Prague to Czech Chelsea's progress

14Feb 2013

Europa Liga

Chelsea travel to the Czech Republic to take on Sparta Prague in the Europa League this evening but Paul Robinson thinks their odds-on quote is wide of the mark.

Sparta Prague have done well to get through to the last 32 of this competition as they had to beat Feyenoord over two legs in the qualifying rounds and then negotiate a passage through a group that contained both Lyon and last year's finalists Athletic Bilbao.

Vítězslav Lavička's side only suffered one defeat in the group and that was a narrow 2-1 loss in France. They comfortably beat both Bilbao and Ironi Kiryat Shmona at the Generali Arena, which extended their undefeated run in the competition to 11 on home soil.

The main negative that can be attributed towards Prague is that they haven't played a competitive game since the start of December, however they have had a couple of warm up friendlies and we saw last night in Donetsk that it doesn't necessarily have to be an issue.

Chelsea are quite hard to predict but I'm willing to take a chance on opposing them this evening given their short price. The victory at home to Wigan on Saturday was actually their first for four matches since the 2-1 win over Arsenal. Away from home they've drawn three and lost one in their last quartet of fixtures and they've thrown leads away at both Reading and Newcastle.

Juan Mata was rested at the weekend so he is likely to feature for the Blues but Demba Ba is cup-tied and David Luiz is suspended. Rafa Benitez has always been known as quite a cautious manager and from his history at both Liverpool and Valencia it's likely that he would take a draw from this opening leg of the tie, so don't expect Chelsea to push for a winner if the scores are level going into the final 10 minutes of the match.

I simply can't have the English side at their current odds of 1.79 and that's why I'm making them my lay of the day.

Recommended Bet

Lay Chelsea v Sparta Prague @ 1.79