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Champions League betting tips for Porto v Arsenal
Tobias Gourlay / 16 February 2010 Free Bet View Market
If Arsene Wenger ever gets sacked by Arsenal, he should go cap in hand to Porto. He would like it there.
Recommended Bets: Back Under 1.5 Goals at [3.05]; back Porto at [3.0] to Qualify
Before Christmas Arsenal made it out of the initial group stage of the Champions League for a 10th successive season. You might have heard that the Gunners play attractive football these days. True - some of the time - but you would not know it from their recent results in the first legs of knockout ties. Since the beginning of their run to the 2006 final Arsene Wenger has overseen nine consecutive first legs with Under 2.5 Goals ([1.68] for this match).
Portuguese football at large shares a tendency for low goals and Porto have made like Arsenal in getting out of the initial group stage in six of the last seven Champions Leagues, but Arsene Wenger might admire most a strategy that has earned Porto more than €200m in transfer fees since they won this competition in 2004.
This selling policy makes for a high turnover of star players at the Estadio do Dragao and casts doubt on the relevance to this match of previous seasons' results. For example, among the players from last season's group-stage meeting with a second-string Arsenal side, which was won 2-0, Lucho Gonzalez and Lisandro Lopez went to Ligue One in the summer in return for more than 40m French Euros. In the meantime, the club has also signed Aly Cissokho for €300k and sold him for €15m.
Although Porto are not top of the Portuguese Liga at the moment, the latest team is starting to play well. Ruben Micael, a January signing from Nacional, is a crafty midfielder who will become a crafty bit of business when he moves to a bigger league. Hulk, who is indefinitely suspended for a fight, has not been missed because Silvestre Varela is showing himself to be similarly quick and powerful.
The names are not yet familiar, but the pattern of this successful business should be. As part of its own money-making strategy, this column will be taking Porto to qualify (with a view to trading out) at the expense of an Arsenal side that, for the first leg at least, will be without Manuel Almunia, William Gallas, Alexandre Song, Andrei Arshavin and Eduardo, and because six of those nine boring, boring Arsenal first legs have even gone Under 1.5 Goals, it will also be investing in a similar outcome on Wednesday evening.
