Black Cats to pay for City’s Anfield angst

Sunderland is likely to pay the price for Manchester City not getting the rub of the green against Liverpool when the English Premier League’s bottom team rocks up at the Etihad Stadium to play the aggrieved championship-chasing side.

Manchester City was off the pace for the first half hour of its English Premier League blockbuster versus Liverpool but it was the better team for the last 60 minutes, it created the better chances throughout the course of the game and it received no favours from match referee Mark Clattenburg.

Clattenburg bottled several major decisions, failing to send off Luis Suarez for repeated acts of simulation while he was on a yellow card and turning away not one but two stonewall penalty kicks. As well as Liverpool played for the bulk of the first half, it did not deserve to win the game and take control of the English Premier League championship race.

Poor old Sunderland would have watched the Anfield match in horror. Draws are of no use to Sunderland, which is seven points adrift of safety at the foot of the English Premier League ladder with six games to go. Sunderland has to pick up at least one win from its three remaining away matches, otherwise one would think that it is doomed. Unfortunately, Sunderland’s last three road trips are to three of the top seven – Manchester City, Chelsea and Manchester United.

Manchester City has scored a huge 86 goals in its 32 English Premier League games and it has found the back of the net in 64 of its last 65 top-flight home matches. The only side to stop Manchester City from scoring in an English Premier League home game since December 2010 was Chelsea and that was because the Blues parked Jose Mourinho’s big bus.

Sunderland cannot hope to play for a draw so one expects the English Premier League clash of the haves and the have nots to be an open affair in which the score could get very ugly if Manchester City breaks through early and the Black Cats have to commit numbers forward in search of an equaliser.

Since beating free-falling Newcastle in the Tyne-Wear derby, Sunderland has lost six competition matches in a row away from its Stadium of Light home, three of them by three- or four-goal margins. Manchester City, which has won eight of its 15 English Premier League home games by at least three goals, is available at odds of 2.15 with Sportingbet to thrash Sunderland and make statistic 9 out of 16.

Staying in the English Premier League and Everton against Crystal Palace appeals as a match that is highly likely to go under two and a half goals at odds of 2.00 with many bookmakers, including Bet365 and Sky Bet.

Everton’s English Premier League trip to Selhurst Park in November resulted in a goalless draw so that ticks the box marked head to head. Everton is 15th on the English Premier League ladder for goals per game, with its 33 matches having produced an average of 2.55 goals and 16 of them going under two and a half goals. Crystal Palace’s English Premier League games have averaged a division-low 1.91 goals and 25 of its 33 matches have gone under two and a half goals. So the seasonal statistics support the suggested bet as well.

Finally, the latest Clasico game between Barcelona and Real Madrid screams both teams to score at odds of 1.50 with BetVictor and Stan James. The most recent match between Barcelona and Real Madrid had seven goals and it could quite easily have hit double digits. Both Barcelona and Real Madrid has scored in each of their last 15 clashes and 13 of them have gone over two and a half goals.