Porto vs Liverpool 18/04/19

18 April 2019

After a comfortable 2-0 win at Anfield, Liverpool travel to the Estádio do Dragão to meet Porto for the return leg of their Champions League quarter-finals tie confident of dumping the Portuguese giants out of the competition for the second year in a row.

The hosts have enjoyed no success against the Premier League heavyweights in all of their previous seven H2H meetings in Europe in the 21st century (D3, L4) having failed to find the net in all three of their last H2Hs. But, the one thing Sérgio Conceição can lean on here is Porto’s impressive CL home record, as the Dragons won all four of their CL home outings this term, scoring 2+ match goals three times across those games. Lethal in the final third, Conceição’s players have scored over 1.5 goals per match in six of their previous seven home races. In the same period, the reigning Primeira Liga holders have kept five clean sheets while allowing over 1.5 match goals once in the process.

Meanwhile, the visitors have racked up a seven-game winning run across all competitions as they go into this encounter off the back of a 2-0 home win over Chelsea in the Premier League. It was the second consecutive game in which the Reds managed to preserve a clean slate after conceding at least one goal per match in five straight competitive outings. Notably improved in all aspects of their game, the Merseysiders are unbeaten in their last seven away games across all competitions (W4, D3) with all three of their previous road wins featuring over 2.5 goals. Also, Jurgen Klopp’s men seem to have rediscovered their ‘killer instinct’ in front of the goal considering they’ve bagged 2+ match goals in all seven of their previous competitive clashes.