Preview: Liverpool – Manchester City 1.3.2015
Last season’s combatants for the Premier League trophy go head to head again at Anfield Road this Sunday. Both come from agonizing mid-week defeats in Europe. City may still claim to have a remote chance to overcome Barcelona and enter the quarter finals of the Champions League, but Liverpool went crashing out on Penalties in the Europa League and now have very little to show for this season.
Liverpools only hope now lies in rescuing a top 4 spot, and to do so they must overcome City this Sunday. Three points will bring them past Soton and level with Arsenal in 4th position. But City Manager Manuel Pellegrini believes that Liverpools draining away game to Besiktas may give City an advantage in the build-up to this game.
City have a full squad to pick from while Liverpool saw a string of important players sidelined against Besiktas in mid-week: Lucas Leiva, Mamadou Sakho, Jordan Henderson, Steven Gerrard and Glen Johnson are all doubtful for the match.
Liverpool enjoy a strong statistical upper-hand against City at home as they have not been defeated in the last 12 outings between the clubs at Anfield. In addition they are undefeated in their last 10 Premier League games and will be hoping to continue their good run. The last defeat came to the other team from Manchester on December 14th.
City are also strong on form and have only been beaten once in their last 17 Premier League games, and managed an impressive 9 goals in their last two games. Sergio Aguero is back at his best and David Silva has his best season so far. There are more doubts at the back where Vincent Kompany made a crucial error against Barcelona on their opening goal. Joe Hart will be buoyant after saving a penalty against Lionel Messi and will be hard to get past this weekend as well.
Possible line-ups:
Fun fact: Sergio Aguero has scored 17 goals so far this season. The whole Liverpool line-ip below have managed 20 between them.
What the bookies say
William Hill has “City to win and Sergio Aguero on the score sheet” at 7:2. And if you predict a narrow 3-2 win to City (the exact opposite result as last season) you get a stunning 22:1. Check out more bets at: betting.williamhill
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About The Author
svenn
Established the Manchester City supporters' homepage in November 1994 which at the time was the first ever Web-page dedicated to Manchester City. Became part of the MCIVTA-team in the early days, and is still maintainer of the site mcivta.com which has merged the newsletter and the Supporters homepage into one service.