Champions League Last 16 Betting Tips – Wednesday

The Champions League continues with last 16 action on Wednesday night with Bayern Munich who host Arsenal and Real Madrid who welcome Napoli. Leading football journalist Jonathan Wilson gives his expert opinions ahead of the action exclusively for Betsafe.

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Bayern Munich v Arsenal

This feels like a lot more than a Champions League last-16 tie. Rightly or wrongly, it will be seen as a judgement on Arsene Wenger, whose future remains very much in doubt. Given the strange sense of drift about Bayern this season, it may also be seen as a judgement on Carlo Ancelotti.

Ian Wright said that after having dinner with Wenger on Thursday he got the impression his former manager was seriously thinking about not signing a new contract and leaving at the end of the season. On Saturday, after the 2-0 win over Hull, Wenger seemed much more relaxed, but those close to him suggest he is still making up his own mind about his future and that his mood changes almost game by game. While that is understandable, it seems oddly irrelevant to the main issue, which is Arsenal’s habitual lack of edge, the failure to produce when it really matters – and that has been a constant for the past decade.

While Wenger has done great things for the club over the past 21 years and doesn’t deserve to be hounded out, it’s also understandable if fans feel a level of frustration at the same pattern constantly repeating. Bayern put Arsenal out at this stage in both 2012-13 and 2013-14, but the trope of going out of Europe as a spirited second leg can’t quite undo the damage of a lacklustre first has become irritatingly familiar.

There was a sense when the draw was made that Bayern might be more vulnerable this season than they’ve been in the recent past and while that probably is true, Bayern’s demolition of RB Leipzig just before Christmas was a reminder of how good they can be on their game. Ancelotti is laid back and has a tendency to let his team get on with it, which can lead to oddly complacent performances like the 1-1 draw against Schalke 04 two weeks ago, but as his record of three Champions league successes suggests, he is adept at organising and inspiring his teams for one-off games.

Arsenal are as long as 11/2 to win, which is one of those prices that initially looks tempting until you try to imagine them actually winning the game. Arsenal to win with a 1-0 handicap is 8/5 but backing Bayern to overcome a 1-0 deficit at 13/10 looks more attractive.

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Real Madrid v Napoli

The defending champions are a point clear in la Liga with two games in hand. This season they completed a record run of 40 games unbeaten. There is a general sense that their organisation and team play is better this season than it was last. And yet doubts remains about Zinedine Zidane’s Real Madrid. They have only been magnified by the run they’ve been on since Sevilla ended their unbeaten run on January 15. Their last seven games in all competitions have brought just three wins.

In part that’s probably just a natural reaction to the unbeaten record coming to an end, but the injuries to Luca Modric and Gareth Bale didn’t help. Modric is now back and with he and Casemiro in harness at the back of midfield, it should give Madrid a far more reliable base. In beating Osasuna 3-1 away on Saturday, they went with a back three, an unexpected ploy that may have been adopted with an eye on the game against Napoli.

Napoli, after a slow start to the season, have been in excellent recent form and lie second in the Serie A table, six points behind Juventus having played a game more. They’re unbeaten in 18 with Dries Mertens emerging as an unlikely but prolific stand-in for the injured Arkadiusz Milik. The Belgian has now scored 13 times in his last 11 games stretching back to the win over Benfica in the final game of the group stage. If the switched to a back three by Madrid is a specific response to the challenge of Napoli, the logic presumably is to try to match their 4-3-3 in midfield, while using the wing-backs to drive back Napoli’s wide men. It would, in a sense, be a way of flooding midfield without asking Cristiano Ronaldo or Karim Benzema to do any additional defensive work.

Madrid have scored in every game this season and, while Napoli had kept seven clean sheets in Sere A and one in the Champions league, it’s hard to see that changing. At the same time, Napoli are the top scorers in Serie A this season. That suggests goals, and both teams to score, unsurprisingly, is short at 7/12. This feels like a narrow Madrid win, but with Napoli to score a goal that keeps the second leg very much alive: that can be backed at 7/4.

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