Manchester City and Chelsea will renew their rivalry on Saturday when the two sides face-off in the FA Cup semis. This will mark a third meeting of the two this season, the first two having ended in draws. None of the sides will have home advantage coming here, as the game will be staged at the Wembley Stadium. Manchester City, smarting from their Champions League elimination, will hope they aren’t dethroned here as well. Their chase for a treble was ended on Wednesday courtesy of a loss on post-match penalties at home to Real Madrid. Coming here, they carry an eight-game unbeaten run against Chelsea, who last beat them in the Champions League final in 2021. Their run of six straight wins over Chelsea was however stopped earlier this season in a 4-4 draw at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea would then hold them to a 1-1 draw at the Etihad in another epic league encounter. Two aspects will define City coming into this game, their few clean sheets and high scoring returns. The holders have managed just two clean sheets in the last 10 matches while they failed to score in just one of the 10 games. In those 10 matches, City scored three or more six times.
Chelsea will remember the team that last beat them in the FA Cup – Manchester City – and revenge will be among their plans. The Blues will be facing Premier League opposition in this competition for just the second time this season. The last time they did, they had to win it through a replay, eliminating Aston Villa. This time they must win it at Wembley, returning to the venue of their League Cup final defeat to Liverpool. This remains Chelsea’s best avenue for European football next season in light of another difficult league season. Mauricio Pochettino’s side had just the perfect preparation for this game, thrashing Everton 6-0 in their midweek league game. A former Manchester City man, Cole Palmer scored four times in that game, and City will know just what the Englishman can do. Palmer scored the equalizer in the two sides’ first meeting of the season which ended 4-4. Raheem Sterling is another former City man looking to torment the team. He scored in both meetings earlier this season and will be targeting more here. With an eight-game unbeaten run, Chelsea will feel they can get one over City to end an eight-game winless run over Pep Guardiola’s team.
Recent matches pitting these two sides against each other have been epic. Here they meet for the third time this season and the first two meetings already produced 10 goals. With their scoring forms right ahead of this meeting, we expect another high scoring encounter. Our prediction for Manchester City v Chelsea is for this game to have over 2.5 goals.