Chelsea at Manchester City: FA Cup betting guide and tips
By Mike Malley
This is already the third meeting between these two sides this season, which is pretty remarkable and incredibly unfortunate for the club from the capital and its supporters. The Manchurians’ ownership is still in pursuit of completing the legendary quadruple with Pep Guardiola at the helm, so there’s no doubt the Catalan tactician wants to advance deep into, and potentially win, all of the smaller domestic competitions in addition to the Premier League. And with Erling Haaland, Kevin De Bruyne, and countless other talented players at his disposal, I’d back him to do so.
I’m pretty disappointed in my performance on the previous betting guide. I felt confident that we would see a high-scoring match with end-to-end action featuring two struggling defenses. It was an entertaining affair overall but failed to deliver on the goals. I was fortunate to hit on the Manchester City moneyline bet with solid value, but I won’t have the same opportunity on Sunday.
The Citizens are favored at -320 odds on the 90’ moneyline, so I’ll probably stay away from that play and instead target something against the spread. Taking the Blues +1.5 at -135 feels pretty safe considering how well they played last time out. I just hope we get to see more of the youngsters who gave serious effort in their substitute appearances and nearly drew Chelsea level in the second half.
A second bet I like, especially for its value, is the both teams to score prop at -115 odds. We all know City will be looking to put on a show in front of their fans, so I’m fairly confident the home side will find the back of the net at least once during the match.
As for the Blues, they simply have to up their scoring output at some point, don’t they? They’ve only scored three times since November 6 and currently average the fewest EPL goals per game of any side in the top half of the table.
Multiple Chelsea shots striking the woodwork on Thursday were unlucky, particularly the one that came from Chukwuemeka, but I’m banking on the fact that at least a few of these will start trickling into the goal.
As I mentioned in the previous guide, this Man City defense is not as dominant as past iterations have been, so Potter should instruct his forwards to be direct and get shots on target. I anticipate Guardiola will deploy Stefan Ortega in net for the cup match again. Unless the German shot-stopper regenerates as prime Neuer for his fifth start of the season, I like the odds of this bet cashing.