Chelsea vs Malmo Betting Pick | Champions League

Champions League

2021-10-20 - Chelsea vs Malmo

A Sports Betting Pick by Auls

Chelsea v Malmo
Football: European Champions League Group Stage
Wednesday 20th October 2021 - Kick Off 8pm
This game is live on TV

Chelsea

They had to battle down the hatches and weather a considerable storm, but the Chelsea squad showed they are ready for a fight in their narrow 0-1 win at Brentford on Saturday. The defending European Champions will return their focus to the Champions League and bouncing back from the Match Day 2 defeat at Juventus as Chelsea look to move closer to Qualification to the Last 16 at the end of this upcoming double header.

A narrow 1-0 win over Zenit St Petersburg means Chelsea have the head to head advantage over the Russian team in the Group, but both teams are 3 points behind early leaders Juventus. The Blues are unbeaten in 6 Champions League games at Stamford Bridge, while they have won all 3 here under Thomas Tuchel.

Chelsea lost consecutive games to Manchester City and Juventus at the end of September, but they have recovered to win Premier League fixtures either side of the October international break. The win over Southampton earlier this month means Chelsea have won 5 of their last 7 games at Stamford Bridge in all competitions.

Antonio Rudiger and Thiago Silva could both potentially return for this Match Day 3 game. Hakim Ziyech is back in training too, but Christian Pulisic is expected to miss out.

Malmo

It is highly unlikely that Malmo will match the 1979 squad that reached the European Cup Final, but the early results in this Group suggest even falling back into the Europa League is going to be beyond them. The section was a tough one for the Swedish Champions, but Malmo had battled hard to Qualify for the financially rewarding Group Stage and they will want to show more than they have so far.

After two rounds of fixtures, Malmo are bottom of the Group and have suffered a 0-3 home loss to Juventus and a 4-0 defeat at Zenit St Petersburg. The heavy loss in Russia makes it very unlikely that they will even finish 3rd in this Group, and this is a club that have struggled mightily on their travels once reaching this Stage of the Champions League.

Malmo are in a huge battle domestically to retain their Swedish title, but they have won back to back games ahead of this Match Day 3 fixture. They won 0-3 at Ostersunds this past weekend, but Malmo had lost 3 of 4 away games in all competitions prior to that result.

Anel Ahmedhodzic is suspended for the visitors. A number of other players will also be missing with injuries hurting the options in the squad.

Head to Head

In the 2019/20 Europa League season, these two clubs met in the Knock Out Round and it was Chelsea who won both games.

Chelsea won the home Leg 3-0.

Prediction

The layers are asking Chelsea to cover a pretty big spread for a Champions League Group game, but the defeat to Juventus on Match Day 2 should mean the home team are plenty focused.

They are due to return in the Premier League in the early Saturday kick off, but Chelsea should be focused and that should lead to a comfortable win. While they have not been at their fluent best going forward, Chelsea have been pretty ruthless at home and have scored at least three goals in half of the 6 games played at Stamford Bridge this season.

Now they are going up against a Malmo team that have been battered in both Champions League Group games played and one that has struggled to compete in the Group Stage of this competition in recent years. That is no disgrace for Malmo as they have faced opponents of a much higher standard than they would see in Sweden on a week to week basis.

However, it does mean they may struggle to contain Chelsea here and both defeats this season in the Champions League Group Stage have come by three or more goal margins.

Chelsea have sometimes been more functional than expressive with their football and they could easily turn their attention to the next Premier League game if they take a comfortable lead in this one. Even then, they should be too strong for Malmo and I think Chelsea can cover the big Asian Handicap mark on their way to a good win.

The Statistics :

CHELSEA LAST SIX HOME FORM
	DATE	RESULT		OPPOSITION
	2021-09-14	W	1-0	H v Zenit_St_Petersburg
	2021-05-05	W	2-0	H v Real_Madrid
	2021-04-13	L	0-1	H v Porto
	2021-03-17	W	2-0	H v Atletico_Madrid
	2020-12-08	D	1-1	H v Krasnodar
	2020-11-04	W	3-0	H v Rennes

MALMO LAST SIX AWAY FORM
	DATE	RESULT		OPPOSITION
	2021-09-29	L	4-0	A v Zenit_St_Petersburg
	2021-08-24	L	2-1	A v Ludogorets
	2021-08-10	W	1-2	A v Rangers
	2015-12-08	L	8-0	A v Real_Madrid
	2015-11-03	L	4-0	A v Shaktar_Donetsk
	2015-09-15	L	2-0	A v Paris_SG