Manchester City are the favourites to win the Champions League. Again. Consult whatever you like: expert opinion, the bookmakers or sophisticated predictive modelling by some sort of supercomputer. You get one answer. No other team has a better chance of going all the way to Saint Petersburg and winning it. No team in the last-16 can be as confident of reaching the quarter-finals either.
We have been here before though. “In the last two seasons too and we didn't win,” as Pep Guardiola pointed out on the eve of this season’s knockout stages. “We must be handsome, we must be so sexy, for people to believe we're the favourite every single season,” he joked, “but I know the reality.”
