Manchester City vs Bournemouth 16/07/20

16 July 2020

Manchester City will look to maintain a 100% success rate in the Premier League H2Hs with Bournemouth (W9) when the two sides lock horns at the Etihad Stadium this midweek.

The hosts enter the round on the back of two identical 5-0 wins over Newcastle and Brighton, respectively, and are enjoying a five-game winning run at home in the Premier League. Impressively, each of those triumphs has been accompanied by a clean sheet and witnessed Manchester City score in both halves. With an average of 2.94 goals scored per Premier League home fixture, the Sky Blues boast the division’s best goalscoring record, having netted over 1.5 goals in all but two of their 17 top-flight home outings this season. What’s more, all three of City’s previous Premier League home clashes against the bottom-five sides have yielded a clean sheet and a full-time margin of at least two goals.

Meanwhile, the visitors had lost five Premier League games in a row before avoiding defeat in the last two (W1, D1), as they come into this meeting trailing 17th-placed Watford by three points. However, the Cherries have suffered eight consecutive league losses away from home heading into this round, conceding an average of 2.5 goals across those failures. Also, all three of Bournemouth’s previous top-flight trips to the current top-six sides have resulted in a defeat, despite Edie Howe’s team finding the opening goal on two of those occasions. Their disappointing away form seems unlikely to stop here, given that Bournemouth lost all four of their top-flight trips to the Etihad, each by at least a two-goal margin.