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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Sport
Liam Wood

Supercomputer predicts Man City's Champions League chances before Sporting Lisbon tie

Manchester City are set to continue their quest for maiden Champions League honours tonight - but what chance do they have of finally landing the big one?

Pep Guardiola and his star-studded team have won the Premier League three times in the last four seasons.

City remain in pole position to make that four from five this campaign, too, but the marquee European competition has eluded Spanish coach Guardiola ever since touching down in the UK.

They came agonisingly close to ending that hoodoo in Porto last May.

However, it was fellow Premier League side Chelsea who ultimately reigned supreme; with Kai Havertz settling the score at the Estadio do Dragao.

City are favourites with the bookies to atone for that 1-0 defeat this time around.

But in order to do that, they must first get past Sporting over two legs.

According to the renowned FiveThirtyEight supercomputer, City are the team to beat and they boast a 92 per cent chance of making it through to the last-8.

The same data offers them a 64 and 41pc likelihood to reach the semi-finals or final - while Guardiola has a 25pc shot of recapturing the trophy he won twice at Barcelona.

FiveThirtyEight deem their biggest challenge to come from Bayern Munich (20pc) and Liverpool (15pc), while PSG and Real Madrid (both 4pc) sit a little further down on account of them playing against each other in the last-16.

Chelsea are fourth favourites at 10pc and Manchester United are given a less than 1pc chance!

How does the supercomputer work?

FiveThirtyEight uses SPI ratings, which have an attacking and defensive component in order to determine which team is going to win a specific game. This is then all built up to see how many points each side will accumulate for when the season ends, or to pick a team to progress when it comes to knock-out competitions.

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