Can Fulham strengthen Uefa push at Man City?

Premiership Preview.co.uk takes a look ahead to Sunday's game at Eastlands and pinpoints the best prices for those of you who enjoy a flutter.

Manchester City v Fulham

Sunday 12^th April 4pm ko Live on Setanta

H2H in Premier League 

HOME/AWAY AVERAGES (LAST 20 GAMES)

MANCHESTER CITY – HOME

FULHAM – AWAY

H2H (LAST 5 SEASONS – 10 LEAGUE GAME)  

THIS SEASONS GOAL AVERAGES PER GAME 

CURRENT FORM

MANCHESTER CITY - LAST FIVE GAMES 

FULHAM - LAST FIVE GAMES 

TEAM NEWS

Strikers Craig Bellamy and Benjani both picked up injuries in City's mid week defeat by Hamburg and are ruled out. 

Shaun Wright-Phillips, Vincent Kompany and Wayne Bridge are all doubtful. 

Michael Johnson remains a long term absentee. 

Fulham have doubts over Zoltan Gera but have an otherwise fully fit squad. 

MANCHESTER CITY Squad: Given, Richards, Onuoha, Dunne, Zabaleta, Wright-Phillips, Elano, Ireland, de Jong, Robinho, Bojinov, Bridge, Garrido, Fernandes, Evans, Etuhu, Vassell, McGivern, Hart, Petrov. 

FULHAM Squad: Schwarzer, Pantsil, Stoor, Hughes, Hangeland, Konchesky, Baird, Davies, Etuhu, Dacourt, Murphy, Gera, Dempsey, Johnson, Zamora, Zuberbuhler, Kallio, Nevland, Kamara, Gray, Barnes. 

TOP SCORERS (LEAGUE ONLY) 

MANCHESTER CITY     FULHAM 

THE ORACLE'S MATCH PRICES (100% BOOK) 

MANCHESTER CITY   10/11 52%

DRAW   12/5 29% 

ANALYSIS

MATCH: 

Although Manchester City have lost four of their last five in all competitions, closer inspection of their results is required before we pass judgement. All four of those games were away from home and this has been City's Achilles heel all season. They have won just once away from Eastlands this season and it is something they will have to greatly improve on if they have aspirations of making the top four next season. Home games, however, are an entirely different story. Only Manchester United have won more games at home this season and City have beaten everyone outside the top five apart from Tottenham. If they can beat Fulham on Sunday it will be their seventh home win in a row. 

Fulham are in exactly the same boat as City. Just two points separate them in the league and at home, Fulham are all conquering, away however, they are terrible. In fact, terrible doesn't quite sum up Fulham away from Craven Cottage. Not only have they won just once in fifteen games this season, they have only won six times going back four years! There can't be many sides in all of Europe with such a prolonged bout of travel sickness. 

The main problem seems to be an ultra defensive approach away from home. Fulham have failed to score in eleven of their fifteen away games and have scored just once in seven visits to top half opposition. This fits quite well with another statistic which says that City have won eight of their ten home victories "to nil". Consequently, Manchester City to "win to nil" at 2/1 looks like a value bet. A slight word of warning however, is that Fulham do draw a lot of away games. Six of their seven away draws have been 0-0 and so a small saver on no goalscorer at 9/1 may be prudent.  

GOALS: 

There is a history of goals in this fixture in recent years with six of the last seven featuring three or more. Manchester City home games also tend to be high scoring affairs with twelve of the last twenty featuring three or more. Fulham away games however, average an incredibly stingy 1.3 goals per game this season. Eleven out of fifteen have featured two goals or less. With Fulham continuing to adopt such a negative approach on the road, another low scoring game looks on the cards. 

GOALSCORERS: 

Steven Ireland is the player to back here at 4/1 to score anytime with Paddypower. He marked his return from injury with a goal against Hamburg during the week and now has eleven in all competitions, just one behind Robinho.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1PT MANCHESTER CITY TO "WIN TO NIL" 2/1 PADDYPOWER AND WILLIAM HILL

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