Champions League Betting: Liverpool into 5 from 400 to qualify but fall just short

Champions League / Jamie "The Pacman" Pacheco / 14 April 2009 / Leave a Comment

Liverpool twice came close to creating some serious carnage on Betfair before drawing 4-4 with Chelsea in an absolute thrilling match...

Chelsea went off as the [1.05] favourites to qualify with Liverpool at 16 but two first-half goals by a Steven Gerrard-less Liverpool made them just [3.1] shots to qualify from that position and [1.18] favourites to win the match. The draw lengthened to odds of [11.0]. Chelsea came back all guns blazing in the second half though with three goals and all of a sudden they were back to prohibitively short odds to qualify and just [1.15] to win the match.

Cue Liverpool's own comeback, who after drifting to odds of [400.0] to qualify and needing to score three times in just 9 minutes to go through, scored two in two minutes and went into odds of just [5.0] to progress needing just one more goal and having 7 minutes plus injury-time on the clock to score it. But it wasn't to be and a late Frank Lampard equaliser for Chelsea settled matters for once and for all after the draw drifted to odds of 11 this time, with just a minute to go.

7 goals or more in the match was backed at odds of [79.0] and the price would have been even bigger had Betfair gone as high as 8 goals or more. All this means that Chelsea are now the [4.4] second-favourites to win the competition ahead of tomorrow night's matches and the [2.36] favourites to be the British team to go furthest in the competition.

The honour, and indeed responsibility, of being the tournament favourites falls to Barcelona who are [2.66] to lift the trophy. Their night was far less eventful as they settled for a 1-1 draw away to Bayern Munich having done all the hard work in the first leg when they won 4-0. The draw traded at a high of [4.4] with Barcelona only ever reaching [1.47] on the to qualify market before the start of the first leg.