Russian Zenit welcome visitors from Sweden for this Champions League group stage round 2 match. I see a very big difference in raw class between two the teams! In my opinion Malmö do not really belong to this competition at this time of the season and were quite lucky to qualify for the group stage. They played two quite balanced matches in the summer versus a pretty small club by European standards, HJK Helsinki from my home country.. Before the HJK matches they beat a Latvian team but did not really dominate - I think they should have as Riga are a pretty lowly team. Later in the Champions League qualification they somehow managed to topple Scottish Glasgow Rangers, a big team but again I do not think they were the better team. I would say Rangers both under-performed -  and were unlucky.  Finally in the last qualification round Malmö took on Bulgarian Ludogorets, not a particularly good team, and played two pretty balanced matches. Malmö have also not been particularly good in the Swedish Allsvenskan, not a very high-level league. They are currently in second place but have dropped many points recently versus weaker teams and their defense has often looked vulnerable. In their Champions League group opener they were completely crushed by Juventus 0-3 at home. Juventus of course are bigger team and were solid favorites but  - as I have written many times - they are not nearly as good as they were a few years ago but still Malmö had no chance at all! 

How about Zenit then? They are a much bigger team in terms of players' total market value and have also proved on the pitch that they are much better than Malmö. They lost only 0-1 versus Chelsea in the first round in London as heavy underdogs. Chelsea, as most of my fans probably know, are a top-5 team in the world. In their domestic league they have also been playing extremely well are in the lead by four points difference.

 I would be surprised if Malmö were to take even a point here. Zenit -0.5 goals handicap is my pick for my growing fan-base. Malmo are missing several players today , but even with their best lineup they would be massive underdogs!