It must have been a strange experience for Manchester City fans.
As they sat in Wembley Stadium on Saturday watching their side come from behind to beat Southampton in their FA Cup semi-final, many will have been keeping one eye on the score across London as title-race rivals Arsenal hosted Newcastle United in the Premier League.
City sealed their place in a record fourth-consecutive FA Cup final, but they also found out soon after that the Gunners had reclaimed top spot in the league with a hard-fought 1-0 victory. In this week’s SVQ, we’ll look at the Premier League record Arsenal broke with their only goal of the game at the Emirates.
The Gunners are in action in the UEFA Champions League semi-finals this week, and we’ll bring you the Opta supercomputer’s latest predictions.
We also have our usual quiz so you can flex your footy knowledge muscles, and our Ask Opta question is all about Premier League points.
🏆 Before We Begin…
If you’ll indulge us for a moment, we were thrilled to bits that the Opta Analyst team were crowned Specialist Sports Publisher of the Year at the SJA British Sports Journalism awards on Monday. It’s a huge honour for all of us here, especially in such a competitive field with other outstanding nominees.
Right, that’s quite enough of that. Let’s look ahead to this week’s Champions League semi-finals, and nudge the Opta supercomputer for some numbers.
📈 STAT - Who Will Win the Champions League?
The Champions League has delivered again this season, with some outstanding games, pure drama, and a fascinating final four heading into this week’s semi-final first legs.
Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain have both looked mightily impressive. The Bundesliga giants thrashed Atalanta in the last 16 before winning a titanic tussle with Real Madrid in the quarter-finals. PSG have carried on their theme of last year’s successful campaign by eliminating Premier League clubs in the knockout stage, with Chelsea and Liverpool both dispatched with relative ease. It promises to be a classic between two of the most exciting teams on the planet.
Atlético Madrid and Arsenal will face off in the other semi, two teams perhaps less synonymous with outstanding attacking football than Bayern and PSG, though it is a bit outdated to consider Atlético a primarily defensive team. Only Bayern and PSG (38 each) have scored more goals in this season’s competition than Diego Simeone’s men (34).
Interestingly, Arsenal and Atlético are the two teams that have played the most matches in the history of the European Cup/Champions League without ever winning it: 223 and 190 respectively. With one of them certain to reach the final, they can both dream of ending that run soon.
But what are their chances? Well, as you may be aware, we at Opta have our very own supercomputer, so we can see what its latest predictor numbers are.