Benfica vs Astana Betting Tips

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Benfica

Astana

Benfica picked up an impressive 6-0 win over Belenenses at the weekend, by far their best performance of the young season. There are some doubts about the 2015-16 edition of Benfica to replicate the domestic championship winning performances of the previous two seasons, but they are pretty well set-up for this group and perhaps a few things are starting to come together for Rui Vitoria’s team.

It’ll be interesting to see how Vitoria approaches this match-up. It’s important to make a strong start to Champions League group play, but Benfica will surely have one eye on the weekend match-up against Porto.

Astana become the first Kazakh club to reach the group stages of the Champions League. There’s generally some positive signs that the standard of the Kazakh league is pretty good, Kairat performed pretty well and tested Bordeaux in Europa League qualifying.

The approach will be simple for all of the games in this group. Astana will set themselves up with men behind the ball and aim to score goals on the counter attack. They’re inexperienced at European level and they didn’t take down any “giants” in qualifying.

Three Reasons for Betting Tips

1. Benfica have discovered their fire power

Whether they end up resting players or not, there have been signs that Benfica’s roster is shaping itself up and they look very capable of scoring goals. We think they’ll put a few past Champions League group stage newbies on Tuesday.

2. Can Astana hurt Benfica?

It’s true that they are not well-known, but when we look at their qualifying stage play and their roster, we don’t see an Astana side with the fire power to hurt Benfica. It’ll be natural for this team to play a little overly cautiously in Tuesday’s trip to Portugal as well.

3. Short handicap odds

In another giant vs underdog match-up, Malmo are +2.5 against PSG, the oddsmakers have been less generous in this game. We like a two-goal win margin in this match-up, especially considering the experience deficit between the two clubs and Benfica’s good form.