This is the fixture which was cancelled just before Christmas when City went to the World Club Cup and scheduling it for this week has meant that the Bees will have played City twice in just 15 days with Wolves and Liverpool sandwiched in between, making for a super tough run. They lost the first meeting 3-1 and by 4-1 to Liverpool on Saturday, but before we see their cause as a totally lost one, we can look at the two games in a little more detail. Brentford led in the first and were just seconds away from taking that lead into the break and then things could have played out differently, City, that night, were unplayable, the best team I have ever seen against the Bees and yet, the hosts might/should have scored at least twice themselves. Brentford made a lot of defensive errors at the weekend and were punished by a clinical Reds team, but the Bees had three strong chances to take the lead and scuffed all three attempts and were denied late in the game by a miracle save. Either side of the two matches they won 2-0 at Wolves and might have scored 4 there and prior to the City game lost 3-2 at Tottenham ( missing 3 BC's) and beat Forest 3-2 so goals and/or chances are coming thick and fast regardless of who they are playing and the Bees have scored in their last ten starts and now have Ivan Toney back and Yoane Wissa has returned from the ACN to increase offensive options.

 

Brentford have scored in 10 straight games and before the break in nine of those, they have also scored in both halves of their last three away starts and also did so in this fixture last season, winning 2-1 in what is City's only home defeat in 22 months!

 

City's last 41 home EPL games, that is more than two full seasons worth, so a big sample, have seen them keep a clean sheet in 15 (36.59%), concede in 26 (63.41%) , giving up multiple goals in 24.39% , winning and conceding in 18 (43.9%).

 

They have conceded a first half goal in 8/14 EPL starts.

 

Brentford have the 3rd best road xGA record in the EPL and only the top 3 have conceded fewer away goals. Their road xGF of 1.58 per game is top 10 and they come out as a top ten team in all "expected" categories. Last season they finished 9th and were 7th for xP and considering they have been without 9-12 senior players for most of this campaign for a variety of reasons it is remarkable that they have kept those performance levels so high and that is a real tribute to head coach Thomas Frank and his staff and the analytics team. You can largely control performances , if not results, but if the standard of the former remains good, the results almost always follow.

 

All those stats and numbers suggest value in two bets............

 

 

Good luck!