Champions League - Group A: Bayern vs Maccabi HaifaLouis van Gaal looks to be counting his last days at Bayern and he could easily get fired if his side fail to win this game. This puts an extra pressure on the home side, who are desperately underachieving lately, but they should still have enough in themselves to see off still pointless Maccabi Haifa.
Difficult times for Bayern
Louis van Gaal is one of the most controversial coaches in football today and he either enjoys a lot of success or is disliked even by his own players. The latter seems to be the case for his reign at Bayern and the Dutch coach looks to be on the way out. His side are sitting in 7th place in Bundesliga, while they face elimination from the Champions League. The players have lost the confidence and that is evident in their every performance, thus the hosts face a difficult task against well-organized visitors. If we disregard their lucky win over Maccabi in Israel, Bayern scored just one goal in three group games and we expect the trend to continue. Therefore, we see a great value in backing Bayern to score under 2.5 goals at odds of 1.62 offered by Sportingbet.
As we have already said, the atmosphere in the team is at an all time low, with a couple of players even publicly criticizing boss van Gaal. Bayern played another poor game last weekend and failed to beat Leverkusen at home, thus the poor run continues. Franck Ribery is still unable to help his side through injury, while Arjen Robben remains a doubt. Considering the current situation, odds of 1.25 offered by Bwin on home win definitely don’t look too tempting.
Maccabi searching for first points
Maccabi’s results in this year’s Champions League have been more than disappointing but they seem to be playing better than the results are showing. Not only did Israelis fail to take any points from first four group game, but they also failed to score a single goal and that is very disappointing indeed. Seeing that boss Elisha Levy is set to adopt a defensive approach, we expect the poor run to continue. Betfair pays 1.82 on Maccabi not to score.
Boss Elisha Levy faces some selection dilemmas before this match and he will be missing Brazilian midfielder Tiago Dutra through suspension but Eyal Golasa and John Culma are back in contention after injuries. However, the pair is unlikely to be risked, which means Ali Otman and Biram Kayal will start in the centre of the park. Meanwhile, Shai Maimon or Jorge Teixeira are vying for a place alongside Dekel Keinan in defence.
Betting verdict
Bayern have too much quality not to win this game but they will definitely not have an easy job. The Bavarians are in very poor spirits and they will have problems breaking the opposition defence, thus we expect them to win by the narrowest of margins. Even a small stake on 1:0 victory is recommended.
Looking for livestream! Here it is! Our tip: Bet 4 on Bayern to win by one goal
Odds +275 at
Bookmaker: BetCRIS
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1/8 F
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