Man City travel to Merseyside in a bid to keep up the pressure on title leaders Chelsea by taking three points from Goodison Park on Sunday. They will take heart from their 5-0 demolition of West Ham in the FA Cup last weekend, while Everton will be devastated at the nature of their elimination at the hands of Leicester. The Toffees are likely to make it tough for Man City, but Pep Guardiola’s men should be able to leave here with a vital win.
Inconsistency has cost Everton in their first season under Ronald Koeman. They started the season well, only to slide down the table on the back of a horrendous run of results. Now every time they seem to be on the brink of a mini-revival, they let their fans down with a poor performance. They beat Arsenal, their first win in six games, only to lose to arch-rivals Liverpool next time out. They then beat Leicester, putting in a great performance, only to then drop points at lowly Hull. They impressed by beating Southampton 3-0 at home, filling their fans with optimism ahead of the FA Cup third round, only to be unceremoniously dumped out by the same Leicester team they had so recently beaten.
For years Everton have had plenty of excellent individual players, but have been less than the sum of their parts. There are signs that they are becoming a more cohesive unit under Koeman, but there is still a lot of work to do.
Inconsistency has also dogged Man City this season, and Guardiola has frequently cut a miserable figure on the touchline. They got off to a flying start, winning seven games in a row, but they have struggled for most of the season since then and now have three draws and four defeats from 20 games, leaving them seven points behind Chelsea. But they are still very much in the title race and have the players to carve teams open, as they proved away at West Ham, where Sergio Aguero, David Silva, Raheem Sterling and Yaya Toure led the east Londoners a merry dance.
The key for City is to get the balance in the team right. They are poor defensively and some bizarre formations from Guardiola haven’t helped matters. At times they have played three at the back, and those three defenders have spent much of the game bombing up the pitch to join in attacks, leaving them horribly exposed at the back on many occasions and much to their detriment. Yet in recent weeks there are signs that Guardiola has reined it in a bit, with Gael Clichy and Bacary Sagna playing like normal full-backs and John Stones and Nicolas Otamendi staying back and defending. They are going to be prone to the occasional howler, as they play out from the back too much and the goalkeeper is unconvincing, but without Aleksandar Kolarov marauding all over the place they look a lot tighter, as they showed in keeping a clean sheet against West Ham.
You would expect Everton to create chances in this game, and their forwards will be desperate to gives Stones, their former teammate, a hard time, but City should have enough about them to outscore Everton. They drew 1-1 earlier in the season, but that was because City missed two penalties. Now that Toure is back in the side, that is unlikely to happen again, and they should sneak a narrow win here. The odds are attractive, with the likes of Bet365 offering 1.85 while other green listed bookmakers are going to 1.88. That looks a good bet as City should be full of confidence following that 5-0 win. Another bet worth considering is the 2.08 that 888 Sport and Unibet are offering on Sergio Aguero scoring at any time. He is looking back to his deadly best since returning from suspension, and he ran the West Ham defence ragged. Everton have lost the defensive solidity they enjoyed under David Moyes – Koeman has not quite corrected the Roberto Martinez era yet – and there should be gaps for Aguero to exploit with his pace and movement.
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