Man City v Swansea City: Scoreline Tip

Manchester City matches are generally pretty good ones for correct scoreline bets. Mancini’s side have become increasingly adept at winning the fixtures they should win, but they rarely blow the opposition away. With this in mind we can quickly limit our options down to a low scoring home win at the newly re-named Etihad Stadium.

If we look at City’s results in similar fixtures in 2010-11 we’ll see a definite pattern emerging. Early in the season there were slip-up draws at home to Blackburn (1-1) and Birmingham City (0-0). After that we can see that a whole host of the so-called ‘lesser teams were defeated by a one goal margin at Eastlands. Blackpool, Bolton, Wolves, West Ham and Wigan all fit into that category. In other words as City improved, they normally got the job done, if only just.

Of course there were standout performances such as the 5-0 hammering of Sunderland but they were very much the exception. Crucially, with Aguero and Tezez likely to be substitutes at best on Monday night, the likelihood of going goal-crazy is remote.

Further to that we should give Swansea City some credit. The Premier League’s first ever Welsh side forged a reputation as a team who could defend doggedly in the Championship. Brendan Rodgers’s troops conceded 16 goals less than second-placed Norwich last term and that decent level of organisation shouldn’t disappear overnight. However, they are likely to have influential captain Gary Monk out, and without him any hopes of pulling off a shock result seem unlikely.

City don’t have any significant injury or fitness concerns in defence and this makes them a really strong bet for a clean sheet. Having acknowledged the pattern of wins by a single goal margin, the scoreline to back has to be 1-0 to Man City at best odds of 13/2 with Betfred.