UK Edition
Champions League best bets: Manchester City can secure progress by taking big lead against Schalke
Manchester City are still in with a chance of winning every competition this season and are a short price to make short work of Schalke tonight.
Manchester City are 100/30 favourites to win the Champions League and are the only English side in the competition to play the away leg first at this stage.
Pep Guardiola’s side have travelled to Germany to play a Schalke side who are struggling in the Bundesliga this season and are battling to avoid becoming embroiled in a relegation battle.
Italian manager Domenico Todesco has seen his side win just four of their 11 home league games this season and qualified for the latter stages of this competition after being handed a relatively easy task in a group containing Galatasaray and Lokomotiv Moscow.
Schalke have failed to win any of their last four Bundesliga matches, which include a home defeat to third-placed Monchengladbach and a 0-0 home draw with 14th-placed Freiburg and only the bottom three teams in the Bundesliga have scored fewer home goals.
That suggests that they are overmatched against a side chasing the almost perfect season.
Manchester City will be hopeful of winning the first domestic trophy of the season this weekend against Chelsea in the League Cup final and they look more than capable of putting this tie to bed in this leg.
With 21 goals scored in their last six matches in all competitions and Guardiola having the luxury of resting Sergio Aguero, Raheem Sterling, Kevin de Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, David Silva, Kyle Walker and Aymeric Laporte for the 4-1 FA Cup win over Newport County at the weekend, a full-strength side can expect to be out of sight before the second leg on March 12.
It’s no surprise that bookmakers rate Manchester City a best-priced 2/7 to come out on top in Germany tonight, but that price can be improved upon when taking into account the match result.
Given Schalke’s lack of home goals, for example, it’s well worth considering Manchester City to win to nil at 11/10, while the price for Pep Guardiola’s side to be winning at half time and full time is also tempting at 5-6.
With Manchester City expected to win the game quite comfortably, the margin of victory is a market that could be of interest, with a two-goal City winning margin available to back at 11/4 and a three-goal gap between the two sides in City’s favour backable at 4/1.
In the expectation that Guardiola will start with Aguero, Sterling, the two Silvas and De Bruyne in attack, it will pay to focus on those for goalscoring purposes.
Unsurprisingly, given his rich vein of form includes two hat-tricks in his last three matches, Aguero is favourite to find the net first at 11/4, while he is odds-on (8/11) to score at any time.
Despite his goalscoring form, those prices look skinny, and it could pay to focus on Kevin de Bruyne. He featured in only one match in the group stages and is working his way back to his best after some serious injuries in the last few months. He is available at 8/1 to score the first goal and 12/5 to score any time