Chelsea vs Zenit St Petersburg Prediction & Betting Tips - Champions League

Prediction published on 12/09/2021, 05:32  by James | Modified on 12/09/2021 at 06:32 in Champions League Predictions

UEFA Champions League holders Chelsea begin the defence of their trophy on Tuesday night when they welcome Zenit St. Petersburg to Stamford Bridge for a Group H encounter. Last season, the Blues won the competition with a 1-0 victory over Manchester City in the final, their second triumph following a 2012 win over Bayern Munich. Zenit crashed out of the UCL group stage last season, and the Russian side have never made it past the Round of 16. They have one Europa League to their name, from the UEFA Cup era, back in 2008. Chelsea have started the season in flying fashion thanks to the return of former player Romelu Lukaku. The Belgian forward's previous spell didn't work out to inexperience on his end and mismanagement on the part of the club. Across 15 appearances, Lukaku didn't score once. However, 193 goals in 357 subsequent appearances for several different clubs prompted Chelsea to break the bank. Three goals in his first three games back suggest that Lukaku will succeed the second time around.

Naturally, winning the competition allowed Chelsea to stack up impressive UCL statistics. They are unbeaten in 12 of their last 13 matches, and they have kept five clean sheets in their previous seven outings. This propensity for keeping the opposition out led to low-scoring fixtures, with their most recent eight featuring fewer than three goals. A  big reason for that is Chelsea didn't have a clinical finisher up front. Now they do, so we expect a better goal return. This upgrade is bad news for a Zenit team that has lost six of their last seven UCL games overall and three of their last four in England. We expect Chelsea to win to nil.