The Opta supercomputer considers Tottenham big favourites for their UEFA Europa League opener. Can they live up to expectations? Look ahead with our Tottenham vs Qarabag prediction and preview.
Tottenham vs Qarabag Stats: The Key Insights
Tottenham Hotspur opened their Europa League campaign with a win in 64.3% of the Opta supercomputer’s pre-match simulations.
Qarabag have lost all six of their previous competitive meetings with English clubs.
Spurs are the fourth favourites to win this competition, going all the way in 8.6% of the season sims.
Tottenham will be expected to get their 2024-25 UEFA Europa League campaign off to a strong start at home to Azerbaijani champions Qarabag on Thursday.
Ange Postecoglou’s side have endured somewhat underwhelming start to the season domestically, dropping points against Leicester City, Newcastle and Arsenal, losing to the latter two.
But Thursday’s game – mercifully at home rather than requiring a trip to Azerbaijan – offers them the opportunity to make it three wins in a row across all competitions, having beaten Coventry City in the EFL Cup before recording a 3-1 victory over Brentford in the Premier League on Saturday.
While the standard of the opposition in that run, with respect to Coventry and Qarabag, might not be the highest, Spurs haven’t strung three successive wins together since last December.
Building additional confidence would be a welcome consequence considering Spurs have a tricky run of fixtures on the horizon in three consecutive away games after Thursday, starting with a trip to Manchester United on Sunday. In the seven days after that, they are also at Ferencváros and Brighton before the October international break.
Spurs actually fell behind to Brentford last time out but rallied to win 3-1, seemingly responding well to the Bees’ early flurry. Record signing Dominic Solanke got off the mark in that game, while Brennan Johnson and James Maddison – both of whom have come in for criticism lately – were on the scoresheet too.
Whether those three will be involved from the start on Thursday is unclear, but Postecoglou is likely to make some alterations; after all, Spurs are massive favourites for this encounter and therefore should be able to rotate their squad without much jeopardy in theory.
In fact, Spurs are among the most-fancied teams in the re-formatted competition, with only three clubs going all the way more often in the Opta supercomputer’s 10,000 season predictions than their 8.6%.
They’re given an 81% likelihood of progressing through the 36-team league phase and reaching the last 16, only behind FC Porto (87.6%) and Athletic Club (83%), while Spurs’ fixture schedule is also deemed to be among the most straightforward.
The average Opta Power Rating of their opponents is 83.6; only five clubs in the competition are deemed to have an easier set of games, with trips to Galatasaray, Rangers and Hoffenheim about as difficult as it gets on paper for Postecoglou’s men.
Tottenham would be advised against going into the competition too relaxed, however. Their record in Europe isn’t spectacular, failing to get beyond the last 16 in 11 of their last 13 participations in UEFA competitions.
In fact, in their most recent Europa League participation, they were knocked out by Dinamo Zagreb in the 2020-21 season despite winning their home leg 2-0, following that up with a 3-0 defeat in Croatia after extra-time thanks to a Mislav Orsic hat-trick.
Tottenham will be without Cristian Romero for this game after he was sent off in Tottenham’s last European game in March 2023, a 0-0 draw with AC Milan in the Champions League, while Richarlison and Wilson Odobert aren’t expected to be back in action for roughly another month.
Head-to-Head
This is the third meeting between Tottenham and Qarabag in major European competition, with Spurs winning both previous meetings in the 2015-16 group stage of the UEFA Europa League (3-1 and 1-0).
Qarabag have lost all six of their meetings with English sides in all competitions – twice against Spurs (2015-16), twice versus Chelsea (2017-18) and twice vs Arsenal (2018-19).
Tottenham vs Qarabag Prediction
Unsurprisingly, the Opta supercomputer makes Tottenham comfortable favourites for this one, winning 64.3% of the 10,000 pre-match simulations.
Qarabag are given just a 16.6% likelihood of sneaking what would be a shock victory, while the draw is rated at 19.1%.
As mentioned before, Spurs are among the favourites to win the whole tournament; Qarabag, however, lift the trophy in just 0.2 % of the simulations, which is more often than just three teams.
Qarabag are given a 31.5% chance of getting to the last 16, though, which is better than clubs such as Ajax and Rangers.
Tottenham vs Qarabag Predicted Lineups
Tottenham: Guglielmo Vicario, Pedro Porro, Destiny Udogie, Radu Dragusin, Micky van de Ven, James Maddison, Rodrigo Bentancur, Dejan Kulusevski, Son Heung-Min, Dominic Solanke, Brennan Johnson.
Head coach: Ange Postecoglou
Qarabag: Mateusz Kochalski, Elvin Cəfərquliyev, Kevin Medina, Bəhlul Mustafazadə, Matheus Silva, Marko Janković, Júlio Romão, Abdellah Zoubir, Yassine Benzia, Leandro Andrade, Juninho
Head coach: Gurban Gurbanov
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off on Thursday, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.