Manchester City are absolutely flying, they have now won 9 matches in a row and are getting wins in a dominant fashion. In those 9 wins, City have won by at least 2 goals in 8 of them and have scored 31 goals in their last 9. They won 3-0 in midweek and the performance meant they could cruise through the last 15 minutes of the match, leaving them fresh for this match.

Leicester are in terrible form, they are 9 matches without a win and have lost 8 of their last 9. Dean Smith has come in as the new manager but hasn’t had much time to make an effect so Leicester’s improvements may not come here. In a way Dean Smith will be happy with this as a first match, there is no pressure on Leicester to show up and put in a performance at all and I expect them to struggle here, this could be a walkover for Manchester City and they are good enough to win by at least two.

Leicester were always a team that liked to play good football under Rodgers and they have a lot of strong technical players. However, recently they have really struggled to keep the ball, in their 9 losses they only had over 55% possession against Southampton and Blackburn in the FA Cup. Against Manchester United they had just 43% possession, against Arsenal they had 35% possession and most recently against Aston Villa they had just 36% possession.

Leicester will likely struggle for possession again here and this means Manchester City’s defensive players can hit high passing numbers. Ruben Dias has averaged 91.5 attempted passes per 90 and has attempted at least 90 passes in 5 of his last 9 Champions League or Premier League matches. Dias has only failed to attempt 90 passes against the very best teams such as Bayern Munich and Newcastle, but against the like of Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth, he attempted over 100 passes in both matches. It should be easy for Dias to get up to 90 attempted passes here.

Erling Haaland has got back into ridiculous goalscoring form, he has scored 12 goals in his last 5 matches and scored in 6 of the last 7 matches he has played in. As they are 3-0 up against Bayern Munich ahead of the second leg in midweek, Manchester City can focus all their efforts in this match and won’t need to rest big players. Haaland isn’t just scoring ridiculous goals, he is getting big chances, he has accumulated over 0.8 xG in all of his last 4 matches and he should be nailed on to score again here.

Manchester City have been extremely strong defensively recently and Leicester will know that they won’t get many chances, something that could actually result in them shooting a lot but from distance. James Maddison averages 2.99 shot per 90, with an average distance from of goal of 21.3 yards, one of the highest in the Leicester squad. The Leicester man has had some matches with ridiculously high shot counts, he had 6 shots away at Manchester United and 5 shots at home against Chelsea.

Maddison has had at least 2 shots in 7 of his last 11 matches for club and country and with Dean Smith injecting some energy back into Leicester, he could shoot even more often than normal here. Maddison also has a shot from a free kick approximately once for every 2 matches he plays, with Leicester limited in chances here I wouldn’t be surprised if he was to go for goal from set-piece situations. While it depends on Leicester’s performance levels a little, Maddison is still good enough to hit 2 or more shots more often than not, something I feel he can do here.