February 16 – The Champions League restarts tonight with Round of 16 matches. Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Bayern Munich are reckoned to be nailed on qualifiers for the last eight, while Chelsea, Manchester City and Barcelona will join them, according to analysis of data from the CIES Football Observatory.
The other two ties are harder to call, with the stats just favouring Gent over Wolfsburg and Benfica over Zenit St-Petersburg.
CIES used Opta stats to measure defensive and attacking strengths of both teams against each other. The result is a percentage performance stat of one team over the other in that particular area, combining for an overall percentage. Take that to the next step which is a prediction of who will win the fixture.
The stand out stat is that Chelsea on these percentage indicators should beat PSG. What is surprising is how far last year’s beaten finalists Juventus are behind Bayern Munich on these stats (Bayern are +32%).
Stats are stats but anyone looking for betting tips could test them out for real.
View the CIES stats and methodology at http://www.football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2015/137/en/
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