City the clear favourites with bookies now. Hard to see any other outcome. When this Chelsea team are 3rd favourite you know the stars have aligned for city
Champions League Quarter Finals 2020/21 - Apr 6/7 & 13/14
- Thread starter Pagh Wraith
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PSG's attack is pure art, beauty and excitement. Mbappé, Neymar and Di María at their best are amazing to watch. Di María MOTM in my opinion.
Am I the only one who thought Bayern were kind of poor that game? Fannying around with the ball without any incisiveness. PSG should've put the tie to bed by halftime.
We were. Kimmich had a terrible game. Sané even worse. Choupo-Moting scored but is nowhere near the level you need to compete. Phonzie had a poor game as well.
Boateng and Neuer were the two players showing their class.
Bayern shot themselves in the foot last week, without Lewandowski they really are toothless up top against decent teams.
I've disliked Dortmund for over 20 years now, but hopefully they can turn City over in the second leg. I think City would beat PSG over the 2 legs, although it would be pleasing to see them get beat in the final, I'd prefer they didn't even make it that far.
I've disliked Dortmund for over 20 years now, but hopefully they can turn City over in the second leg. I think City would beat PSG over the 2 legs, although it would be pleasing to see them get beat in the final, I'd prefer they didn't even make it that far.
Actually, I suppose this is a potential cultural difference worth discussing then - do you happen to know off the top of your head what volume of bets in the UK are placed with actual bookies as opposed to online? I was assuming when I posted earlier that the latter was a far greater volume, as that's the way it works generally in the US and that's where I've done the vast majority of my gambling. Those kinds of sites were what I was referring to - I'd not expect bookies to change odds overmuch based on what they're seeing personally unless there was a massive disparity for one side over another. I just know that sophisticated oddsmakers will always strive to have roughly equal volume on either side of a bet so as to come out ahead after vig - I assumed that even independent bookies in the UK would try to do the same but happy to be corrected if that doesn't apply at the local level.
Unfortunatly I fear its gonna be either them or City that wins it this year. Real Madrid looks a bit stronger now but I have my doubts about them keeping up with City/PSG. Nothing would be better if they did though! Their midfield trio is worldclass, but theyre not that good in attack compared to City/PSG. Also todays match was a crazy one, both teams with plenty of big chances but Bayern ran that 2nd half and shouldve scored the 2nd goal. Still think a fully fit Bayern squad would beat a fully fit PSG squad. Missing both Lewandowski and Gnabry in both matches against PSG cost them the semis.Good job PSG. Hope they can go on and win it now
Not Lucas? Thought he edged it personally.
Gonna be funny when dortmund eliminates them tomorrow
Yes, Lucas was great too, got better the longer the game went on.
I'm not British but the same is true for all Euro bookmakers as well. You may call it lazy, but why invest resources pricing up games when you won't even come close to getting accurate odds as Asian bookmakers which accept infinitely higher stakes. It's far more profitable to just copy with higher margins.
In Asia you can stake millions through agents which is why any big price shifts originate there.
This is true for football. I'm not really sure how or works in American Sports/Vegas. Limits on these are tiny (if offered at all) in most Asian bookmakers. So a totally different ballgame.
It would be but there's a zero percent chance of it happening. Dortmund are a very ordinary side having a terrible season.
They gave City a good go away from home and got robbed of a legitimate goal. Despite the loss they got the away goal and its exactly the type of scenario pep keeps fecking up in the cl
Does the same apply for EU gambling sites? In the US at least most are still offshore or are located in specific states where gambling is legalised, so I suppose that's a fairly high bar for entry and has driven pretty sophisticated modeling to ensure profitability.
That said, I'd also agree with @acnumber9's point that PL teams are also likely to be overrated by Asians as well given the globalisation of the PL - surely to a lesser extent than would be the case if it were the UK public setting the odds and as such I agree with you given the way you've described the process, but I do think pricing worldwide is likely to be affected by the PL's popularity.
Just want to say as well that this is genuinely really interesting to me and I appreciate the chat / learning from your perspective!
Really, City also shits their pants in UCL quarter-finals. If it was not for that, I was sure that City would have blown Dortmund away in the first leg already, they are far better than Dortmund and are having an amazing season in which they have total control against almost every team. But City lacks mentality and keeps doing mistakes in the UCL in Guardiola's whole tenure, losing to sides that they would blow away in the league, such as against Tottenham in 2019.
You may want to ask @Spiersey about UK high street betting specifically.
UK bookies cater to the recreational punter. It's a completely different business model altogether. They offer all sorts of stuff to bet on (like the Royal family or game shows), generally don't take large stakes on football unless you make them money in some way (horses or casino) and quickly restrict or ban you if they suspect you're a winning gambler. So no 'smart money' even reaches them. But this is what shapes the prices in Asia.
Btw, when I say Asia I don't mean a random Chinese United fan betting on his team. It's just the place where you can get the most money down so the big betting syndicates like Star Lizard stake there.
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That's really fascinating! Thank you for the insight and would love to get @Spiersey's input if he's willing. Definitely a very different model to what goes on in the US, where it's generally very sophisticated books trying to get as much money out of recreational gamblers as possible. They're generally so good at this that smart money doesn't particularly bother them as it's usually a small fraction of what they make off the public. Suppose it might be because there's a more grassroots gambling culture in the UK, whereas in the US it's quite consolidated given governmental restrictions?
Looks like I spoke out of ignorance so apologies if I came across as condescending! Really appreciate your patience and willingness to teach me a thing or two!
Bayern in the first leg was far from toothless. They are a team that creates A LOT of chances in almost every game, even with Choupo Moting as striker, but they lacked Lewa and Gnabry to finish. But Bayern usually creates so many chances that I thought, before the tie, that the lack of Lewa wouldn't matter so much, Bayern would still dominate. And they vastly dominated in the first leg. Bayern was toothless today, but that's not their usual level. Meanwhile PSG was great in the first half, much more composed on the ball than the first leg, and creating great chances. Bayern is still in the Top 3 of best teams in the world, let's not be immediatist people who make analyses only based on the final result and what team was eliminated.
And while Bayern's high line this season needs corrections, Mbappé, Neymar and Di María at their best are truly scary and would be a HUGE threat for any top team.
They had 30 odd shots and couldn't put them away. Today they were terrible. But they gifted that tie to PSG last week, with poor finishing and woeful defending. Only have themselves to blame.
PSG will beat City in the semis.
No worries! I know a little bit about how it works but there are lot of things you can only make an educated guess on as well. But I know the annual turnover in Asia trumps the GDP of some nations. This is nothing any traditional bookie can compete with.
I can really recommend the Inside Betting podcast by Matthew Trenhaile, who is an insider, where a lot of the workings of the Asian betting markets (where incidentally the Asian handicap originated) are explained.
Makes perfect sense! I'll definitely check out that podcast; thank you for the recommendation! It'll definitely be illuminating to learn about how other markets do - will be glad to educate myself a bit and broaden my knowledge beyond the US.
Really appreciate the chat mate and hope you have a great evening!
Yeah but these 'what if' scenarios don't really follow a logical sense. Lewandowski played against an injured PSG in the final last season and didn't score a goal, maybe their game changes with Lewandowski, maybe this or that, it's all hearsay. If Veratti was healthy and Marquinhos played the second leg, do Bayern still score a goal or PSG don't get more counters resulting in goals? It's not worth mentioning in the end because no one is going to care a year from now, everybody deals with tough injuries and PSG has been missing the world's most expensive players two out of their last four champion's league seasons. Cry me a fecking river.
I loved Mendy's reaction after the Porto wondergoal. He went apeshit at Jorginho for allowing the cross in.
Zidane is our last hope to save the trophy from going to plastic hands. Don't really mind PSG winning it either, but it will be unbearable if City or the chavs win it. To think that Chelsea can have 2 CL wins since we had our last one ..
Hoping for Madrid-PSG final.
Hoping for Madrid-PSG final.
agreed!
Don’t worry, we’ll save the day and win number 7.
As someone who has lost a fair bit of money betting on favourites I can tell you that what the bookies think & what happens are not always the same thing.
Man C are clear faves but there is a reason why they play the games !
Haha no, city have been bookies favorites many times and choked many times. Neymar and mbappe have the potential to rip city on the counter even worse than Lyon did last season. City’s defense has gone down a peg
Flick lost the match the moment he decided he feared the PSG counter enough to instruct his fullbacks not to overlap. That caused an absolute disaster in the Bayern attack with the wingers cutting in into the traffic and nullifying their width. He should of backed his team to outscore PSG by 2 regardless of how much their score.
The worst part about his adjustments is they didnt help at all. PSG created lots of chances regardless the defenders all being in their place but then again a high line against Mbappe and Neymar is unlikely to end well.
There was some fluid football by PSG at times with the wide players contributing alot to their efforts to playing through the phases by coming in narrow. At this point there's no stopping Mbappe and Neymar, you pretty much have to hoe they had a bad game on front of goal.
Btw what the hell happened to Draxler? He played like he's forgotten that he can actually play.
The worst part about his adjustments is they didnt help at all. PSG created lots of chances regardless the defenders all being in their place but then again a high line against Mbappe and Neymar is unlikely to end well.
There was some fluid football by PSG at times with the wide players contributing alot to their efforts to playing through the phases by coming in narrow. At this point there's no stopping Mbappe and Neymar, you pretty much have to hoe they had a bad game on front of goal.
Btw what the hell happened to Draxler? He played like he's forgotten that he can actually play.
What? Guardiola fixed City's defense this year (Rúben Días also was crucial), they have been amazingly rock-solid defensively and even spent many games without suffering goals, it's perhaps the best that City has ever been defensively, even more so when compared to City last season and how vulnerable they were to counters. If it wasn't for City's bad PL start in the first months, in which Guardiola still hadn't fixed City's problems (suffering 5 goals against Leicester in one match is the best example), City might even have been able to match Chelsea's record of suffering only 15 goals in a PL season.
I can't agree with this feeling. A new champion, such as City and PSG, would be far better than Real. I choose City to win because I love Guardiola and City has been having by far the most consistent and amazing season in all Europe, they have effectively been the best team in Europe the most in this season. City is due a champions because of their also amazing previous seasons and football.
There is no club I hate more than Real Madrid. And they have 3 UCLs in a row pretty much yesterday, I'm sick of Real and Zidane's black magic.
Maybe Draxler can already be considered a failed promise at this point.
Mbappé, Neymar and Di María at their best are so fast, smooth, skilled and silky. Any top team would have serious trouble holding them. On their day, it's impossible, they are gonna create at least a few great chances because they are so good.
Sané and Coman were so frustrating today. Imagine Ribéry and Robben, specially Robben, in their places.
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City lately have been leaking goals left right and center. I love Dias, but they were extremely fortunate not to concede more against Dortmund. They've kept a clean sheet in just two of their last 8 matches. Put them up against Neymar and Mbappe who are much better than any attacking duo in the EPL? It could get ugly if city aren't careful. They can certainly beat PSG but their defense needs to step up from what it has been given them lately on top of some woeful finishing.
The replies from Chelsea fans to that tweet are comical. All sarcastic ‘I thought we had no history’. Seemingly oblivious to the fact all those semi finals came after their Russian crook made them relevant.
Mbappé and Neymar can always get ugly no matter how careful you are. And last game against Leeds, for example, City benched a lot of starters, including Rúben Días.
Dortmund has Haaland who, with his speed and positioning, is a threat no matter what you do. And City actually did a good job in isolating him from the rest of Dortmund's team, but he still found a way through. That nullified Dortmund goal was also an Ederson individual blunder rather than any collective problem. Overall, I think that City felt the weight of the game in some aspects, though they were bad by means. City was superior, specially in the second half, but wasted chances of sealing the tie and seemed too satisfied with simply controlling the game despite having only a 1-0 lead.
It doesn't matter if they were bought by a russian crook, Chelsea has history now and for a good enough time. 8 semifinals, specially with all of them being in the 21st century, is impressive. They established themselves as a big team for two decades now. Milan, unlike Chelsea, had great history before Berlusconi bought them in the 80s, but they had stopped being relevant (Milan was relegated two times in the 80s) and owe their huge amount of big titles from the late 80s and onwards to Berlusconi. Otherwise, Milan might still have now only the two Champions from the 60s. But no one cares that Berlusconi is corrupt.
You’re missing the point. The no history jibe was thrown around in the early Abramovich years. Them coming out with that shit in the face of Champions League semi finals earned with Abramovich’s gold is fecking stupid. It doesn’t prove those initial jibes wrong.
Chelsea don't own or have any affiliation with Opta though?