Atalanta v Man City: All-or-nothing for La Dea

THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE continues on Wednesday night. We asked Tom Love (@TomLove_18) to source the best bets from Manchester City's trip to Atalanta.

Atalanta v Manchester City | Wednesday 6th November 2019, 20:00 | BT Sport

The reverse match between these two certainly lived up to its billing with six goals being scored and even a red card being shown. It leaves Atalanta in a rather invidious position with zero points to their name in a group they would’ve been confident in qualifying from.

La Dea are not going to get anywhere when you’re conceding an average of 3.67 goals per-game – even for Atalanta and that’s nothing new. For all their attacking bravery and brilliance, they’re just not good enough at the back and it will be to their detriment against the better sides who have the individual quality to punish them.

Surprisingly the recent absence of last season's top scorer Duvan Zapata has had little effect on La Dea’s attacking output. Fellow Colombian Luis Muriel has stepped in admirably with eight goals in five games and with the craft and quality of Josip Ilicic and Papau Gomez in the half spaces they can be hard to get a hold on.

I did have this side down as a dark horse for the competition but they’ve disappointed in all honesty. Naivety seems to be their achilles heel and although their gung-ho approach under Gian Piero Gasperini has paid dividends in Serie A it’s not translated to the UCL. They have to win here really if they’re to have any serious chance of going through and it should make for another entertaining and watchable affair as the English champions make the trip to their temporary home San Siro in nearby Milan.

Pep Guardiola's group have conquered all before them in this group and have fully deserved their comfortable wins. Surely Pep will be wanting to get the group sewn up ASAP so he can field a second string to rest his key men for the Premier League. It will be interesting to see if he goes full strength here though with the mammoth game against Liverpool coming up on Sunday,.

The betting angles

Goals have been rife in this group and given the attacking potency of both sides it’s no surprise to see the goal line as big as 3.75. It wouldn’t surprised me if that paid out but wanting five goals for a full payout isn’t really my bag so I’ll dip into some alternative markets.

One player who goes slightly under the radar for the Bergamo boys is Ukrainian international Ruslan Malinovskiy. He bagged twice on international duty recently and his performances for his nation in a more advanced role has clearly impressed Gasperini who’s decided to push him further up the pitch.

Malinovskiy averaged 3.3 shots in the Nations League campaign and is averaging 2.1 shots in Serie A but that figure shoots up when he’s in an attacking midfield role. SkyBet go 5/6 on him registering 2+ shots and in a game where they have to attack and for a side averaging over 20 shots per-game in Serie A.

I also think that the 5/1 available (VBet) on a red card to be shown is of interest. It’s an all or nothing game for the hosts here and that means they could be a bit more reckless. Three of their last four games have seen a red card including the reverse fixture with Phil Foden been given his marching orders.

Two of Manchester City’s past four have seen a red been shown and the Blue moon have been much more ill disciplined, they’re seeing over 20 Booking Points on average these days.

Best Bets

Atalanta v Manchester City – Ruslan Malinovskiy to have 2+ shots (5/6 SkyBet)

Atalanta v Manchester City – A red card to be shown (5/1 VBet)