Chelsea against Manchester City is always an interesting and important game, but tomorrow’s edition promises even more intrigue than usual.
Both teams are in an unusual position. Chelsea came into the season with a huge amount of uncertainty hanging over them, but surprised most pundits with their strong start to the campaign. They lost on the opening day (to a weakened Man City, no less), but after that quickly found their feet and really looked to have gelled.
That culminated through a November – December run of 8 wins in a row in all competitions. By Christmas Eve they were miles ahead of expectations and had the chance to go top of the Premier League. That was as good as it got though – after that they had a winless run of 5 games, which they finally broke on Monday night with a 3-1 win over Wolves.
Meanwhile City have had a historically bad season all told. Nobody saw them regressing this much, and they’ve been forced into a January slew of signings similar to the ones we saw Chelsea indulge in in recent years.
Just when wins over Leicester, West Ham and Ipswich looked to be seeing them get back to their best, they’ve slipped up against Brentford and PSG. They don’t look as helpless as they did in December, but they’re not the fearsome force of previous years.
Chelsea have great chance if Jackson is in form
So who would you back tomorrow? It’s as hard a game to call as we’ve seen the Blues play all season. Sites like Betboom have City as pretty heavy favourites at evens, while Chelsea are at 2/1. That’s probably largely down to the home advantage Pep Guardiola’s team has, but still seems harsh on Maresca’s Blues.
Chelsea have not had the results they would want against strong sides all season – and that all began back in August with that limp defeat to City. This is a superb chance to pick off a big boy, and we’re confident that the way Guardiola sets up his team will play into our hands to a degree. We’ve got speed to burn on the counter and have hurt plenty of teams that way already this year.
A lot of it will come down to Nicolas Jackson in those spaces – if he has his shooting boots on and makes the right decisions in the final third we’ve got a great chance to get a big away win, especially with Ruben Dias out injured for the home side.
