Stuttgart – Lyon
The champions from Germany and France are meeting in Stuttgart with goals to keep their hopes for advancing into the next stage, or taking the third place at least, a live. They had very slow starts of the season, both in domestic championship and in Champions League.
Lyon after the two starting losses in domestic championship, improved their game a lot and won 8 of their last 9 matches and they are unbeaten in 9 matches in a row, if we exclude the two defeats in Champions League from Barcelona and Rangers. Lyon is still without Coupet and Cris, but the forward Fred is fit again
Stuttgart became a champion last season in Germany and instead strengthening the squad they lost several players and brought some average players. I was pretty much convinced that this team cannot fight on two fronts and they proved me that I am right. Stuttgart is currently 14th in German Bundesliga, winning only at home against teams with poor quality like Cottbus, Duisburg and Bochum. In addition to their poor form, they have some important absences (Hitzlsperger, da Silva, Magnin and Boka) which will make this match even harder to them.
Both teams desperately needs points from this match, especially the host team, because if they lose this match, they will have only theory left if they want to go into the next round of Champions League. Stuttgart will try to get three points here and their strongest weapon is the attack line composed with Gomes and Cacao and they know that draw is not making any good to them and even more the weak, leaking defense will force them to decide the match with offense. Lyon also is having great attack, leaded by inform Benzema and they are attacking team also, so goals should not be a problem tonight. I rate Lyon a better team, team with better individuals, with better form and with absences that Stuttgart has, I rate them as favorites for this match.
Pick no.1: Lyon (0) --> Odds: 1.91 @ StanJames --> Stake: 5u
Pick no.2: over 1.5 goal --> Odds: 1.38 @ Bwin --> Stake: 7u