Average Man City form contains the seeds of PSG’s downfall
Published:
The chasm between the respective odds on Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City reaching the Champions League semi-finals is tough to fathom.
Les Parisiens are 4/9 to make the last four at City’s expense, with the Etihad side, who visit the French capital for their quarter final first leg tonight, 17/10 to qualify.
Sure, Manuel Pellegrini’s side have won just three of their last 11 games, becoming all but an irrelevance in the Premier League title race in the process.
But, buried within the morass of “meh” that constitutes their form since the beginning of February, the seeds of their adversaries’ downfall have been germinating.
PSG, too, have begun to produce their best form in more erratic fashion of late and look an uneasy 7/10 punt to beat City at the Parc des Princes.
The first-leg draw is priced up at odds of 3/1, while a victory for the visitors is 17/4 and the win or draw double-chance wager on the Manchester side is 6/5.
After winning 18 of their first 20 home games of the campaign, Laurent Blanc’s already-crowned French champions have been thwarted three times in their previous six outings in front of their own diehards.
Lille and Montpellier have escaped with draws, while Monaco became just the second team to depart with the laurels in the last 53 matches, the other being Barcelona.
In all three cases shutting out Les Parisiens was the key, which bodes well for City, whose recent defensive parsimony has gone relatively unpublicised.
The Etihad outfit’s much-maligned rearguard have conceded one measly goal across their last five games.
A disciplined and diligent performance from Chelsea came close to eking a draw from the Stamford Bridge club’s trip to Paris in mid February.
With Pellegrini likely to welcome back first-choice goalkeeper Joe Hart for the fixture, City should harbor high hopes of going the whole hog in their own bid to frustrate the French kingpins.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.
