Southampton vs. Man City
Venue: St Mary’s Stadium
Kick off: 4PM
Manchester City make the trip to high-flying Southampton this afternoon on the back of successive draws that have further derailed their Premier League title hopes.
The Citizens are eight points adrift of leaders Liverpool with a game in hand, while Southampton are four points better off in third after a superb start to the campaign.
City seemed happy to accept a point from their recent derby clash with Manchester United, but there was little to celebrate following Tuesday’s 1-1 draw with West Bromwich Albion.
Ilkay Gundogan opened the scoring and it looked like being a routine win at that point, only for Ruben Dias’s own goal – plus a string of Sam Johnstone saves – to deny City.
Pep Guardiola accepted after the game that his side cannot afford to drop points against sides such as West Brom, who still went ahead and sacked boss Slaven Bilic after the match.
City have won back-to-back league games just once all season and are already playing catch up on Liverpool with two thirds of the season to go.
This trip to St Mary’s is not exactly the easiest of matches on the face of it, either, with Southampton in great form at the moment.
Ralph Hasenhuttl’s charges drew 1-1 away at Arsenal on Wednesday night, with Theo Walcott’s goal cancelled out by Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
That came on the back of successive wins over Brighton & Hove Albion and Sheffield United, the Saints having now lost only one of their last 11 league matches.
They won this corresponding fixture 1-0 last season, too, thanks to Che Adams’s strike – his first for the club – when the sides last faced off in July.
That ended a six-match losing run against City and Southampton will feel, on recent form, that they may well be the favourites to win this game and keep their outside title hopes alive.
Southampton possible XI: McCarthy, Walker-Peters, Bednarek, Vestergaard, Bertrand, Walcott, Ward-Prowse, Romeu, Armstrong, Adams, Ings.
Manchester City possible XI: Ederson, Walker, Stones, Dias, Cancelo, Fernandinho, Gundogan, Mahrez, De Bruyne, Sterling, Aguero.