Barcelona meets Arsenal on Camp Nou, in a return match of the Champions League.
Just to refresh your memory, Barcelona lead in the first game on Emirates with 0:1, but Arsenal managed to equalize in the 78th minute and completely reverse the game in the 83rd minute.
Now Barcelona has to win the game at all cost, the more goals they score the better, although a 1:0 victory would be perfectly enough for the Spanish team to advance in the next round. Gerard Piqué will be absent due to suspension for this game, while Carles Puyol has been announced (according to the medias) injured and still not recovered. Let’s not forget the few tricks managers usually use in such games, so nothing is certain before the game stats.
Arsenal missed to shorten the distance to Manchester United to 1 point this weekend, drawing their home game with Sunderland. The whole team has their attention set on this game. Wenger announced that Fabregas is 90% ready and will most likely travel to Spain with the club for the return game.
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In the direct games on Camp Nou, Barcelona has played twice with Arsenal, once in 1999, a game that has ended 1:1 and once last year, a game that ended 4:1 in favor of Barcelona after the first game on Emirates finished 2:2.
The biggest problem for Barcelona would be that both of their starter defenders will not be present, which might create problems in the defense. Top scorer in Premier League Van Persie injured himself and will miss the return match. Walcott will most likely miss the game as well which will deprive Arsenal from the needed speed on the wings.
However as I mentioned earlier, such tricks are usually used in games with big stakes to confuse the opponent and its strategy.
In the worst betting scenario, the game will end 1:0 and the only way to make money out of that is to bet on exact score 1:0 odds in bet365 at 9.00.
Assuming that this wont happen there are few ways this game turn out to be. Scenario one, in which Barcelona wins with a good amount of goals, just like they did last year, in which case you can go with an Asian Handicap of -2.5 where the odds are at 2.85.
Scenario two should give us a pretty boring game in which Arsenal will play similar to how Inter played here last year, defending for 90 minutes. Let’s hope that wont happen, but the odds for a draw are at 6.00.
Scenario three will be Wenger and Arsenal have cracked Barcelona’s way of playing and manage to win this game as well. The odds for this outcome are at 9.00.
I expect a lot of goals in this game, due to the fact that Barcelona needs at least one, and that Arsenal would be looking for one as well regardless of the result on the scoreboard. Seems like the best bet here is Over X amount of Goals, and in our case the least amount of goals that offer good odds is 3.5.
Recommended Bet:
Over 3.5 Goals @ 2.10 (Bet365)
(Place your bet in BET365.COM)
