Obviously this is only the second most important game taking place today, but it will carry a huge worldwide television audience and hopefully be a great advert for Premier League and English football.

 

This is the holy grail that City have chased for the best part of a decade and spent many hundreds of millions in pursuit of and why Pep Guardiola was bought into the club.He has also spent a decade hunting his third Champions League title , but to be honest, you or I might have collected the first two, which he claimed with two of the greatest Barcelona teams in history ( 2008 and 2011) and it is those two sides which invariably come out on top in best ever Barce 11's . Pep's role was largely to point them at the pitch and shout GO !

 

I joke (a little) of course, but when you have only ever coached , Barce, Bayern and City, with a vast array of riches in the bank and on the pitch at your disposal , I always have issues with the GOAT head coach claims. Spend a season at Burnley and get them into the top 6 or even 8 and then we can talk ! But I digress !

 

City finished 19 points ahead of Chelsea, but "only" 7 better over the second half of the season, basically since Thomas Tuchel arrived at Stamford Bridge and the Blues have won both h2h games since his tenure started ,a 2-1 win at the Etihad and 1-0 win at Wembley in the FA Cup semi final. City might not have cared overly about the second competition, but appeared to and dominated and, the title was already "won" when they lost the league game, but it hands a significant mental edge to Chelsea and Tuchel and both games have been played in the last six weeks, so are fresh in the memory. I find it hard to agree with the very short odds about City given the two h2h meetings and variety of options that Tuchel has at his disposal and xP for the season only saw Chelsea as circa 4 points inferior. I can also see the officials playing a key role, four of the last seven finals have seen at least six cards in normal time, there were five in the FA Cup game, fewer in the league meeting, but that had more of a "friendly " vibe and we have a strict disciplinarian in charge in Mateu Lahoz, he loves a yellow and that applies to all games he takes charge of, but in the Champions League he has given out 25 and 5 penalties in five starts , 14 and 2 respectively combined in the two of those involving English clubs. He could play a big part and might not help the rhythm of the contest. Four of the last 13 finals have gone the distance and two of those involved Chelsea, both of which went all the way to penalties and included that all English final with Manchester United. Another close game, I think the odds on City should be avoided and best value in that 1-1 Chelsea CL final hat-trick !

 

 

 

 

Good luck !