Mighty Manchester City vs Struggling Newcastle, a pre-match analysis

It’s time to make a pre-match analysis of the Premier League  Saturday’s (13.01.2024) clash between Manchester City and Newcastle , scheduled to take place at St. James Park. Pep Guardiola‘s City, just five points off Liverpool with a game in hand, looks promising in the EPL title race.  

It’s a potential mouthwatering encounter between mighty Man City and struggling but formidable Newcastle. 

City, having won its last game against Sheffield United comfortably, with 40 points in its kitty, is comfortably placed at 3rd spot in the table. On other hand Newcastle, sandwiched between 8th placed Man United and 10th placed Chelsea, must be looking to bounce back after their 3 back to back defeats in their current EPL run. Chip seems down for Newcastle, it remains to be seen how they turn them up.

How Newcastle Look Going 

Though, in Newcastle’s last game against Liverpool there were some dodgy VAR decisions, but still they were totally outplayed at Anfield. The Liverpool attack was too hot to handle for the Newcastle defence. They couldn’t stop Liverpool from banging their goal net 4 times but they managed to make the score line a bit respectable with 2 goals from Alexander Isak and Sven Botman.

Things which may make an already miserable run of Newcastle even more worse is their long list of injured players with names like Nick Pope, Matt Targett, Jacob Murphy, Harvey Barnes, Callum Wilson, Joseph Willock, Elliot Anderson and Javier Manquillo. 

Long term suspension of Sandro Tonali is an added reason to feel crippled for Newcastle. They will have to do something more than their 100% against mighty looking Manchester City to bring their derailed run back to the track, which looks quite difficult but not impossible.

Newcastle’s final eleven is still not clear but it may look like this: Dubravka (GK), Burn, Schar, Botman, Livramento, Guimaraes, Longstaff, Miley, Joelinton, Gordon and Isak.

Whats up for Man City

Things for City are not clumsy like Newcastle. Besides most of the players Phil Foden and Julian Alvarez, City’s young guns, are going great as usual. 

A little reason for their worry may be John Stones’ possible exclusion from the match due to a foot injury, but at the same time they hope to see the return of Erling Haaland in this weekend’s game. 

City’s Lineup may look like this: Ederson (GK), Gvardiol, Walker, Ake, Akanji, Kovacic, Silva, Grealish, Rodri, Foden and Alvarez

Manchester City is quite clearly a hot favourite for this game but still we must remember that the best results are produced by the teams when they look unlikely to do so.