Pep Guardiola has another Premier League title in his sights ahead of Saturday’s meeting at Etihad Stadium. We look ahead to the game with our Man City vs Wolves prediction and preview.
Man City vs Wolves Stats: The Quick Hits
- Manchester City are the favourites for this clash, winning a huge 71.1% of the Opta supercomputer’s pre-match simulations against Wolves.
- City have won seven of their last eight home Premier League matches against Wolves.
- Kevin De Bruyne has started six league matches against Wolves and has both scored five goals and assisted five goals against them.
Match Preview
Manchester City will hope to move one step closer to the Premier League title when they host injury-hit Wolves in Saturday’s clash at Etihad Stadium.
City are unbeaten in their last 19 Premier League games (W15 D4) after a 2-0 victory over Nottingham Forest in their last outing. Josko Gvardiol and the fit-again Erling Haaland scored in either half as the reigning English champions swept aside Nuno Espírito Santo’s side at the City Ground.
Saturday’s hosts have already had four runs of 20+ games without a defeat in the competition (three under Pep Guardiola) and here will hope to become the second side to do so five times after fierce rivals Manchester United (7).
Extending to all competitions, City are unbeaten in their last 31 matches (W25 D6). The last Premier League team to have a longer run were also neighbours Man Utd, who went 33 games without defeat between December and May in the 1998-99 campaign.
That incredible run of form paints a familiar picture in the end-of-season title run-in, leaving City just a point adrift of leaders Arsenal in the league table and still boasting a game in hand over Mikel Arteta’s Gunners.
Kevin De Bruyne assisted both goals in the win over Forest, a first-half corner for Gvardiol before a delicate through ball for Haaland, to take his overall Premier League assists tally to 110. Just one more assist against Wolves would move him to joint second in the competition’s all-time rankings, level with Cesc Fàbregas and only behind Ryan Giggs (162).
The Belgian maestro has also scored five goals and assisted five more in six top-flight starts against Wolves, although nine of those involvements came at Molineux (five goals, four assists).
De Bruyne will likely start once more this weekend, while Phil Foden – who was unavailable against Forest – hopes to recover from illness in time for kick-off. Rúben Dias had a similar issue and should be fit to make Saturday’s lineup if selected, while first-choice goalkeeper Ederson suffered a shoulder injury in the last game and has no return date yet.
As for the visitors, Wolves’ 2-1 win over relegation-threatened Luton Town last time out ended a six-game winless run in the competition. However, only twice this season have they put together runs of consecutive victories, winning three in a row in December and two in succession in February.
Hwang Hee-chan and Toti Gomes were on target before Carlton Morris’ late consolation at Molineux as Wolves finally secured victory to leave them 11th in the league table, just five points behind eighth-placed Chelsea.
Both Hwang and striker Matheus Cunha have scored 11 Premier League goals for Wolves this season. There’s been just three occasions of a player scoring more for the club in a campaign – Steven Fletcher in 2011-12 (12), and Raúl Jiménez in 2018-19 (13) and 2019-20 (17).
Wolves manager Gary O’Neil still has injury issues to contend with, though. He will hope Jean Ricner-Bellegarde, Rayan Aït-Nouri, Santiago Bueno and Noha Lemina are fit enough for Saturday’s meeting in Manchester.
Yet star winger Pedro Neto, 18-year-old forward Leon Chiwome and veteran centre-back Craig Dawson will be unavailable as Wolves’ stop-start season continues to cause frustration for O’Neil, who has repeatedly voiced his concerns over the club’s recruitment.
Man City vs Wolves Head-to-Head
City have won seven of their last eight home Premier League matches against Wolves, losing the other 2-0 in October 2019.
Since completing a league double over Man City in 1960-61, Wolves have managed just one top-flight double over them in 25 seasons, doing so in the 2019-20 campaign.
However, they will have another chance here after Wolves beat them 2-1 earlier this season at Molineux. A Dias own goal and Hwang finish earned victory after Julian Álvarez levelled for the visitors in late September.
Wolves could become the first club to complete two league doubles over Guardiola in his entire managerial career.
Recent Form
City may be unbeaten in 31 games across all competitions but that does include their Champions League quarter-final exit to Real Madrid on penalties, which is counted as a draw because the match itself ended level.
Yet Guardiola’s side have won their last three games across all competitions – against Chelsea, Brighton and Forest – without conceding, scoring seven in the process as their Premier League title charge intensifies.
That run seems likely to continue here given all five of Wolves’ Premier League away wins this season have been against either teams starting the day in the relegation zone (2) or London clubs (3).
They’ve lost 18 of their 20 Premier League away games against sides in the top two, winning the others at Tottenham (December 2018) and Man City (October 2019).
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off this weekend, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
Man City vs Wolves Predicted Lineups
Man City vs Wolves Prediction
The Opta supercomputer struggles to see anything other than a Man City win here, with the hosts triumphing in a dominant 71.1% of 10,000 pre-match simulations.
Wolves have a meagre 9.6% chance of managing back-to-back top-flight victories, with the draw perhaps their best hope as that result was forecast in 19.4% of data-led sims.
City remain the favourites for the Premier League title in Opta’s end-of-season simulations, too, winning the trophy in 65.7% ahead of Arsenal (34.2%) and Liverpool’s miracle 0.1%.
Wolves may currently sit 11th in the league table before the weekend’s action but they drop down to 12th most often in 33.7% of the season predictions.
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