Data analyst provides prediction on Tottenham’s Champions League group hopes

Tottenham Hotspur will kick start their Champions League campaign in Greece against Olympiacos later this evening. The Lilywhites will be hoping to go one better than last season when they failed at the final hurdle against Liverpool.

Bayern Munich and Red Star Belgrade are the other two sides that makeup Tottenham’s group, with the line up looking much easier than last season when Spurs had Barcelona, Inter Milan, and PSV Eindhoven in their group.

Tottenham made it incredibly difficult for themselves last season after getting just one point in their first three games but turned it around incredibly with two wins and a draw in the last three matches.

Spurs fans will be hoping that the passage through to the knockout stages would be a little bit easier this time but according to data analytics site fivethirtyeight.com, who have crunched the numbers, that might not be the case.

Tottenham have been given a 65% chance of making it to the round of 16 stage, making them the 11th most likely team to do so based on their rankings, with Manchester City the most likely with a whopping 98% chance.

However, the concerning part for Spurs fans would be that the numbers suggest Tottenham are more likely to get beat in their opening two games than they are to win them.

They rank Spurs’ chances of beating Olympiakos in Greece at 37% with Olympiakos just having the edge with a 38% chance of winning.

When Bayern Munich visit the Tottenham Hotspur stadium two weeks later, they are given a 47% likelihood of getting all three points while Spurs only have 30%.

Spurs Web Opinion

While people will obviously point to the fact that numbers don’t paint the whole picture, I think the one valuable insight that could be gained from these numbers is that Tottenham’s group is actually much tougher than it looks on paper. Teams have not found it easy to win away at Olympiacos and Red Star Belgrade in previous years. So while three points from the first game will be extremely valuable, a draw wouldn’t be the worst of results either.

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