Huddersfield Town vs. Man City
Venue: John Smith’s Stadium
Kick off: 2:30PM
Champions Manchester City will continue their Premier League title charge this afternoon when they travel to the John Smith’s Stadium to take on managerless Huddersfield Town.
City are seven points behind Liverpool, but all they can do right now is keep within touching distance of the league leaders.
The 2-1 win over Jurgen Klopp’s side at the start of this month breathed new life into their title defence and also began a scintillating run of form which has seen City score 21 goals in their four outings so far in 2019.
The champions were ruthless in 7-0 and 9-0 wins over Rotherham United and Burton Albion respectively, and some Huddersfield fans may be fearful of a similar drubbing given that they look so certain to be joining those teams in the realms of the lower leagues sooner rather than later.
Worryingly for the Terriers, City’s record victory actually came in this fixture, and they hit Wagner’s side for six earlier in the campaign.
Pep Guardiola will be wary of allowing complacency to creep in following the blip around Christmas, though, and his side produced a thoroughly professional showing en route to a 3-0 triumph over 10-man Wolverhampton Wanderers on Monday night.
Those three goals took City up to 99 across all competitions this season – comfortably more than any other team in Europe’s top five leagues – and 19 of those have come in their last three outings, one more than Huddersfield have managed in their last 36.
It is not just in attack that Man City boast an impressive record, though, with clean sheets in their last three games and a joint-league-low seven goals conceded away from home so far this season.
Today’s match will be their first away from home since the turn of the year, and Huddersfield may find a glimmer of hope in the fact that the champions only won one of their final four away games of 2018, not including penalty shootouts.
The expectation will be for Guardiola’s side to run riot once again, though, and doing so would shift the pressure back on to Liverpool going into the FA Cup fourth round break.
On the other hand, the Terriers are rooted to the bottom of the table following a dreadful run of form. They prop up the rest in the Premier League table after 22 games, having amassed just 11 points so far to leave themselves already eight points adrift of safety.
It is a position from which no team has ever avoided finishing bottom – yet alone managed to survive – so whoever takes the reins following David Wagner’s departure will have an almighty challenge to turn things around.
Huddersfield possible XI: Lossl, Smith, Zanka, Schindler, Durm, Puncheon, Hogg, Billing, Kachinga, Pritchard, Mounie.
Man City possible XI: Ederson, Walker, Stones, Laporte, Delph, De Bruyne, Fernandinho, D Silva, Sterling, Aguero, Sane.