Sunday Soccer Stats
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Man City v Chelsea, Sun 16:00
Man City have been made favourites for the title after their comfy win in the opening round while Chelsea could only pick up a point at home. While City looked impressive against West Brom they were in truth not tested by a team that were too happy to sit back and concede the initiative from the first whistle.
City’s Monday night win was their seventh in a row in the league and they are also riding a seven-game winning streak at the Etihad. However, they’ve won just one of their eight games against top-three finishers in the past two seasons and Manuel Pellegrini is yet to find a way to beat Jose Mourinho in the league. Three of their four home matches against these teams have had fewer than three goals as did eight of their 13 home games last season excluding against the bottom six.
Jose Mourinho lost on his first trip to Man City as Chelsea manager, back in 2004, but since then his Chelsea teams have lost just twice in 20 Premier League visits to Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City and Man Utd. There is one trend from these matches that is more significant than any other relating to this match and that is that 15 of the last 16 of these games have had fewer than three goals with seven having no more than a single strike. Seven of the last 10 have actually finished all-square (with just 14 goals in total) and Mourinho would undoubtedly settle for a point and move on to the next battle.
With Vincent Kompany fit again City look to have a solid defensive unit and with the pace and trickery of Raheem Sterling, Sergio Aguero and David Silva up front Chelsea will need to make sure they don’t over-commit when going forward. Branislav Ivanovic looked like he was playing on ice against Jefferson Montero last week and Mourinho will almost certainly add an extra holding midfielder to provide the defence greater protection.
All five of Chelsea’s away draws last season came after being level at half-time and given Mourinho will look to keep things tight the Draw/Draw double at 5.5 looks better value that the straight draw. Under 2.5 Goals, however, has to be the standout bet at 1.91 with Under 1.5 Goals at 3.7 also a great price. If anything Mourinho has been even more negative in these big matches during his second Chelsea spell and three of their eight trips to Arsenal, Liverpool and the two Manchester teams in this time have finished 0-0. Given that the nil-nil has to be backed at 11.0.
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