Frank Lorenzo
Everton (+300) vs. Manchester City (-117) (Draw +275)
Manchester City will land at Goodison Park next Saturday, January 10, to face Everton (10:00 a.m. Eastern). The meeting is part of the 21st set of fixtures in the Premier League.
In the EPL odds, Manchester City come into the game as the favorite, listed at -117 in the money line. Meanwhile, Everton are +300 and the draw will pay +275.
After Chelsea suffered a surprise loss to Tottenham last weekend, Manchester City are now level with the Blues at the top of the table with 46 points (14-4-2) and an identical +25 goal difference. With goal difference as the potential tiebreaker, both City and Chelsea will be doing their best to, not only win their remaining games, but do so by wide margins.
On the other side, Everton come into the game as a team in crisis. The Toffees have lost four straight league matches and have fallen to 13th in the table (21 points and a 5-6-9 record). The poor results come as a surprise for a team that finished fifth last season – narrowly missing out on a Champions League spot – and remains largely unchanged.
“This is a challenging time but we need to look forward to the second half of the season,” Everton manager Roberto Martinez said his team lost to Hull City (2-0) in its last BPL match. “We need to work as hard as we can. Yes, we have some injuries, but we have the talent that we used so well last season. We know what we can achieve.”
There is some reason for optimism at Goodison Park, as the Toffees are currently on top of Group H in the Europa League with 11 points and a 3-2-1 record. But Everton will struggle to end their Premier League skid this weekend against a Man City squad that hasn’t lost in ten league matches.
(Photo credit: Голубович Дмитрий (Soccer.ru) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)
