Man City v Everton Tip

So far Manchester City’s defence of their Premier League title has been carried out with an efficiency that has rarely seen the heights hit of last season. They are unbeaten in their first 14 top flight matches and the wins have almost always come by a narrow margin. The following statistics show how close most of the champions’ fixtures have been.

Draws: 5 (Liverpool, Stoke, Arsenal, West Ham, Chelsea - 4 of 5 away)
Wins by 1 goal: 5 (Southampton, Fulham, WBA, Swansea, Spurs)
Wins by 2 goals: 2 (QPR, Wigan)
Wins by more than 2 goals: 2 (Sunderland, Villa)

So we can see that only two out of 14 City fixtures have been remotely one-sided and even the QPR and Wigan victories were only given a comfortable looking gloss by late goals. The citizens have either drawn, or won by the odd goal, in 10 out of 14 games - that’s 71% of the time.

This grinding out of results should make them a good bet in the margin of victory market. So how will they fare against Everton?

Well, a closer look at the stats suggests that the Toffees are very unlikely to win (no league visitors have won at the Etihad in two years) and very unlikely to get hammered - they are a lot better than Sunderland and Villa.

Are they a good shout for the draw? The statistics again suggest no. Mancini’s men have have won a remarkable 24 of the last 26 on their own patch in the Premier League. As we can see confirmed by the figures above, dropped points are only really coming on the road. Furthermore, the Toffees are enduring a bit of a sticky patch, currently on a three match winless streak.

With all this in mind, a narrow victory for the hosts looks on the cards. The likes of Fulham, WBA, Swansea and Spurs are all having pretty good seasons, similar to that of Everton, and City beat them all by 1 goal. At 11/4 (Bluesquare) they are a decent price to continue the trend on Saturday.