KEY STAT: Villarreal have won five of their last seven home matches
EXPERT VERDICT: Villarreal are a short price to establish a first-leg lead but they are enjoying a fine season and they should deliver at El Madrigal. The Yellow Submarine are fourth in La Liga and look to be in a strong position in pursuit of Champions League football next season. Their home form has played a big part and they came from 2-0 down to grab a point against Barcelona before the international break.
KEY STAT: Shaktar have won six of their eight games in all competitions this year
EXPERT VERDICT: Braga will be keen to establish a first-leg lead ahead of a difficult return trip to Ukraine but they might find that tough against Shakhtar. The visitors failed to progress from a difficult Champions League group featuring PSG and Real Madrid but they have the class toget a positive result. Shaktar beat both Schalke and Anderlecht away from home to set up this quarter-final.
KEY STAT: Seville have not won any of 20 La Liga or European away games this season
EXPERT VERDICT: Seville’s away record is remarkably bad and they could be set for more road misery when they visit San Mames for this all-Spanish quarter-final tie. Bilbao have been inconsistent but they usually reserve their best performances for their home crowd and they look the likely winners.
KEY STAT: Dortmund have won 14 of their last 16 matches
EXPERT VERDICT: Jurgen Klopp has been the focus of attention ever since this quarter-final tie was made but the Liverpool boss looks unlikely to enjoy a winning return to the Westfalenstadion. Dortmund are in brilliant form and they showed they are not a club who see the Europa League as a distraction with a 5-1 aggregate win over Spurs in the last 16. Liverpool have been inconsistent and they are vulnerable against high-quality opposition.
KEY STAT: West Ham are unbeaten in their last 15 home matches
EXPERT VERDICT: Arsenal may need to win all of their remaining seven Premier League matches to stand a chance of being crowned Premier League champions but those hopes could suffer a hammerblow at Upton Park. The Hammers won at the Emirates and they have proved that is no fluke with a number of stunning successes. The Gunners have lost four away league games.
KEY STAT: Aston Villa’s only away win of the season came against Bournemouth
EXPERT VERDICT: Aston Villa could be relegated this weekend and have lost their last seven games, conceding 22 and scoring only two. Bournemouth suffered a 4-0 home defeat to Man City last weekend but they could bounce back to avenge their 2-1 loss to the Villans on the opening day.
[h=1]Masters 2016 predictions: who the experts are tipping at Augusta[/h] With the world of golf focusing its sights on Augusta National Golf Club ahead of the opening major of the season, Telegraph Sport asks the experts who they think will be wearing the green jacket come Sunday night
James Corrigan, Telegraph Golf Correspondent
Jason Day: Has two top threes to his name and is a better play now. Has the ideal game for Augusta in that his touch is as impressive as his ball-striking.
Tom Watson, two-time Masters winner
Rory McIlroy: He has won four major championships. He’s the guy. He hits the ball high. I think it’s always been an advantage to hit the ball high on this golf course.
Paul Hayward, Chief Sports Writer
Rory McIlroy: winning would be a blockbuster story. A matter of time before re rediscovers his 2014 form and this would be a great place to start.
Paul McGinley, former Ryder Cup captain
My favourite is Bubba Watson. He has won twice here in the past, the course suits his strength of shot-making and left handers seem to win there more often than any other venue in the world.
Colin Montgomerie, eight-time winner of the European Tour Order of Merit title
Jordan Spieth: He has that confidence and authority on the greens. He will again be the man to beat – there’s no question.
Oliver Brown, Chief Sports Feature Writer
Jason Day: This ought to be one of those rare occasions where the favourite does come good. The Australian has won his last two tournaments and possesses the combination of power and touch crucial to conquering Augusta.
[h=2]Our golf expert Ben Coley is backing Rickie Fowler to win his first major championship at the Masters this week.[/h]
One year ago, there was one dominant narrative in the build-up to the Masters: could Rory McIlroy win his first Green Jacket, in the process winning three majors in a row and, crucially, securing a career grand slam? Then everything changed. Along came Jordan Spieth with a record-breaking performance which had echoes of Tiger Woods in 1997 about it. Spieth would become the story, as he added the US Open to edge halfway to a one-year slam of his own, before St Andrews and the Road Hole intervened. And then everything changed again. Via the Canadian Open, Jason Day stepped up to win the PGA Championship, confirming that golf now had a Big Three which would set the standard for others to aim at. Over the subsequent weeks and months, as Day and Spieth traded top spot in the Official World Golf Rankings, McIlroy took a back seat. So as we approach the 80th Masters Tournament, talk of the McIlroy Slam is yet to graduate beyond a murmur and you just wonder whether that could be a positive. Defeat to Day at the WGC Dell Match Play ensured that Rory would arrive here winless in 2016, just as he did in 2011 before romping to a four-shot lead with one round to play. You can be near certain that if the same thing happens, this time he won't miss. Yet as much as I admire McIlroy's game and still consider him to be the best of the best, it's hard to argue that 8/1 is a value play here. Strictly speaking, last year's fourth was his strongest finish and, numerically speaking, the putting stats have improved, but it's five years since Rory had his one and only sniff at Augusta and the quality of the opposition keeps on improving. He'll win it eventually, I'm sure of that, and it may well be this Sunday. But for now, I must consider him the worst of the three market leaders from a purely price perspective, with Day (7/1) and Spieth (9/1) much more tempting. Day's profile is next to flawless. He's winning tournament's at a near-50% strike-rate at the moment and that includes the very best ones, like the Match Play and the PGA Championship. He boasts two top-five finishes at Augusta, might have won it in 2013 had he been a little more experienced, and there are no chinks in his armour bar a tendency to get ill at just the wrong time. Reports of flu-like symptoms last week are taken with a pinch of salt. Some will tell you that arriving at Augusta as world number one is a curse which makes it harder to win but that's nonsense and Day has the best chance of anyone in this field. He deserves to be 7/1, arguably even shorter, and it may only be stubbornness which sees me look elsewhere. The reason I'm doing so is that in Rickie Fowler there's a player with outstanding credentials who can be backed each-way at around the 18/1 mark. Almost every year brings a new major champion - 2015 brought two of them, both highly predictable - and Fowler is by far the best placed to do what most of us have long thought he's capable of doing. In many ways, he in fact reminds me of Day. Both had gone close in several majors before even proving themselves capable of winning frequently at PGA Tour level. Both then started collecting those titles which validated their lofty reputations. And now Fowler can follow Day's success in the PGA Championship by beating him to a Green Jacket. Crucially, Fowler has the right game for Augusta. He showed as much when fifth two years ago, a performance which started his ascent to the world's top-five, and five cuts made from five visits is a really impressive start to his Masters career. That his best two efforts have come over the last two years is no surprise, given that this course takes some knowing. But it also speaks to the value of having joined Butch Harmon's stable, which in turn has seen him play numerous practice rounds with Phil Mickelson, who knows every inch of Augusta National and how to conquer it and is more than willing to share his secrets. Fowler has that touch of magic we've long associated with Mickelson and his short-game improvement has been notable - again, could this be a by-product of time spent with Lefty? Yet it's really the long-game which has held him back at Augusta - from day one he was fine on and around the greens, but simply needs to set up more birdie opportunities if he's to go through with it and win. The signs are that Fowler is in the right shape to set up those opportunities. This year, he is second for greens in regulation. Even at the end of a four-win 2015, Fowler ranked outside the top 100. He's sixth in strokes-gained: tee-to-green, an even better measure of the quality of a player's ball-striking, and another marked improvement even from an outstanding season. Fowler has also jumped from outside the top 50 in total driving (distance and accuracy combined) to inside the top three and all of this supports what we can see: that he's vastly improved even from the man who was one off the lead with 16 holes to play here a couple of years ago. What's more, winning at Augusta has long depended on playing the par-fives well. Even all the way back in 1933, at the opening of this great golf course, Bobby Jones said: "We want to make bogeys easy if frankly sought, pars readily obtainable by standard good play and birdies - except on par-fives - dearly bought." Those words - except on par-fives - reveal the secret to Masters success. And the good news here is that Fowler ranks second this season in par-five scoring average. Incredibly he averaged 4.59 in both 2014 and 2015; he's down to 4.40 now, second by 0.01 to Adam Scott, and a continuation of these numbers will put him in an extremely strong position. The other area of notable improvement in Fowler's game is again particularly relevant to the Masters: bogey avoidance. It was once said that he couldn't go a tournament without a double and we did see a couple of big numbers in his tune-up at the Shell Houston Open, but the fact is Fowler leads the PGA Tour in bogey avoidance and by some distance. In fact, the gap between Fowler's first and Patrick Reed's second is bigger than any other gap in the top 200. Fowler's top-10 finish in Houston last week represented a perfect way to prepare and the fact he led the field in greens hit further underlines the control he's demonstrating right now. "I'm excited for next week," he said on Sunday night. "Definitely I really like where the game is at. I like how I played this week. I was able to get some work done and figure out what I'll work on the next few days, but yeah, I like where I'm at." With confidence coursing through the veins of the best player in the world yet to win a major, another practice round with Phil coming up, numbers which say he's playing as well as just about anyone and the belief which winning events like the PLAYERS brings, Fowler is my idea of the Masters winner. The reason for opposing Spieth is mainly historical - only one man in history has defended the Masters at the first time of asking, and only three have defended it full-stop. It's dangerous to rely solely on such facts when judging a player on his way to all-time greatness, but when you also consider that Spieth hasn't quite been at his best for a month or two it's easy enough to leave him alone at 9/1. Instead, I'm drawn to the claims of Justin Rose at anything upwards of 25s. Rose, like Fowler, has a blemish-free Augusta record. He's played the Masters 10 times and has made 10 cuts, eight of which have resulted in top-25 finishes. He may not be mentioned in conversations about Augusta specialists, but the numbers suggest he should be. Jim Furyk once said that there's no course in the world where you learn more with every visit than Augusta, and Rose's record supports that idea. He might have led after round one in three of his first four visits and been in with a chance in 2007, but 2015 was the first time Rose saw it through, finishing second to Spieth courtesy of four extremely solid rounds. Patience has been the hallmark of Rose's career. This is a player who missed 21 consecutive cuts after turning professional, and who won his first major at the 37th attempt on a golf course, Merion, which rewarded such patience and experience above all else. It therefore stands to reason that his best at Augusta could still be ahead and he said last year: "I think that being here ten times now, I'm sort of beginning to put it all together." Interestingly, Rose's second place came when he'd been struggling with a wrist injury and had missed three cuts in five. This time around, while short of the fireworks produced by so many of the key players here, he's played nicely with four top-20 finishes in his last four strokeplay starts plus two wins in three at the Match Play, during which he's shown his customary accuracy from tee to green despite having what he called 'the flu' and a niggling back injury, both of which have cleared up. It's no surprise that the stats back up Rose's strong play and he sits third, behind Scott and Fowler, in par-five scoring average which, as mentioned, could be vital. He's also second only to Fowler in the all-around and much improved in the strokes-gained putting charts so, despite not being known as a good putter, he's rolling it really nicely at the moment. The weakness in Rose's game is clearly around the greens, where he's prone to some of the worst pitch and chip-shots you'll see at elite level. But no player in this field is completely devoid of negatives and Rose's ball-striking at Augusta has been awesome at times, to the extent that he's been able to limit how often he needs to scramble. Last year, the 35-year-old was second in greens; he was also second in greens on his first visit and led the entire field in 2010. Again, his all-around stats are strong and in three of the last four years he's been inside the top six. In other words, when he tees up here in the Masters he invariably produces something close to his best. None of this appears to have been factored into Rose's price. His chance is considered equal to Stenson's, yet Rose is better than Stenson at Augusta, better than Stenson at winning, and better than Stenson at playing par-fives. He's also got a major in the locker already, something the Swede still searches for on the week of his 40th birthday. It's not that I'm against Stenson as such, but Rose's achievements are superior. They're also superior to Louis Oosthuizen, who hasn't won in a world-class field in six years yet is just behind Rose in the market. Again, I'm a fan of Oosthuizen's and he might well win, but Rose's credentials are stronger. I see him as having a similar chance to Dustin Johnson, a player I really like and who trades at around the 20/1 mark. In my eyes, Rose must be the value. I like Brooks Koepka, who keeps playing well in the biggest events, but a lack of Masters experience means the final vote instead goes to Hideki Matsuyama, another who I think has been a shade underestimated at 40/1. Matsuyama is a top-15 player in the world now and can be expected to continue to make progress. He's won twice in little over two full seasons on the PGA Tour, both times in strong fields at the expense of world-class players, and in his two completed campaigns has made it all the way to East Lake. Most recently, he showed composure and guts to beat Fowler in a play-off for the Phoenix Open and bar a withdrawal in the Honda Classic, his form has remained at an extremely high and consistent level ever since including when sixth on his most recent strokeplay start at Bay Hill, despite a closing bogey. Notably, he played the par-fives very well there. What I like most about Matsuyama is the form he's shown in the biggest and best events. So far in his career the 24-year-old has played in 13 majors, making 12 cuts, including when 27th as the leading amateur here at Augusta, fifth last year, sixth in the Open despite a cruel slow-play penalty and 10th behind Rose at Merion. That 27th gave us a real glimpse of what was to come as an emotional Matsuyama considered withdrawing in the wake of a catastrophic earthquake back home. It's an astonishingly impressive record whichever way you look at it and, backed up by those two PGA Tour wins which have both come via play-offs, suggests that Matsuyama has the quality to win a major championship very soon. Here at Augusta, his all-around ability should make for plenty of chances over the years - starting on Thursday. Matsuyama is fifth in strokes-gained: tee-to-green, first in birdie average, first in bounce back and strong enough across the par-fives and in bogey avoidance to believe that he can replicate last year's top-five, if not going a few places better given that he didn't feel he had his best game over the first two days. All of Matsuyama's achievements are made all the more remarkable by the fact that he can struggle on the greens but it strikes me that he's a good putter when they're lightning quick, as they will be this week and as they were when he won the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village. Again, that makes last year's effort more impressive as the course had been softened up a tad.
The first-round leader market is one I like to have a good look at - particularly in events like the Masters - and while the weather forecast for Thursday makes it difficult to know which side of the draw is best, I am compelled to mop up the last of the three-figure prices quoted about Charley Hoffman. There's no great science to a bet on the American. He is quite simply a very fast starter, as we've seen as recently as last week when he led the way in Houston. Prior to that, he'd been inside the top-five in both starts in Florida and this streaky type tends to find form in four- or five-week bursts. In fact, just last year he led twice and was second once in a group of five starts, and the second was here at the Masters when he carded an opening 67 only to be overshadowed by a certain Jordan Spieth, who went within one of the course record with a round of 64 which set him on course for a famous victory. Hoffman is in the sixth group out on Thursday morning so will have pure greens to work with and playing alongside Tom Watson may act as further inspiration for one of the PGA Tour's most aggressive players, one who is absolutely capable of shooting another sub-70 round at a course he's really taken a shine to. Hoffman has been well-backed already but there's plenty of 80/1 available and you may even be able to nab some 100s. At that sort of price he's certainly worth a small play. Rafael Cabrera-Bello is in many ways a European Tour equivalent of Hoffman, in that he's immensely talented, prone to making a very fast start but often found wanting when it comes to the crunch on Sunday afternoon. The Spaniard can also be backed at 80s and makes some appeal but this is his Masters debut and, from a middle-of-the-draw slot, I think he's a shade on the skinny side. Others to mention include Anirban Lahiri, who has the right game for this, played well in his last major start and has caught the eye recently, and local Harris English, who often starts well but struggled here a couple of years ago. Instead, a small bet on Scott Piercy gives us one on the other side of the draw to Hoffman. Piercy is an aggressive, big-hitting drawer of the golf ball so has the right sort of game for Augusta, and while down the field on his sole visit he did make the cut and card an encouraging second-round 69. More recently, he's secured two first-round leads already this season including in top-class company at the WGC-Cadillac Championship, while last week's top-20 finish in Houston confirms his game is in good shape. Piercy has been inside the top six after round one of the PGA Championship three times in just five appearances to further underline that he can perform in the big events, especially on Thursday, and from an afternoon tee-time he can bring that sort of scoring form to Augusta. Piercy is also worth considering to win his three-ball against short-hitting pair Fabian Gomez and Graeme McDowell, but Ryan Moore rates my idea of the best value on day one. Moore hasn't yet managed to break 70 in the first round here but rounds of 66 and 69 last year confirm that he loves Augusta, the course at which he finished 13th as an amateur just over a decade ago. Six cuts made in seven is a very solid record and with a string of good performances behind him already this season, including at the Match Play last time, he can be expected to enjoy another solid week at the Masters. Moore is the outsider of three but I don't think he should be. Sergio Garcia is a worthy favourite on account of his class and all-round quality, but he's said more than once that he isn't all that keen on the course and having missed the cut last time can be taken on. Many will look to Danny Willett, who was a solid 38th on his debut last year and has improved since, but the Sheffield man flew out late having welcomed a new addition to the family last week. Becoming a father might well inspire him to a memorable performance but more likely is that he's under prepared. Moore on the other hand boasts an ideal preparation and he's value at 5/2. There are options galore if you're looking for a banker, with past Masters champions like Tom Watson and Larry Mize making up the numbers and effectively turning three-balls into two-balls. If you can get on Troy Merritt at 11/8 or so, he's got a great chance against an injured Byeong-hun An and 58-year-old Ian Woosnam, but most firms have wisely left that match alone and while I have made the case for Hoffman, I don't want to back him at evens given that Augusta specialist Lee Westwood is in his group along with Watson. The short one I do like is Billy Horschel, who should be too good for Darren Clarke and Matt Fitzpatrick. Clearly, Fitzpatrick remains a player of great potential and I'm neither surprised nor concerned that he's just taking a little while to adjust to his lofty status having won as a rookie on the European Tour last season. In fact there have been one or two encouraging signs of late, but Fitzpatrick's stock left-to-right drives aren't suited to Augusta, where he narrowly missed the cut as an amateur, and I suspect he's in for a difficult week. So too is Clarke, who hasn't broken 70 this year and last did so at Augusta over a decade ago, which should leave the way clear for Horschel to land us a winner at a shade of odds-against. The 2014 FedEx Cup champion isn't quite at his best but has generally been hitting the ball well again lately, having adapted to a switch in club manufacturer at the turn of the year. While yet to break 70 in the Masters, he was 37th on debut and is a strong ball-striker who has a distance advantage over both rivals. With a string of solid major performances in the locker he should win this three-ball on both Thursday and Friday.
