Man City great value to beat Everton without conceding

Manchester City’s battling win at Wigan kept them one point behind their red neighbours in their bid to retain the Premier League crown and will be looking for more of the same at home to Everton before hosting their biggest rivals the following weekend.

The season began with City looking dodgy at the back, Vincent Kompany’s performances in particular coming in for some criticism. Recent stats have served to quash talk of the City captain’s demise, however, and a home win to nil looks a great bet for the Everton game at 13/8.

Kompany and co have restored order with five clean sheets in their last six outings, limiting their goals against column to 10 from 14 games and no one has called Roberto Mancini’s tampering with the formation into question of late either.

Wigan were able to sustain long periods of pressure at the DW Stadium, but the champions never looked like buckling, as was the case against Chelsea in the previous encounter, although the Latics proved the sterner test.

Everton are equipped to ask even more questions of the improving City defence, especially with the aggression of the ever-impressive Marouane Fellaini in their ranks and pulling off a fourth shut-out in succession will be a monumental boost ahead of Manchester United’s visit to the Etihad.

The clean sheet alone is available at 6/5 and has to be worth a punt giving the recent stringency of the Citizen’s back line, even if Everton have only failed to score just once all season.

This is a fixture that the Toffees have fared well in of late, winning in four of their last five visits to the blue half of Manchester. They haven’t won in four straight Premier League away games since beating Swansea, though, and none of the sides they struggled against were of City’s calibre.

History also favours the win to nil, with 10 of the past 14 tussles between the pair yielding this outcome. David Moyes’ men are definitely stuttering following their fast start to proceedings and it’s difficult to oppose City making it 11 from 15 in this one.

All odds and markets accurate as of publication’s time and date