Football betting tips: Super Sunday
1.5pts 50+ booking points at 5/6 (Sky Bet)
1pt Manchester City to win at 3/1 (bet365)
1pt Ederson to be shown a card at 9/2 (Sky Bet, bet365)
0.5pt Man City to win and Ederson to be shown a card at 20/1 (bet365)
1.5pts Erling Haaland to score anytime at 2/1 (Sky Bet, bet365)
0.5pt Josko Gvardiol to score anytime at 14/1 (Betfair, Paddy Power)
BuildABet @ 30/1
- Haaland to score anytime
- Ederson to be shown a card
- Man City to win
- 50+ booking points
Hell hath no fury like a protege scorned.
It's perhaps a stretch to suggest Mikel Arteta became angry and vengeful towards Pep Guardiola after a pair of defeats by his former mentor proved Premier League title-defining two years ago, but it certainly led to a change in his approach; we can probably draw a direct line from those chastening losses to his shift from Mini Guardiola into Mini Mourinho.
Last season Arsenal refused to open up when facing Manchester City, instead resorting to the kind of anti-football pragmatism the Special One would've been proud to witness John Terry, Pepe or Walter Samuel direct in place of the comparatively vanilla Gabriel.
Hard-fought home win and two scrappy away draws - the most recent of which they deserved victory in, denied in the 98th minute after a first-half red card - have been the net result, ending City's sequence of 12 straight league wins over the Gunners.
In September, it all got a bit petty.
Unseen footage as chaos erupted between the Man City and Arsenal benches after John Stones' late equaliser 🍿 pic.twitter.com/7QWr8rW0xc
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) September 24, 2024
Guardiola's side may be off the pace in the current title race, but successive season-long battles has created the kind of rivalry sorely lacking in recent years.
Very much unnoticed, these are the top flight's in-form teams in 2025 too, setting us up perfectly for what ought to be a cracker.
What are the best bets?
The scenes at the end of the sides' last meeting were far from rare, though they did fall towards the extreme end of the scale.
Nine cards (including Leandro Trossard's two first-half bookings) were dished out that day, taking the total number of BOOKING POINTS to 275 in five league games since this became a real rivalry in 2022.
The 55-point average is dragged down by one fixture seeing only two yellow cards, but that low-event goalless draw in the latter part of last season, when the title race was going to the wire, is very much an anomaly.
Even the Community Shield, little more than a friendly, saw four yellows, so the 5/6 about 50+ BOOKING POINTS is advised.
Side with overpriced City
City head into this game on a four-match winless streak in all competitions against Arsenal, a run they will obviously be determined to break.
After a season beset by issues, Guardiola does seem to have turned his team's fortunes around - at least to some degree. Unbeaten in six top-flight games (W4 D2) scoring 18 goals, a trip to a side unbeaten in 13 league matches (W8 D5) will be the toughest test yet of this reshaped City team.
The resilience they showed to fight back and beat both Chelsea and Club Brugge 3-1 is enough to embolden me to back MANCHESTER CITY at an outstanding 3/1.
In early December they were 9/4 to win at Liverpool when in the midst of their crisis. Here, we have much more than just hope.
Eyes on Ederson
As the spikiness of this rivalry has developed, so too has the role of EDERSON in it.
In the teams' last five league meetings, a goalkeeper has been SHOWN A CARD in four of them - including each of the last three. The Brazilian has been the culprit on three occasions, twice at the Emirates.
While 9/2 may seem short for a keeper to be booked, we are very much playing the situation. At 20/1, combining MAN CITY WIN & EDERSON CARD is also worthwhile.
Further help comes from the referee appointment, with Peter Bankes booking six goalkeepers in 19 games this season, including handing Ederson one of the three bookings he's already collected.
Go for goalscorers
Rounding off a very City-centric preview are two goalscorers who look superb value.
JOSKO GVARDIOL at 14/1 and ERLING HAALAND at 2/1 both require little explanation, so I won't labour the points.
Since scoring his first Manchester City goal in April, GVARDIOL has developed into one of European football's most reliable goalscoring defenders, scoring 10 times in 39 Premier League and Champions League appearances, including five already this term.
As much a threat in open play as at set-pieces, he could expose Arsenal's issues at right-back.
As for HAALAND, his barren run of three goals in 13 league games is long over.
- CLICK HERE to back Gvardiol to score anytime with Sky Bet
- CLICK HERE to back Haaland to score anytime with Sky Bet
The Norwegian has scored five in five and it's frankly astonishing firms are willing to put him up at 2/1, no matter the opponent.
Team news
Myles Lewis-Skelly is available for Arsenal after his red card against Wolves was overturned but Riccardo Calafiori is pushing to start anyway.
Ben White, Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Jesus all remain sidelined.
City remain without Ruben Dias and Nathan Ake. Jeremy Doku is not expected to be fit yet either, while Oscar Bobb and Rodri are long-term absentees.
Abdukodir Khusanov and Omar Marmoush are eligible again and could come in while Savinho's impact off the bench against Club Brugge means he may start.
Predicted line-ups
Arsenal: Raya; Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly; Rice, Partey, Odegaard; Trossard, Havertz, Martinelli.
Man City: Ederson; Nunes, Stones, Akanji, Gvardiol; Silva, Kovacic, De Bruyne; Foden, Haaland, Savinho.
Match facts
- Arsenal won this exact fixture 1-0 last season – they last won consecutive home league games against Man City between 2005-06 and 2008-09 (a run of four).
- Having won 12 consecutive league games against Arsenal between 2017 and 2023, Manchester City are now winless in their last three against the Gunners (D2 L1).
- Arsenal are unbeaten in 13 Premier League matches (W8 D5) and have won the most points of any side from MD11 onwards (29). The Gunners have never had a longer unbeaten run under Mikel Arteta, last going 14 without defeat between August and December 2018 under Unai Emery.
- Manchester City are unbeaten in six Premier League games (W4 D2) and only Newcastle (15) have won more points since Christmas than City (14), while City have scored the most goals in that time (18).
- Manchester City have lost just one of their last 40 Premier League matches played from January until the end of the campaign (W33 D6), losing 1-0 to Brentford on the final day of 2022-23. They are unbeaten in their last 23 of these games across the last two campaigns (W19 D4), scoring 66 goals at an average of 2.9 per game.
- Arsenal have scored the most goals via set pieces (12, excl. pens) in the Premier League this season, while opponents Manchester City have conceded the joint fewest of these goals (2, level with Brentford). One of those was against the Gunners earlier in the season however, with five of the last 10 goals that Arsenal have netted against City coming via corners.
- 39.6% of the minutes played by Manchester City players in the Premier League this season have been given to players aged 30 or older, the second-highest percentage in a Premier League season for City behind the 2016-17 campaign (54%).
- Since Mikel Arteta’s first Premier League game in charge of Arsenal, the Gunners have received more red cards than any other side (19). Despite this, Arsenal rank 23rd out of the 27 teams to feature in that time for fouls per game (10.1).
- Erling Haaland has scored five goals in his last five Premier League appearances for Man City, two more than he’d managed in his previous 13 games combined (3). He’s exceeded his xG by 1.1 in his last five games (5 goals vs 3.9 xG), having underperformed by 5.2 goals in his previous 13 (3 goals vs 8.2 xG).
- Man City’s Phil Foden scored more Premier League goals in January than any other player, scoring six goals from six shots on target. He was the fifth player on record (2003-04 onwards) to score as many as six goals with every shot on target in a month, along with Jermain Defoe in March 2008, Dimitar Berbatov in December 2011, Sergio Agüero in August 2019 and Taiwo Awoniyi in May 2023 (all six goals).
Odds correct at 1330 GMT (31/01/25)
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