Champions League
2010-11-23 - Basel vs CFR Cluj
A Sports Betting Pick by ROzsolt
Football: UEFA Champions League : Group stage
Venue: St. Jakob-Park, Basel
Tuesday 23th November – Kickoff time: 21:45 GMT+2
FC Basel
Basel hosts CFR Cluj in a match that could decide the team that will progress to Europa League from this group. In order to ensure the qualification, Basel needs to win by at least two goals tonight.
Domestic form: Basel's nine-match unbeaten league run came to end with a 3-1 home defeat by FC Thun on 13 November. The Swiss are coming after a Saturday cup match against Servette, booking their place in the quarter-finals with a shoot-out victory, Samuel Inkoom scoring the winning penalty.
Squad news: Marco Streller and Valentin Stocker serve one-game bans on Matchday 5, the former having collected his third yellow card of the group stage last time out, when Stocker was sent off. Scott Chipperfield and Jacques Zoua would play no part because of muscular problems.
CL stats: Basel only won one game this season, in a surprising yet well deserved victory in Rome. However, they’ve lost both home games and are close to repeat the counter-performance from the 2008 UCL group stage when they also lost all their home games (to Sporting, Barcelona and Shakhtar).
Probable Basel line-up :
Inkoom – Ferati – Abraham – Safari
Shaqiri – Yapi – Huggel – Tembo
Almerares - Frei
CFR Cluj
CFR Cluj only needs a draw to stay ahead of Basel as they have better head-to-head record winning their opening game in Cluj against the Swiss champions.
Progressing to Europa League was the initial objective of CFR Cluj even before the competition begin, so the leadership is offering a consistent bonus for a victory in Basel, 50 000 euro for each player (which is a nice amount considering that average contracts at top teams from Liga 1 are somewhere around 150K per year).
Domestic form: CFR conceded the first goal at home in Liga 1 in 287 minutes, Eric scoring a goal that brought Gaz Metan Medias one point. Roberto De Zerbi found the net after just 26 second, the fastest goal in the league. This draw didn’t helped them at all, being only 8th on the table, 10 points behind the leader.
Team news: Gabriel Muresan and Yssouf Kone are still injured, both are determinant players for CFR but neither of them were able to help CFR in this UCL season, both suffering serious injuries. Striker Roberto De Zerbi will be the big absent tonight, he brought a lot of quality in CFR’s game since his arrival from Napoli but unfortunately he is not fit for this game.
CL stats: CFR Cluj will look to improve their poor away record, since their first victory in CL at Roma in September 2008, CFR have recorded 7 defeats and one draw on the road in European competitions.
Probable CFR Cluj line-up :
Panin – Piccolo – Cadu – Rada
Culio – Costa – Dica – Edimar
Hora - Traore
The betting verdict
This group provided lots of goals, in fact the only match that finished with less than three goals was Bayern’s home win against Roma in the first matchday. That’s seven overs and just one unders until now.
Basel needs to win by at least two goals and they also play at home against the weakest opponent from the group so they’ll need to go out and take some risks. On the other hand, CFR proved that they could be dangerous at counter-attacks and I really expect Traore to score here after hitting the post 3 times so far, against Roma and Bayern.
Over 2 goals can be found at 1.7 and it seems to be the best betting option in this one. I think the odds for a home win are quite short, i would have expected to be somewhere around 1.8 but despite the short odds it's the more probable outcome.
The Statistics :
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Pick :
Basel 2-1 CFR Cluj
BEST BETTING TIP :
Main bet: Over 2.5 goals to be scored at 1.72 at CanbetConfidence: 8/10
Side bet: Lacina Traore to score anytime at 3.4 Bet365
Confidence: 3/10
