Football Bet of the Day: Lions to put up a fight in Turin

Juventus v Sporting Lisbon
Wednesday 19:45 (Live on BT Sport Extra)

Feyenoord 1 Shakhtar Donetsk 2 in Rotterdam last night. The Dutch stay pointless in Group F, the Ukrainians stay in touch with Man City at the top, and we march south to Italy for one of tonight's Champions League games.

Juventus entertain Sporting Lisbon in Group D and we fancy it could be a close-run thing. Both sides have won one and lost one to this point, so we'd expect the hosts to be chasing the win hard.

Max Allegri's men should probably get it too, but recent stumbles suggest they might not have everything their own way. Since beating Olympiakos 2-0 here in their previous European outing, the Old Lady have managed just one point from six in Serie A.

Juve are unbeaten in 20 Champions League home games (W13-D7-L0) since eventual champions Bayern Munich won here in 2013. In 12 of those 13 victories, the margin of their success has been either one or two goals. And those are the two outcomes we'll be dutching in the Winning Margin market today.

Sporting Lisbon restricted Barcelona to a single goal in their last European outing, and have a decent record avoiding thrashings on the road in this competition. There was that 7-1 at Bayern Munich, of course, back in 2009. Before that, there was some 4-0 ignominy at Real Madrid in 2000. Other than that, they are W5-D5-L14 (including a few qualifiers), but none of those 14 defeats have come by more than a couple of goals.

Recommended Bet
Back Juventus by 1 & Juventus by 2 @ combined odds of 2.001/1 v Sporting Lisbon