UEFA Champions League Group Stage Round 4 – Statistical oddities:

Sometimes bookies release odds for all the games of a specific date. For that reason, I decided to analyze all the games of last Tuesday, to bring some information regarding this time of betting.

Common selections include, for example, the number of home wins, let’s say, over/under 4.5. Or draws, over/under 3.5.

Let’s have a look at the results of October 11th.

UCL Round 4, Oct 11th games: only one home team victory!

This matchday certainly wasn’t an average one. Maccabi Haifa was the only team that won their home game… Against Juventus! With 1×2 odds for their victory… of 4.73 on average!

Borussia Dortmund and PSG had odds of 1.42 and 1.51 on average to beat Sevilla and FC Porto, respectively. The draw of the game in Germany paid odds of more than 5.0, and the draw in Paris paid 4.74 on average!

If we had a market for the number of victorious home teams, we can say the line would most certainly be above home win -2.5 @ 2+.

We had two hosts with fairly low odds, and Dinamo Zagreb with odds similar to the visitors to win the game. Juventus, Real Madrid, Manchester City, Chelsea, and RB Leipzig were strong visiting sides in the markets, but even if there would be more victories of the visitors, 1 in 8 is still pretty low.

The draws of October 11th: UCL Matchday 4

5 out of 8 games ended in a draw. But there’s more: match draw odds for games between teams of the same level of quality usually have odds between 3 and 3.5

50% (4 out of 8) games of October 11th ended in draws that paid odds bigger than 4.70.

The draw between FC Copenhagen and Manchester City paid odds of more than 9 on average.

I believe the reason behind big odds like these being paid was a considerable underestimation of Shakhtar Donetsk and Porto in this round. The case of Man City was a lot more unlikely and involved an early red card to Man City.

Under 2.5: Ten games with less than 3 goals!

The big statistical anomaly, however, was in the over/under goals market. All 8 games of Tuesday, October 11th, ended with less than 3 goals.

It means that 8 bets on under 2.5 goals would be winners.

This market usually has average of 2.5 lines with odds circa 2. That means, on average, 50% of the games produce over 2.5, and 50% produce under 2.5 goals.

Four games could be considered as tough and likely to have a more careful man marking: Milan – Chelsea, Shakhtar Donetsk – Real Madrid, PSG – Porto, and Maccabi Haifa – Juventus.

Manchester City was expected to produce lots of goals. Their handicap in the Asian handicap markets was -2.5, so just their team was expected to beat the Over 2.5 line alone, regardless of any potential and unlikely goals of the Danish side.

Champions League Betting Summary: October 11th, 2022 games

We had lots of draws and underish games, which was a bit surprising. The bravery of Shakhtar Donetsk and Maccabi Haifa was anticipated, as Real Madrid already had lots of points, and even fielded lots of subs in the starting XI, which almost allowed the Ukrainians to win in Poland.

Juventus was very poor, which is a reflection of their morale right now. The Israeli side had players returning to the team after religious fasting, and they deserved their result.

Surprises happen in football, but if we had a surprise, it was the failure of City in Denmark. Maccabi Haifa was not that much of a surprise in comparison with the 0-0 result in Denmark.

Stay tuned for more UCL Betting Analysis!