more point than they had at this stage last season and the second most through 22 games since 16/17 (only one shy), when they totalled 93 for the season, their most in the last decade and they are very much a second half of the season team. XP puts them on a few points fewer, but exactly on par with Barcelona and xGF gives them an additional 6-7 goals. They scored six goals in their three road CL group stage games and in their last seven away La Liga starts they averaged 2.2 xGF per game and scored 2+ goals in five. Real also won the World Club Cup this month, scoring 9 goals in their two games, which makes 15 in their last four outings and it feels like they are building up a head of steam. Liverpool have won 2/6 home CL knockout stage games and only 1/5 at Anfield in the R16, although we have to bear in mind that they did not need to win all of those, but it is hardly a record which matches their Anfieldunder the light european reputation and this version of the Reds looks weaker than any we have seen domestically since 2015/16.
2 units Real Madrid level ball 2.30 asian line.
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