FA Cup third round tips preview: Manchester City set to dominate Chelsea again

Sergiu Baltuta
8 January 2023

Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez of Manchester City

As Manchester City and Chelsea go head to head for the second time in three days, Tipstrr football expert Sergiu Baltuta weighs up each team's chances of progressing to the fourth round of the FA Cup.

After Thursday's 1-0 win in the Premier League, Manchester City will try to repeat the feat when they meet Chelsea for the second time in three days in Sunday's FA Cup third round tie.

City are enjoying another good season, and once again they have the elusive quadruple in theri sights, having already reached the EFL Cup quarter finals, beating both Liverpool and Chelsea on the way.

City boss Pep Guardiola acknowledged that his tactics were wrong in the first half on Thursday, and will very likely make significant changes to his starting eleven, not least because of the busy schedule and the huge game against Manchester United looming next weekend.

Ruben Dias is injured and will miss the game, while another central defender, Aymeric Laporte, missed City's last three games because of a back injury.

This could mean Erling Haaland may start from the bench, even though he has been in his usual form since the international break, scoring three goals in three games.

It is very likely that Guardiola will also rest his goalkeeper Ederson in favour of Ortega, while Julian Alvarez could be in the starting lineup for the first time since returning from Qatar, where his four goals played a major part in Argentina's World Cup triumph.

Graham Potter began his reign as Chelsea manager with three consecutive wins, but the injury crisis in the last few weeks has triggered a very poor run of form for the Londoners, who have won only one of their last eight Premier League games.

N'Golo Kante, Reece James, Armando Broja and Edouard Mendy are all sidelined and will definitely be missing, while Wesley Fofana is not fully recovered, and Potter will most likely not risk using him.

On top of that, against City on Thursday, Chelsea lost Raheem Sterling and Christian Pulisic in the first quarter of the game, and the two of them must also be doubtful for this game, which might force Potter to risk Mason Mount, who withdrew from Thursday's encounter with an injury picked up in training..

To make matters even worse for Chelsea, they have failed to score in any of their last four games against Pep Guardiola's team, while the last five games between the two teams have each produced fewer than three goals.

Each of the last four games between Manchester City and Chelsea were all square at half time, but all of them ended with City picking up the spoils with dominant second-half performances.