Man City v Arsenal: Premier League football betting preview, free tips & TV

Free football tips, best bets and analysis for Manchester City v Arsenal in the Premier League on Saturday.

Where to watch

Sky Sports Premier League & Main Event, 5.30pm, Saturday

Best bet

Arsenal +1.5 on Asian handicap
2pts 5-8 bet365

Team news

Manchester City
Sergio Aguero is back training but he and Gabriel Jesus are still absent. Kevin de Bruyne has been ruled out.

Arsenal
Kieran Tierney (Covid) is out.

Match preview

Mikel Arteta, who learned his coaching trade under Pep Guardiola, has already shown his former boss he's got what it takes to be a top-level manager and can further enhance his reputation by orchestrating a frustrating evening for Manchester City at The Etihad.

Arteta has made giant strides at Arsenal in his first job in management since emerging from Guardiola's wing and masterminded victory over City in an FA Cup semi-final in July.

And on current form the Gunners have got every chance of landing a blow against a Guardiola side who aren't at their most convincing.

Whether they can be trusted to get up over 90 minutes given they did fluff their lines at Liverpool, their one blemish to date, is up for debate, and maybe they still deserve to be 13-2 shots.

But these aren't normal times, City are a long way off their best and perhaps the visitors with the safety net of draw no bet or, better still, Arteta's side to oblige on the Asian handicap, are more tempting.

City simply don't look as though they should be long odds-on having been hammered 5-2 by Leicester on their last home start, held 1-1 at Leeds before the international break and with sufficient injury concerns to even have the usually unflappable Guardiola mildly perturbed.

Home advantage looks far less of an advantage at the moment anyway, as evidenced by the fact that there have been 19 away wins compared to 16 at home in the first four weeks of term.

Surprisingly, given no one team have played more than two away games yet, only four of the 20 top-flight teams have yet to register a road win.

The most recent away winners, of course, were Arsenal's rivals Tottenham who ran out 6-1 winners at Manchester United 13 days ago. And just to prove anything is possible this season, a couple of hours later Aston Villa had thrashed Liverpool 7-2.

So Arsenal to win at Manchester City hardly smacks of mission impossible – indeed, the 13-2 about the Londoners is pretty fair given they are set up to play at their best when teams come on to them and they can utilise the likes of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Willian, Nicolas Pepe or Alexandre Lacazette on the break.

City have got headaches, of that there's no doubt. Guardiola has brought in Ruben Dias to shore up a central defence which needs work. Benjamin Mendy is also a questionable choice at left-back. City are giving up five shots on target per match at the moment – only four top-flight teams are more exposed – and that's a serious issue.

At the other end of the pitch Guardiola doesn't have a fully match-fit number nine with Gabriel Jesus and Sergio Aguero only gingerly coming back to full health.

Hopefully, Arsenal will have learned lessons from their one defeat when they were comprehensively outplayed at Liverpool. But they didn't fold that night and were always in the game until the champions scored late on to win 3-1.

They are making giant strides under Arteta, look nicely balanced, stronger for Thomas Partey's arrival and, like Tottenham, they should be heading for Manchester feeling confident.

Key stat

Arsenal's seven matches this season have yielded 17 goals at 2.2 goals per game.

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