MANCHESTER CITY are overwhelming favourites to win the Champions League this season, according to our supercomputer.
Pep Guardiola’s side are aiming to finally win the famous competition for the first time after a string of near misses.
City booked their place in the semi-finals on Wednesday night by completing an impressive 4-1 aggregate victory over Bayern Munich.
And our supercomputer reckons it’s their time to win it all.
The boffins over at Bettingexpert have built BETSiE – a supercomputer tasked with determining probabilities in football.
BETSiE takes into account factors like results, xG and pre-season expectations while running a simulator 20,000 times.
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Having worked its magic, BETSiE gives City a 65.75 per cent chance of reaching the final and a 50.25 per cent likelihood that they go on and win it.
Real Madrid are distant second favourites, despite their amazing pedigree in the competition, given just a 22.57 per cent chance of winning the final and 34.25 per cent shot at beating City in the semis.
BETSiE reckons that Inter will beat Milan in the other semi-final, giving them a 54.22 per cent chance – compared to 45.78 per cent for their rivals – of reaching the final.
Neither Italian side are given much of a shot at beating City or Madrid, however, with Inter at 14.65 per cent and Milan at 12.53 per cent.
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Both semi-finals will take place next month, before the final in Istanbul on June 10.
City boss Pep Guardiola has admitted that his side are feeling the fatigue as they continue to fight on three fronts.
Ahead of this weekend’s FA Cup semi-final against Sheffield United, he said: “We are exhausted.
“I don’t know how we recover to play against Sheffield United. Now is a tough moment for the game on Saturday.
“Three years in a row in the semi-finals of the Champions League.
“We struggled in the first half. (Dayot) Upamecano broke all the lines down our left side and we struggled with (Kingsley) Coman.
“We were fortunate before the penalty miss, they had one or two chances and anything could happen but we defended really well.
“The finishing from Erling (Haaland) was really, really good. He is so young. The experience that we have in this competition, the players feel it a lot, they want to do it really well. The second half was much, much better since minute one.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
