Burnley vs Manchester City Betting Tips (11/08/23)

The Build-Up

Following promotion from the Championship last season, Burnley head into the Premier League campaign with a lot of excitement and intrigue surrounding their young and enterprising squad. The first game of any top-flight season is one that is looked forward to but with last season’s dominant Championship winners hosting the 2022/23 treble winners, as well as the added storyline of Vincent Kompany facing his former side, it makes this one particularly interesting.

The Clarets come into this season on the back of a busy and ambitious summer in which they have spent nearly £70 million and do not seem ready to stop there. Last season, they played a very energetic and entertaining style of football that saw them romp to the second-tier title and really did highlight the impressive work of Kompany, considering the shift in playing style from Sean Dyche, who left the club in April 2022 prior to their relegation.

Manchester City were beaten by Arsenal on penalties in the 2023 FA Community Shield last weekend, conceding a 101st-minute equaliser to Leandro Trossard. The minute of that goal could be the start of a theme throughout this season with added time set to be extended to a fairly extreme amount, akin to that of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. That, one suspects, is something to potentially benefit the larger squads in the division which is, weirdly, something that may concern City.

Despite the often discussed strength in depth of the reigning champions, Pep Guardiola is keen on working with a relatively small squad and with a few first-team departures this summer, there is a feeling that City might be slightly under-prepared for the coming campaign. It has been the case in the past that Guardiola’s City have endured their worst bit of form early on or in the first half of the season so that will be a worry heading to Turf Moor.

Betting Trends to Watch

Perhaps something niche to keep an eye on specifically is Manuel Benson and his long-range shooting antics. Cutting inside from the right onto his strongest left foot, Benson, particularly late on in Burnley’s title-winning campaign, was drawing comparisons to former Dutch star Arjen Robben.

In his last four appearances of the campaign, he scored in all four matches with almost identical finishes. Although City has played with a narrow back-line, albeit successfully, it is perhaps an area of space that Benson will seek to exploit and take on an effort at goal. You can find him at odds as tempting as 11/10 for over 0.5 shots on target for this game with a number of bookmakers across the market.

The Form

In pre-season, Burnley have had a bit of an inconsistent time of it with three victories but two of those coming against lower league opposition in Sheffield Wednesday and Burton Albion, one draw against Real Betis a fortnight ago and a defeat away to Genk. In terms of competitive football, they finished the 2022/23 Championship season with three successive wins, followed on from collecting two points in three matches immediately after confirming promotion in early April.

As mentioned, Manchester City come into this on the back of a penalty shootout defeat to Arsenal at Wembley last weekend. Guardiola’s men won one and lost one of their other pre-season friendlies with a defeat to Atletico Madrid and victory over Bayern Munich. It does now technically mean that the visitors have managed just three wins in their last seven matches and haven’t won by more than one goal in their last eight matches. Another way of looking at it is to say they have suffered just one competitive 90-minute defeat in their last 29 games and that came with a heavily rotated side on the final day of the Premier League season at Brentford.

Head-to-Head Meetings

Burnley and Manchester City have faced each other 110 times with The Clarets coming out on top on 55 occasions with City managing just 30 wins in contrast. However, of those 30 Manchester City victories, remarkably exactly half of them have come in their last 16 games with Burnley managing to defeat their Lancashire rivals just once in their last 30 meetings, stretching back to 1974.

Burnley vs Manchester City Betting Tips

Last season, Vincent Kompany’s side were excellent to watch from the off with their 1-0 win at Huddersfield Town. However, there was a lack of effectiveness for about a month or two as the cohesion in attack grew so, as they consistently dominated the ball without much thrust, they were prone to a low-scoring encounter or a draw. Given that Kompany is aiming to bed in a fair few new players this summer, that may well be the case once again.

As mentioned previously, Manchester City didn’t necessarily stumble over the line to their treble because that would be immensely harsh but they would have preferred more comfortable and efficient displays against both Manchester United and Inter Milan in the respective FA Cup and UEFA Champions League finals. As well as those performances, though, they also managed to win by more than one goal on just two occasions in their final seven Premier League matches of the season – highlighting the fact that teams did and can manage to avoid being blown away by them.

Whilst City remain the firm favourites, my free football betting tips show a handicap bet of +1.5 in favour of Burnley could potentially be good value as the newly-promoted hosts seek to limit their guests. Backing a low-scoring encounter, too, could well be sensible as both sides aim to re-establish their fluency in fairly complex systems and styles at the start of this season.

All odds are accurate at the time of writing.