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Football London
Football London
Sport
Kwame Boakye

Chelsea's chances of winning the Champions League revealed along with Liverpool and Man United

With hopes of a first Premier League title since the 2016/17 season fading, Chelsea’s attentions and priorities have now switched to their European commitments.

The Blues will be hopeful of retaining their Champions League crown and they've been given a 10% chance of doing just that, making them fifth favourites, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Manchester City are the side most likely to win the trophy, with last season’s beaten finalists given a 27% chance, according to the data.

Meanwhile, Liverpool and Bayern Munich can't be separated with each side given 18%.

Dutch giants Ajax complete the top five with a 12% chance of winning European football’s most coveted prize.

The predictions are courtesy of FiveThirtyEight and use a range of match data to predict the results of football competitions from around the globe.

Thomas Tuchel’s side face Lille in the first knockout round after finishing runners’ up to Juventus in Group H.

However, the Italian giants have been given less than a 1% chance of winning the competition.

Quality of opposition has been considered as part of the predictions, and due to the fact Chelsea will play Lille in the last-16, they have been given a 90% chance of progressing to the quarter finals.

Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid are two of the strongest teams left in the tournament but as they meet each other in the first knockout round, their respective chances of lifting the trophy in May sit at just 4% for PSG and 3% for Los Blancos.

According to the FiveThirtyEight website: "The forecasts are based on a substantially revised version of ESPN’s Soccer Power Index (SPI), a rating system originally devised by FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver in 2009 for rating international soccer teams.

"We have updated and adapted SPI to incorporate club soccer data going back to 1888 (from more than 550,000 matches in all) that we’ve collected from ESPN’s database and the Engsoccerdata GitHub repository, as well as from play-by-play data produced by Opta that has been available since 2010."

Chelsea will host Lille in the first leg of their last-16 encounter on February 22, with the return leg taking place on March 16.

Manchester United undoubtedly face the toughest challenge to progress in the competition.

The Red Devils have largely flattered to deceive both domestically and in Europe this season, and have been given a 40% chance of overcoming Spanish Champions Atletico Madrid and a 1% chance of winning the tournament.

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