Swansea City v Manchester City Betting Tips

As expected, Manchester City came through in the League Cup match against Swansea on Wednesday night despite a changed side. I would expect a more polished performance from Pep Guardiola’s side this weekend as they go back to full strength.

The Swans looked better against City on Tuesday than they have for a while and managed to carve out a number of opportunities before finally scoring a consolation in the 93rd minute. However, we must of course take the whole match in context. It was an average performance at home when the players should really have been fired up for it given it was a weakened Manchester City team.

The lack of clinical finishing at Swansea was once again brought into question as they failed to take at least two incredibly clear cut chances after some incredibly sloppy play by both Willy Caballero and John Stones. Going into the Premier League where the intensity is on another level, they will seriously find it tough to score goals if they could not do it in the League Cup – despite being given some amazing opportunities.

Defensively I cannot see them coping with a full-strength Manchester City side that will welcome the likes of Sergio Aguero back and they would struggle to score goals against the poorer sides in the division, never mind the best.

Man City pretty much strolled through that game without much effort and, arguably, they were lucky not to be on the end of an embarrassing defeat after gifting Swansea some wonderful chances. The only real concern from the night was when defender Vincent Kompany, who had not played in four months, had to hobble off with an injury in the dying embers of the match.

It is easy to say Kompnay should not have played the full 90 minutes, especially as City were 2-0 up, but hindsight is a wonderful thing and we would be saying how good it was that he stayed on for the entire match if he did not receive that knock.

Confidence is boiling over at the Etihad under Pep Guardiola and quite frankly they look invincible at the moment with a 100% record in all competitions which does not look like ending any time soon. It’s fancied that whoever finishes above Manchester City will win the Premier League this season.

We will no doubt see a complete change in personnel from Wednesday night and Guardiola will surely revert back to the type of team that beat Bournemouth last weekend. Just when you thought things could not get better for the Citizens, they will welcome Argentina striker Sergio Aguero back into the mix after his three match ban. The former Atletico Madrid man has scored in all but one match he has played in this season and, after a nice rest, will be raring to go at the Liberty on Saturday.

It will be interesting to see if Guardiola drops in-form Nigerian striker Kelechi Iheanacho for the match, the fact he played on Wednesday night suggests that he probably will. Undoubtedly harsh on the 19-year-old (who has scored in his last two Premier League games) but when you have a striker like Aguero on the bench, it would be foolish to leave him out. Having said that I would expect the youngster to come on and make an impact at some point.

Given the incredible form of the two above-mentioned strikers I think the market on both of them to score anytime at odds of 5/2 is certainly worth a go.

You cannot go against a Manchester City win in this match and it would be a complete waste of money if you did so. However, it is about trying to find the right market. I would look at backing Manchester City to win by a margin of two or more goals at 10/11. Given Manchester City’s incredibly goal record this season another big win looks on the cards and this is definitely a bet worth placing.

It is also worth pointing out that, apart from the Premier League opener against Sunderland, Manchester City have beaten all sides in the bottom half of the table by at least two goals.

All of our Premier League tips can be found here.