Cardiff v Man City Tip

Nobody impressed more in the first week of the Premier League season than Manchester City, who eased to a 4-0 victory over Newcastle in Manuel Pellegrini’s first game in charge.

However, with all the talent that the former Malaga boss has at his disposal, it’s going to be tricky to guess his starting line-up and therefore potential good goalscorer tips, at least for a little while.

With that in mind I’m going to instead focus on the defensive might of the 2011-12 champions. Man City are nothing longer than 9/20 (BetVictor) to win in Wales, but much more tempting to do so to nil at best odds of 7/4 with Skybet. Kompany may be injured, but Nastasic may be back to add steel in the skipper’s absence, alongside Lescott.

Under Mancini, the Citizens kept a divisional high of 18 clean sheets in 38 league fixtures last term. That stat gets even better when you consider that there were no shutouts in the first six games of 2012-13. So, including the Newcastle game last week, the Blues have kept 19 clean sheets in their last 33 league outings; that’s a 58% hit rate.

Cardiff are unaccustomed to this level of football and may find themselves overawed by the occasion. They only managed one shot on target at West Ham last week and we shouldn’t expect them to get any more joy out of Man City.