Manchester City will travel to Goodison Park to face Everton on Sunday afternoon intent on maintaining their title challenge in the wake of Chelsea’s 2-0 loss to Tottenham in their last Premier League fixture.
The league leaders defeat at White Hart Lane ended a run of 13 straight league victories and reopened the door for the likes of City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham and Manchester United in their quest to challenge for the title. City is currently still available at 7/1 with Coral to claim a fifth league title in Pep Guardiola’s maiden season in charge.
City aiming to reduce seven-point deficit
With fourth-placed City still trailing Chelsea by seven points, Guardiola will be desperate for his team to take all three points back to Manchester. Toffees boss Ronald Koeman, meanwhile, will hope his players can sustain the club’s challenge for a top six finish and possible European football next season with a win to better the 1-1 draw they achieved in Manchester back in October.
City will go into the match without midfielder Fernandinho who received his marching orders for the second time this season in City’s hard-fought 2-1 victory over Burnley at the Etihad last time out. Ilkay Gundogan is the only other player likely to miss out for City while Everton will have to make do without injured duo Maarten Stekelenburg and summer signing Yannick Bolasie.
No easy task for Guardiola’s men
Guardiola’s men lost 1-0 to title rivals Liverpool on their last trip to Merseyside on New Year’s Eve, their third defeat on the road this season, while Everton boasts an impressive home record with just a solitary defeat, also to neighbours Liverpool to blot their copybook.
The hosts’ good home form and City’s seven victories on the road suggest this will be a close encounter. Last weekend saw Everton exit the FA Cup at the first hurdle following defeat to Champions Leicester while City made a huge statement of intent hammering West Ham 5-0 in East London to progress to the next round of the famous old cup.
On the back of these results, the bookmakers seem less agreeable to Everton’s chances of denting City’s title charge and place them at a very generous 10/3 to claim the win with bet365 amongst others. The visitors, on the other hand, are priced as short as 4/5 with the same bookmaker to escape Merseyside with all three points.
Goals fest on the cards?
Everton has notched 15 goals in their 10 home league matches so far this season, while City has scored an impressive 22 goals in just 10 matches away from home thus far. With City’s defence looking far from comfortable protecting Claudio Bravo’s goal, however, the odds of both teams scoring is a modest 8/13 with Ladbrokes which suggests the bookies are anticipating goals.
Big money returns could be yielded from a punt on who gets that all important first goal. Everton’s main man Romelu Lukaku and City’s forward sensation Sergio Aguero have both helped themselves to 11 goals in the league so far, which makes odds from Skybet of 11/2 for the Belgian and 3/1 for the Argentine to open the scoring on Sunday extremely tempting.
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