THURSDAY EUROPA LEAGUE: The Ultra previews ROMA v PORTO with a recommended BETDAQ bet.
ROMA V PORTO
5.45pm It’s crunch time in the Europa League on BETDAQ BETTING EXCHANGE with the second legs of the knockout stage. One tie always stood out heading into this round, and it’s perfectly set up at 1-1 as Roma host Porto. Roma will be glad to have home advantage in such a big tie, and they will likely view the first leg draw away from home as job done really. They come into this game as the odds on favourites at 1.81 with Porto 5.4 and the draw is 3.75 at the time of writing.
Roma have been through a lot this season – they sacked their manager very early after opening the season with three draws and a loss from four Serie A games. Claudio Ranieri came out of retirement and after a tough start he was probably wondering what he did; however Roma have put a run of nine Serie A games unbeaten now. They haven’t had an exceptionally difficult fixture list; they did hold Napoli and AC Milan to draws on that run though. At home in Serie A their performance level has been much better – they aren’t conceding as many chances and they have been decent going forward. Away from home, they have been conceding more chances than they have been creating on average this season.
Roma would have been reasonably pleased with the first leg performance too. Porto had a lot more of the ball – the procession stats were nearly 60% – 40% – however Roma finished with the higher xG figure. Considering that hasn’t been the case in Serie A this season, Roma will be confident of getting the job done here. Porto have been on a poor run domestically too – they went five games without a win recently and they are six points off league leaders Sporting Lisbon – they did get back to winning ways at the weekend away from home, but that was against a side in the relegation zone.
You could say this fixture has fallen at a bad time for Porto when they are just going through a little rough patch. They were quite average away from home in the Group stage too – Bodo/Glimt beat them 3-2, Lazio 2-1 and Anderlecht got a 2-2 draw. They did beat Maccabi Tel Aviv – and I suppose you could say those sides they failed to beat finished ahead of Roma in the table too! I would definitely lean towards Roma in the match odds market, and I feel it’s a decision between the Roma win at 1.81 and Under 2.5 goals at 1.86 which is only five ticks away. I’d expect a pretty cagey game here, but on balance I marginally prefer the Roma win at the odds. It’s clear they are playing the better football at the moment, and home advantage seems a big factor here with the Porto level dropping too.
The Ultra Says:
Two points win Roma to beat Porto at 1.81 with BETDAQ BETTING EXCHANGE.
You can view all markets here -> https://betdaq.biz/RomPor
