Cahill and Terry absence make Man City’s odds grow fonder

Manchester City get their chance for swift revenge on Chelsea in the FA Cup fifth round and with the visitors unable to field either of their first-choice centre-backs the omens look good for Manuel Pellegrini’s side.

The competition’s fifth round will see two of the Premier League’s quartet of title-chasers left behind and with the news that John Terry and Gary Cahill will not feature, the likelihood of one of those being Chelsea just increased greatly.

Before their title-denting Etihad loss, the Citizens were quoted at 1/1 or even odds-on in many places to prevail, but now their odds of 6/5 to deliver Chelsea a knock-out blow look every bit worth snapping up.

Interestingly, the visitors’ odds of 12/5 to inflict successive home defeats on City are offered for the Londoners to force a replay as well.

However, when Mourinho executed his Etihad master plan just over a fortnight ago, one of the chief reasons it came off was down to the towering performances of both Terry and Cahill and their obvious synergy as a pairing.

Either one or the other have featured in all of Chelsea’s 38 games this season and although David Luiz and Branislav Ivanovic are not bad deputies, playing a team as prolific as City is not an
easy task to warm too.

Although City have failed to find the opponent’s net in successive outings, that surely cannot persist, especially when taking into account their average of registering 3.8 goals per home game this season.

The 7/5 about Pellegrini’s lot at least reaching the two-goal mark against Chelsea’s patched-up defence looks particularly palatable.

In the absence of Sergio Aguero expect ‘the beast’ to be unleashed from the start, and with six goals in his last five Etihad appearances across all competitions, Alvaro Negredo looks top dollar at 5/1 to break the deadlock.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.

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