Bayern And Shakhtar Clash For Champions League Advantage

Pep Guardiola`s Bayern Munich must travel to Ukraine in the Champions League tonight (19:45) to battle against Shakhtar Donetsk in the last-16 of the competition. Munich look to have the Bundesliga tied up at the moment, leading their domestic top flight by a massive eight points. This has followed the club`s securing of 15 points from a maximum of 18 in this tournament.

Donetsk, on the other hand, sit in second place in the Ukrainian Premier League, five points off table toppers Dynamo Kiev after 14 matches. The club managed to fight their way into the knock-out stage of the Champions League in spite of only winning two of their six group games.

As a result of this, it is Bayern who are the favourites to secure victory in this match-up. A whole host of bookmakers are offering odds of 2/5 on the German giants bringing down their hosts away from home. betfair have the Donbass Arena outfit at 9/1 to claim an unlikely triumph whilst a draw can be backed at 4/1 with a number of turf accountants.

Last season, Bayern Munich were knocked out of this competition in the semi-final, failing to pass Spanish club Real Madrid to take one off the final two spots. The Bundesliga holders lost the first leg 1-0 prior to succumbing to a humiliating 4-0 defeat at home in the second of the two legs.

At least, however, they performed a little better than Donetsk, who were dumped out of the competition in the group stages. The Ukrainian club could only manage two wins, two draws and two defeats as they finished in third behind Manchester United and Bayer Leverkusen.

As previously mentioned, tonight`s hosts have also only won twice this campaign though these were high quality victories to nil and were supplemented with three points from three further ties. The team of Mircea Lucescu defeated BATE of Belarus 7-0 away from home and 5-0 at home in a Group H that also contained Porto (Portugal) and Spain`s Athletico Bilbao.

Luiz Adriano bagged five of the seven goals in their initial fixture against BATE at the Borisov Arena before grabbing another hat-trick against the side at home. Having also hit the back of the net in a 2-2 draw at home to Porto, he is the club`s top Champions League scorer. The Brazilian can be picked up at 43/10 with 888sport and unibet to add to his tally at any time tonight and is available at 200/1 (Sports Winner) to hit his third Champions League hat-trick of the season.

Tonight`s visitors, contrarily, progressed through a much trickier group containing Manchester City, Roma and CSKA Moscow. Their only defeat in this competitions so far was felt at the hands of City who triumphed 3-2 at the Etihad Stadium.

Munich have scored 16 times in the Champions League this season and have conceded only three goals. This has meant that the Bundesliga leaders have succeeded in racking up a total of four clean sheets from their six games. Consequentially, Bwin are currently offering 5/4 on Bayern winning to nil.

Both Mario Gotze and Thomas Muller are the side`s Champions League top scorers following their three bagged goals in these six games. Muller has been twice responsible for providing the deadlock breaker in this competition and is 9/2 with Coral and paddy Power to grab the opening goal once again. Gotze, on the other hand, has twice been the final scorer in a Champions League tie and can be backed at 11/2 (Betvictor, paddy Power) to be tonight`s closing goalscorer.

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17/02/2015     © Frixo 2026