This Wednesday evening sees a crucial Champions League match as English Champions Chelsea take on Porto at Stamford Bridge, Kick-off at 19:45 GMT.
This is a vital match and with Dynamo Kiev red hot favourites to win their match at home to Maccabi, the reality is if Porto are to qualify they need to win this game. Providing Kiev win their game then Chelsea would top the group with a win or finish 2nd with a draw.
Chelsea are coming into this match in some terrible domestic form. They are coming off a 0-1 defeat at home to promoted Bournemouth and this defeat left Jose Mourinho’s side languishing in 14th place on 15 points. This has left the blues 14 points away from a top 4 place. Chelsea’s recent home record reads an average looking W7, D4, L4.
When hosting teams placed in the Top 6 Chelsea’s recent home record reads a solid looking W7, D2, L1.
Chelsea’s recent European Champions League home record reads a very solid looking W7, D2, L1.
Since 2000 this is the fourth time that the 2 clubs have met at Stamford Bridge in this competition with Chelsea winning all 3 matches.
Porto are coming off a very routine 2-1 victory over Pacos de Ferreira at the weekend and this victory has left Porto in 2nd place on 30 points, which is 2 points behind leaders Sporting.
Porto’s recent Champions League away form is reasonable and reads W4, D4, L2.
Goal lines
As far as goals are concerned then the stats point to goals. When looking at both sides last 10 respective European home and away matches. We can see in the 20 matches that 11 have seen 3 or more goals, 7 have seen 2, and only 2 matches have seen 2 or less goals.
Prediction
This will be an incredibly tense evening at Stamford Bridge and my ratings suggest value in both the match and goal lines. When looking at the Group table it would be a major surprise if Dynamo Kiev do not beat Maccabi. Therefore the only guarantee Chelsea have of winning the group is to win this game. In the case of Porto, once again only a victory will do. Here my ratings suggest value in backing over 2.0/2.5 goals and there looks to be some decent risk v reward when taking into account previous stats and the game situation.
My ratings also suggest value in backing the home side. Porto do possess some strong domestic away form and indeed when looking at their Champions League away record they do tend to only get beaten by the elite sides. Chelsea do have a strong home record in this competition when facing Portuguese sides, the blues have won their previous 5 home games. Porto have a poor record when visiting English sides in European competition with their 15 game record reading W0, D2, L13. Despite their recent poor form Chelsea offer the value, and my recommended trade is Chelsea -0.5 goals at around 2.05.