Champions League Accumulator Tips

Two teams who will be looking to go deep in this competition meet at the Etihad Stadium on Thursday night when Manchester City host the Serie A champions Napoli in a big game.

City go into the contest as the favourites but Napoli have made a perfect start to their title defence and won’t be easy to get the better of.

The better bet in the match with that in mind may well be both teams to score. It is extremely rare for Man City not to find the net at home but at the same time they don’t always keep clean sheets either.

City have scored in 18 of their last 21 at the Etihad with only Tottenham twice and Liverpool keeping them out. In that time, they have only kept six clean sheets with one of those coming against League Two side Salford.

Feyenoord scored three here in the Champions League last season and Club Brugge found the net too and Napoli carry more of a goal threat than those sides, particularly with the creativity of the returning Kevin de Bruyne in their ranks.

This feels like a prime candidate for both teams scoring.

The second leg of our Thursday night treble takes us to St James’ Park where there is sure to be a wonderful atmosphere as Newcastle United return to Europe’s elite competition with a massive clash against La Liga champions Barcelona.

The Catalans giants are always a big draw and that should ensure a cracking occasion but there is no getting away from the fact that Newcastle look very much a work in progress, especially going forward.

Barcelona represent a stern challenge to Newcastle and much like when Liverpool went to St James’ Park earlier in the season, it is hard to see the home defence keeping a clean sheet.

Unlike against the Reds, it won’t be as easy for Newcastle to get at a Barcelona defence when they see little of the ball, which we would expect given that the Spanish champions currently have 70.5% possession in La Liga.

Newcastle have only registered 12 shots on target in their four Premier League matches so are lacking quality in the final third.

That all leads to Barcelona without the draw being a solid play.

The final leg of the Thursday night treble takes us to Germany for the clash between Eintracht Frankfurt and the Turkish giants Galatasaray.

Both teams will be eager to get their league phase off to a good start and that should lead to goals becoming the order of the day.

Frankfurt and Galatasaray have both started their domestic league well. Frankfurt have two wins from three with eight goals scored and five conceded so are averaging 4.33 goals per game.

Galatasaray have won all five matches in the Super Liga and have scored 15 goals in those matches so they are full of goals too.

You wouldn’t want to rely on either defence here with the attacking personnel that is on show and with the trend of the league phase of this competition last season suggesting that matches are fairly high scoring, along with the domestic matches both have been involved in averaging more than three goals per game, this looks an ideal spot to take over 2.5 goals to round off the treble.