Manchester City vs Southampton Betting Preview & Tips

MANCHESTER CITY host Southampton on Wednesday night in the Premier League. Daniel McCulloch (@DMcCulloch1984) shares his favourite fancies.

Manchester City vs Southampton | Wednesday 10th March 2021, 18:00 | Sky Sports

As is becoming a bit of a habit, Manchester United defeated their closest rivals when the odds appeared to be stacked against them and The Citizens run of 21 victories came to an abrupt end, with a 2-0 defeat on Sunday.

Despite having 23 attempts against United, City posted an xG of 1.28 as they struggled to create clear chances and when they looked to be in a position to score, they forgot to either bring the ball under control or make a connection with it.

I wouldn’t read too much in to that defeat, however. It may have been a completely different encounter had Pep Guardiola’s side not conceded a penalty in the opening couple of minutes. As their record suggests, they had been in exemplary form before that and I expect another victory for the home side on Wednesday night.

Their opponents Southampton ended a dreadful run at the weekend with victory over Sheffield United. The Saints had gained just one point from 27 prior to that and their victory came at a cost, with star striker Danny Ings injured in that encounter and ruled out for four weeks.

One thing that has been common with City games this term is that their games have averaged far fewer goals than we are used to. For example, league games this term have averaged 2.78 goals a game this season, compared to 3.61 last and across their spell of 21 victories, 12 of them featured three goals or fewer.

Southampton have had problems defensively on occasion this season (notably the 9-0 defeat to Manchester United) but actually only three of their last 20 matches have seen four goals or more. They lost 1-0 to City in the reverse fixture and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar scoreline here.

City to win and under 3.5 goals is 21/20 with Boylesports so I will go with that. I did consider a couple of players in the goal scoring market but with so much rotation seen recently I will keep it simple and go with quite a conservative selection.