Manchester City unlikely to ease up against hapless Huddersfield

Premier League
Sky Sports Premier League & Main Event, 1.30pm Sunday

Any thought that Manchester City might have lightened up once the Premier League title had been claimed looks miles off the mark and spells trouble for Huddersfield.

Since being handed the championship by Manchester United, City have walloped Swansea 5-0 and won 4-1 at an absolute canter at West Ham.

Having done no favours to either of those strugglers, it seems clear there will be no charity from Pep Guardiola as City go record-hunting over the final week of term.

There will be a party atmosphere at the Etihad on the day when they collect the trophy, but there’s a ruthlessness about the champs that suggests Guardiola won’t tolerate any showboating.

And if City are on their game, the question is can Huddersfield stop them?

They tried their best in the game at the John Smith’s Stadium in November, a match they lost 2-1.

But the Premier League adventure has turned sour for Town in recent weeks. David Wagner puts a jovial face on affairs, but top-flight safety, which looked odds-on a few weeks back, is now in danger after a run of one win in seven, a set of fixtures which have yielded just two goals.

They’ve still got Chelsea and Arsenal to come so could quite probably get no points from their last three matches and 35 points is unlikely to be enough.

Last week’s 2-0 home defeat by Everton was an absolute sickener and there seems little Wagner can do at this stage other than preach shape and organisation and hope City’s galacticos have an off day.

So bets to consider include Manchester City and over 3.5 goals at 20-23, a combination which has copped 16 times so far. City and over 4.5 has come in nine times and is a 6-4 shot.

To win to nil (for a 16th time) is no bigger than 6-10 and that’s still longer odds than the City-City double result. To win both halves at 4-6 is arguably marginally better value – they’ve done that 16 times over the course of this extraordinary campaign.

Bear in mind that Huddersfield have failed to find the net in 19 of their 35 matches and are the division’s joint lowest scorers so there won’t be a great deal coming back from the Yorkshiremen.

The win to nil looks the bet, but presuming City find their scoring touch, how about over 2.5 and one team not to score, effectively a 3-0, 4-0, 5-0 scoreline, and upwards? That bet has been a winning bet on nine occasions for City in 2017-18.

Recommendation
Over 2.5 goals & one team not to score
1pt 13-10 Coral

Bet on this match at Soccerbase.com

Premier League standings

Team news

Man City
David Silva is available again while Vincent Kompany and John Stones hope to have shaken off knocks.

Huddersfield
Tom Ince (hamstring) is a major doubt. Michael Hefele is back in consideration after a lengthy lay-off. Danny Williams is out.

Key stat
Manchester City have scored 75 goals more than Huddersfield in 35 league matches.

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