Asian Champions League Predictions 2018

[Sir Puntalot]

 

[_Ghost_]

The Group Stages for the 2018 edition of the Asian Champions League kick off on Monday. I'm armed with a full results and price history from the last 4 editions of this and I'm hoping it pays dividends; Quite often the case with competitions like this one bookmaker will put a price up that is wrong and the rest will follow resulting in the whole industry being wrong.

Group Stage Draw

Matchday 1 Info & Tissue

[Xcout]

Al Ahli (Sau) vs Tractor Sazi (Irn)
2018, April 03, 18:20 hrs (CET Time)
AFC Champions League

AFC Champions League, group leader Al Ahli comes this game with a streak of 12 games without conceding defeat, a period in which they won the away game against Tractor Sazi for the minimum in February.

At home the team has 12 games without defeat, since the defeat in the quarterfinals against Persepolis the last edition of the Asian Champions League.

 

Clear contrast with the Sazi Tractor that has seven games without winning, only achieving three draws in that period, with two of them in the Champions League, in both games against Al-Jazeera. There is no tomorrow for Tractor Sazi, because if he does not get the victory, he would play the last game with nothing to play, but he has not shown any arguments to think that he can get anything in this match, since he has not been able to win in this Champions League.

 

With a victory in this match, Al Ahli would be in an unbeatable situation, securing at least the second position and possibly the first group depending on the result of the Al-Garrafa vs. Al-Jazira match, which is being played before this one.

 

So the local has everything in their favor, in addition that in the matches between them, has won two of their three matches, highlighting the visitor victory in the previous game, the other games are from 2015.

 

Al Ahli with 6 units @ 2.08 at Marathonbet

[Xcout]

Result:

Al Ahli 2 - 0 Tractos Sazi

+ 6.48 units

[_Ghost_]

The 6/1 available about Jeonbuk Motors to win the ACL Outright represents excellent vlaue. So-called Chinese powerhouses Guangzhou Evergrande and Shanghai SIPG have already crashed out of this seasons competition pathing the way for Jeonbuk, a side who topmy Korean ratings, from a nation that have won 4 of the last 9 renewals within a region that has won 8 of the last 9 finals. They play fellow Koreans Suwon Bluewings in the Quarter Finals, if their league match prices are anyting to go by they'll be favs for this, they'll meet Tianjin or Kashima in the semis, they were favs both home and away to Tianjin in the group stages whilst Kashima and Suwon shared favouritsim when they met in the group stages suggesting Jeonbuk will be favourites should they meet the Japanese side. As already stated the Eastern region has won 8 of the last 9 finals so you have got to have the Eastern side favs going into that.

In the other half of the draw the top 2 sides in Iran meet the top 2 sides in Qatar  - for me the slight edge goes to the Qatari sides who since 2013/14 lead the head to head over Iranian sides 12-11-8, over this samer period Qatari sides have an overall win rate of 0.560 comapred to 0.510 of Iran.

[_Ghost_]

On 30/05/2018 at 10:18 AM, jazzman02 said:

The 6/1 available about Jeonbuk Motors to win the ACL Outright represents excellent vlaue. So-called Chinese powerhouses Guangzhou Evergrande and Shanghai SIPG have already crashed out of this seasons competition pathing the way for Jeonbuk, a side who topmy Korean ratings, from a nation that have won 4 of the last 9 renewals within a region that has won 8 of the last 9 finals. They play fellow Koreans Suwon Bluewings in the Quarter Finals, if their league match prices are anyting to go by they'll be favs for this, they'll meet Tianjin or Kashima in the semis, they were favs both home and away to Tianjin in the group stages whilst Kashima and Suwon shared favouritsim when they met in the group stages suggesting Jeonbuk will be favourites should they meet the Japanese side. As already stated the Eastern region has won 8 of the last 9 finals so you have got to have the Eastern side favs going into that.

In the other half of the draw the top 2 sides in Iran meet the top 2 sides in Qatar  - for me the slight edge goes to the Qatari sides who since 2013/14 lead the head to head over Iranian sides 12-11-8, over this samer period Qatari sides have an overall win rate of 0.560 comapred to 0.510 of Iran.

I posted the above back at the end of May and it’s worth flagging up again. Jeonbuk are still available at 6/1 to win the ACL outright and since the resumption of the K-League they have gone 4-1-0 including a 3-0 victory away at QF opponents Suwon

[_Ghost_]

Opening lines for the Quarter Finals starting to filter through... 

Kashima Antlers v Tianjin Quanjian

365 have opened up a mouthwatering 11/2 about Tianjian, this to me is WRONG for several reasons;

1. If I can draw your attention to match 4 on the JAP v CHI table below, Kashima v Shanghai Shenua, take a look at the prices for this match. Now go to the Tianjin Quanjian table at the bottom, match 9, Tianjin v Shanghai, and note the match prices. You'll see that Kashima were around 1/2 with Tianjin around 4/7; this suggests to me that the market rates Kashima as a slightly better side than Tianjin.

2. Repeat the above process for match 1 on the CHI v JAP table and match 6 on the Tianjin table. You'll find prices of around 1/2 and 1/3, again this favours Kashima but further supports my argument that whilst they are a better team they are not so much better to warrant Tianjin being 11/2, two teams of equal ability with one having home advantage would have match prices of 21/20 - 13/5 - 3/1 in the ACL. 

3. Chinese teams have a record of 8-9-9 away at Japanese teams since 13/14