Can Alan Pardew’s crew keep high-scoring Manchester City at bay? We look at the juiciest bets from the pick of the weekend’s televised games.
Would anyone like to be playing Manchester City right now? Scoring goals like they are about to be banned by Fifa (we wouldn’t put it past Blatter) they stuffed six past sorry West Ham in midweek and even though this game is being played in St James’ Park, City have been rattling them in on their travels lately too.
Three past Swansea on New Year’s Day, four past Fulham on December 21 and three past Bayern Munich on December 10 suggest that no matter where they are playing, City are bloody lethal right now.
With that in mind, City to score four or more at 19/4 is more than a little tempting, and they are 9/5 to score more than 2.5, which based on current form sounds like free money to us.
In fairness to Newcastle, they have been pretty solid, if unspectacular at home, conceding a respectable 10 in 10 games, but their best defender Mathieu Debuchy is suspended for this one, so we simply can’t see them keeping a clean sheet on Sunday.
However, back in late October, City visited St James’ Park in the Capital One Cup and the game ended 0-0 after normal time before two goals in extra time put Manuel Pellegrini’s men through. The odds on another 0-0 are a huge 14/1 if you are feeling brave.
If you believe there will be at least one goal, then the first goalscorer market is wide open. City have goal scorers all over the pitch. There’s no Roger Johnson for Yaya Toure to torment on Sunday but the newly crowned African Footballer of the year is available at 8/1 to net first. Considering his free-kick prowess, that could be a profitable pick.
Sergio Aguero is still out (terrifying, isn’t it) so Alvaro Negredo and Edin Dzeko have stepped up and you can back them at 4/1 and 5/1 respectively to open the scoring. Top of the Newcastle list is Loic Remy at 7s, while you can get Shola Ameobi at 9s.
To be honest, we reckon there is only one winner here and it ain’t the guys in black and white. City to win and over 2.5 goals to be scored in the game looks to be almost a cert to us so at 13/10 we’ll be investing mainly in that, with a few bob on Toure to score first too.
