Trabzonspor- Juventus
 

I do not think that this is a fixture Juventus will particularly be looking forward to. With the final taking place at their home stadium in Turin and holding a healthy lead at the top of Serie A, we can assume they will be motivated for the competition, but I suspect they would be happy to accept a draw this evening, possibly even a one goal defeat, shake hands and move on. They will certainly not have very positive mental memories of their last trip to Turkey, snow and an abandonment after 30 minutes of the tie, staying overnight and coming back the next day, to complete the fixture and looking in control only to concede a late winner to Galatasaray which eliminated them from the Champions League, was not a fun trip ! They might want to exorcise those demons, but despite winning the first leg 2-0,  they did not look at all comfortable, the second goal came in the 93rd minute and in the second half Trabzonspor were denied a legitimate equaliser by a wrong decision from the match officials. They have since battled to a 1-0 win in the Turin derby and face a never easy trip to the San Siro to meet Milan on Sunday. The Old Lady might hold a nine point lead at the top of the table, but have they have still to visit both Napoli and closest challenger Roma (who have a game in hand), before the end of the season and I suspect they will see the trip to Milan as the more important of their two games this week. The Juve squad are a class above on paper, but a lot of rotation is on the cards, Kwadwo Asamoah is the latest injury, which means tehy are without their two best wide players and upfront, it is more likely to be Dani Osvaldo and Sebastian Giovinco, than Carlos Tevez and Fernando Llorente.
 

This will be painful to write, we have backed Trabzonspor at home to an Italian team already this season, when Lazio came a calling back in October in the group stages of the competition....Italian teams do not tend to show this competition the greatest of respect, but Lazio did make the quarter finals last season, where they eventually lost to another Turkish side in Fenerbahce, losing the away leg 2-0. They went into that match just one point off the Champions League places, but only picked up 11 points from their final eight matches and looked to have been running on empty at the end of a long campaign. I do not think they felt the 12 Europa League games helped much and I do not doubt for one minute, that this week's big game for them, is the home match with Fiorentina on Sunday. That will be their 7th match inside 22 days, including a Rome derby and already injury hit and desperate to stay in touch with the top four domestically, especially with Roma top of the table, they will field a considerably weakened team this evening. They will still be competitive of course, you only have to look at the squad below, but coach Vladimir Petkovic will be very mindful of his priorities. Also, they already have three group points in the bag and if they want to progress in the competition, can basically do so by winning their home matches. Hosts have won their last four and do themselves have a big league game away to leaders Fenerbahce at the weekend, but they are very focused on the Europa League and will take great heart from Galatasaray's point in Turin last night. They have looked far more solid at the back since Jose Bosingwa returned from injury and striker Paulo Henrique (13-9-2 all comps) could hardly be in better form, after missing a lot of last season. He will be greedily eyeing up the Lazio squad, only five defenders have travelled and one, 18 yo Lorenzo Filippini has never made a first team start and was only given a squad number this week.
 

It was "painful" as they led 3-1 with six minutes to play and ended up drawing 3-3, although we did get our money back and a little on top, two weeks later, in their next home group game. The best they can hope for domestically is 4th, so highlight of the season, will be tonight and I expect them to give it a real go. I will take 1.5 units Trabzonspor +1 ball 1.95 asian line/Ibramarket , but they need to score two to have any chance to progress and have proven they can score here against Italian teams and were denied a "good" goal in the first leg and 3.75-4.0 for them to score twice (over 1.5) is a solid looking price, 2-1, 2-2 would suit Juve and if the visitors win a shootout, the hosts could "easily" score two.