Champions League Betting: Stuttgart v Sevilla

Champions League / Tobias Gourlay / 19 October 2009 / Leave a Comment

Surprisingly, Pavel Pogrebnyak is not the new Mario Gomez.

Recommended Bets: Back Sevilla at [2.18] to win

Despite recent disappointments, Stuttgart and Sevilla both have their chins up. Tobias Gourlay tries to decide who has the glass jaw.

VfB Stuttgart play Sevilla at home in one of Tuesday evening's Champions League fixtures. Thus far in the competition, the Germans have a pair of draws, but the Spaniards' pair of wins puts them in a much stronger position.

Stuttgart's manager, Markus Babbel, insisted after the weekend's 2-1 defeat at home to Schalke that the team remained 'in good spirits,' despite now languishing in 13th in the Bundesliga with a W1-D1-L2 record at the Mercedes-Benz Arena. At least they scored against Schalke, something they hadn't done in any of their three previous home games. You might not believe it if you saw him for Germany at Euro 2008, but Die Roten appear to be missing Mario Gomez, who left for Bayern Munich in the summer.

Babbel's counterpart at Sevilla, Manolo Jimenez, is similarly unperturbed by Saturday's defeat to Deportivo La Coruna, which ended his team's excellent run of five league wins. He is still 'happy that everybody is treating us like one of the big teams.'

If Glasgow Rangers were the benchmark, Sevilla ([2.18] to win) would be strong favourites, for they won 4-1 away to the Scottish champions three weeks ago, while, earlier in September, Stuttgart ([3.85]) could only draw 1-1 with them at home. But not many tend to judge themselves against Scottish football these days, so perhaps it's best to widen the investigation.

Since 2007, Sevilla have won four and lost two of six away games in the Champions League, scoring 15 goals in total. Five of those games went Over 2.5 Goals, which is available at evens for this match; three went Over 3.5 Goals, a [3.45] shot this time. No to the Stuttgart Clean Sheet is suitably short at [1.24], despite the absence through injury of Sevilla's Spanish-international striker Alvaro Negredo.

Stuttgart haven't won at home for more than two months, managing only a goalless draw with Timisoara in Champions League Qualifying. They have been through two Champions League campaigns since 2003. In 2003/04, they won all three of their home group-stage games before losing 1-0 to Chelsea in the Last 16. In 2007/08 they failed to get out of their group, losing twice at home. Only two of the seven games produced more than two goals.

There's not much for the bettor to latch onto here. This column's money will be elsewhere on Tuesday evening, but, if it had to choose - and it really doesn't want to - it would take the away win, even though it's just heard that Sevilla's first-choice goalkeeper, Andres Palop, is not on the plane to Germany.