Champions League / Matthew Walton / 02 November 2009 / Leave a comment

The mid-point of the Champions League group stage sees teams play each other in consecutive fixtures. This throws up ample opportunities for bettors but a worrying set of stats for Rafael Benitez, says Matthew Walton.

"Liverpool are up against it; Lyon stand a 73% chance of winning, or odds of [1.36]. That makes the price of [2.48] about the French side look very big indeed."

We've reached the only point in the group stages of the Champions League where two teams play each other in back-to-back fixtures.

A fortnight ago matchday three staged what could be considered the first leg of these ties and this week sees the second leg of these 'home and away' encounters.

And with only six matches in these preliminary group stages, these are important games for several sides - some looking to book an early passage into the last 16, others fighting hard to keep their European dreams alive and the rest merely trying to save face or possibly sneak a place in the Europa League come next February.

However, the peculiar nature of these 'two-legged' matches within the group stages presents the opportunity to highlight the significant data which comes out of these particular ties - and influences the chances of various sides in this year's competition, both short and long term.

Take the case of Liverpool, for example. Their domestic struggles don't concern us here, what does is their need to get a result in Lyon - and Rafa Benitez's men are in desperate need of some kind of a result in Group E this week.

In the last five seasons, we've seen the away side win on matchday three no fewer than 22 times from a total of 80 matches (28%) - just as Lyon did at Anfield a fortnight ago.

The problem is, for Liverpool, when those 22 teams played the reverse fixture on matchday four, with home advantage, their record is W16 D5 L1. In short, Liverpool are up against it as on these figures Lyon stand a 73% chance of winning or odds of [1.36]. Makes the price of [2.48] about the French side look very big indeed.

It also makes interesting reading considering that both of the outright market leaders, Real Madrid and Barcelona are in the same boat. Madrid are [2.8] to reverse a 3-2 home defeat to Inter Milan and Barca just [1.48] to revenge their Nou Camp loss to Rubin Kazan.

The stats certainly suggest these sides won't find it easy to win these 'second leg' fixtures. But whilst the sample data offers little cause for comfort as far as Liverpool are concerned it presents much stronger pointers to Chelsea and Manchester United doing well. Of these 80 sets of matches over the past five years, no fewer than 27 (34%) have been won by the same team, both home and away.

In this respect, Chelsea's 4-0 home win over Atletico Madrid and United's 1-0 win in Moscow make them strong favourites to win these reverse ties. At [1.40] you'd be hard pushed to say United aren't a warm order and Chelsea [1.91] are certainly being traded as though defeat is out of the question.

One odd finding is that only three of these 80 pairs of matches (a mere 4%) have resulted in two drawn games. Wolfsburg/Besiktas, Dynamo Kiev/Inter Milan and AZ Alkmaar/Arsenal were the only three matches which produced stalemates on matchday three and the chances of one occurring again this week in any of these three games, statistically, is very small indeed.

And, irrespective of results, in four of the last five years there have been more goals scored on Matchday 3 than Matchday 4 - so when considering this week's games remember that teams will be much the wiser after those matches a fortnight ago and, whatever the outcome, defences will be more on top than was found previously.

These are unique fixtures within the context of the competition and as such do deserve a little extra study - and, as we've seen, they do generate some very interesting findings. Just another way in which a close study of the form can lead to you finding real value on the exchange.

Tags: Arsenal, Champions League football betting odds, Champions League football betting tips, Chelsea, football betting, Inter Milan, Liverpool, Lyon, Manchester United, Matthew Walton, Rafael Benitez