Manchester City vs Chelsea: Most Important EPL Game This Season
By Chris Buneo
With this weekend comes perhaps the biggest and most anticipated match in the Premier League this season. On Saturday at 12:30pm Eastern Time, Manchester City will travel to Stamford Bridge to take on current league leaders Chelsea. As an Arsenal fan, I would give anything to see City win this game and come that much closer to overtaking Chelsea. If you don’t follow the Premier League, you may not know that this is a huge game for both teams involved, and I’m going to tell you why.
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Manchester City has been on the rise in the Premier League these last couple years, receiving a lot of money from the Middle East, and pushing to their first Premier League title at the end of the 2011-12 season. Small side note, if you’re not familiar with the incredible events that occurred on the last day of the league in 2012. I highly suggest checking out this truly amazing video below.
After a 2012-13 season where Man United won their 13th Premier League title, City once again won the league in 2013-14. They currently sit in second, five points behind Chelsea. If they win this weekend, they’ll sit just two points behind Chelsea. This will give them a much better chance to jump ahead of them in the next few weeks. Their three fixtures after Chelsea being against Hull, Stoke, and Newcastle, while Chelsea has a slightly, but not much more more difficult three weeks playing Aston Villa, Everton, and Burnley.
Chelsea have been in top-notch form since day one of this Premier League season. The team has several world-class players, and one of the best managers in all of soccer, Jose Mourinho. They haven’t lost or drawn at home in a whopping 10 games, and went on a 14-game unbeaten streak, which ended when Tottenham trounced them 5-3 at White Hart Lane. However, a lot of their success can be attributed to one man, Diego Costa.
Costa has scored 17 goals for Chelsea this season, the most by anyone in the Premier League. The reason I bring this up, is that as it stands, Costa won’t be playing for Chelsea against Man City. In Chelsea’s Capital One Cup Semifinal game against Liverpool, Costa stamped on two different players’ legs and feet, and will serve a 3 match ban ruling him out against City. This is a huge hit to Chelsea, as their replacement strikers, Loic Remy and Didier Drogba, are not goal-scoring machines like Costa is. Without Costa, you may be seeing Chelsea struggling a little bit to open chances and score goals as much as Chelsea fans are used to seeing.
If Chelsea win this game, they’re most likely going to win the league. A win on Saturday will put them eight points ahead of City, and that may be enough for them to win, given their current form. That being said, I’d like to name my potential Starting XI for both teams.
Chelsea: Courtois, Azpilicueta, Cahill, Terry, Ivanovic, Ramires, Matic, Hazard, Oscar, Willian, Drogba.
Man City: Hart, Clichy, Kompany, Mangala, Zabaleta, Nasri, Fernandinho, Milner, Silva, Dzeko, Aguero.
Prediction: 2-1 City, with Aguero and Silva finding the net for the City, and Oscar converting for Chelsea. Disagree with me? Let me know in the comments who you are rooting for or who you think will win.