Lyon v Porto Betting Tips [17 March 2022]

Portuguese league leaders FC Porto are faced with the difficult task of overturning a 1-0 aggregate deficit away from home when they travel to East-Central France to take on Lyon in the Europa League round of 16. The visitors have been enjoying a dominant league campaign and are closing in on another undefeated season, having last pulled off the feat in the 2012-13 season. The Dragons have built up a nine point lead over second place Sporting and have a league record of 22 wins, four draws and zero defeats. On the other side, Lyon have been struggling through a difficult season in the league campaign. Success in the Europa League will be the top priority as the seven-time Ligue 1 champions have now slipped to 10th in the league table. Lyon’s last match was a shambolic 4-2 home loss to Rennes in which they found themselves trailing 4-0 after 50 minutes. Porto was able to bounce back from the first leg defeat by thrashing Tondela 4-0 in their last fixture.

Despite Lyon’s loss in their last match, they have largely been a solid home side this season with a league record of 7-5-3. They will surely want to respond with an increased focus on the defensive end after their implosion against Rennes so we could be in for a similar type of match as the first leg. Porto come into this match knowing they will need to score at some point to have a chance to progress to the next round but they will need to be careful as conceding early could see this tie slip away. We expect another tense encounter between these two very evenly matched teams with the winners market a hard one to call. Instead, we will focus on the goals market with the second half of the match being our target. This one could start out slow but pick up towards the end, especially if the visitors are still chasing the deficit.

We’re going with the second half to be the highest scoring of the two as our selection for this match. This is a good spot for this type of bet given the situational spot as the visitors might prefer to make sure this game doesn’t slip away from them in the first half. An increased urgency in the second half is likely which will suit this wager if the teams can finish their chances.