Manchester United and Chelsea will look to avoid Carabao Cup upsets on Wednesday - our Andy Schooler brings you his best bets.
Bristol City v Manchester United (2000 GMT, Sky Sports Football & Main Event)
With the hosts sitting third in the Sky Bet Championship, the home fans will be sniffing the upset in this one.
Such is modern-day football though, you wonder whether even a cup quarter-final will be deemed as important as Saturday’s bread-and-butter trip to QPR – and the packed festive programme to come.
Bristol City may not actually have the widest choice when it comes to naming their XI as they’ve had plenty of injury problems this season but have clearly coped admirably.
United will definitely make changes but their back-up players are a quality bunch. For example, Henrikh Mkhitaryan is likely to start here. He may not be Jose Mourinho’s cup of tea right now but he was earning rave reviews at the start of the season and is certainly a level above the Championship.
Paul Pogba is also available again after a three-game ban so there looks every chance he is given a run to improve his match sharpness with Christmas fixtures lying in wait.
United haven’t exactly been flying of late but they have been ekeing out results with Brighton, Bournemouth and West Brom all beaten by a single goal recently.
It would be no surprise to see a repeat here – a one-goal winning margin for the visitors can be backed at 3/1 – but there’s a bet I prefer in the sub-markets, namely City’s Marlon Pack to be carded at anytime.
He’s already been booked eight times in 16 starts this season so statistically alone the bet makes sense.
The central midfielder loves a tackle and in a big game like this will surely be out to make an impression – he won’t have played against many bigger opponents.
A tough tackler, champing at the bit with a record of picking up cards regularly – it all makes 9/2 simply too big.
Prediction: Bristol City 1-2 Man Utd (Sky Bet odds: 7/1)
Chelsea v Bournemouth (1945 GMT)
Chelsea have made widespread changes for their two Carabao Cup ties so far this season and boss Antonio Conte was on Tuesday vowing to give youth its chance again in this one.
England international Danny Drinkwater will be given much-needed game time and Michy Batshuayi should start again up front – he’s odds-on to score at any time. But there will be other youngsters handed a chance to shine.
Bournemouth will also look different to Sunday’s 4-0 defeat to Liverpool. That may well be a good thing, although the enforced absence of Charlie Daniels and Josh King is far from ideal.
Sunday’s heavy loss hardly reflected well on Eddie Howe. Everton and West Brom had provided a template of how to thwart the Reds’ devastating attack but the blueprint was ignored with the Cherries too open. They were easily picked off, pardon the pun.
Maybe it would have been different had Jermain Defoe’s effort gone in instead of coming back off the inside of the post at 2-0.
That incident thwarted my both-teams-to-score bet in the game but I’m prepared to go in again here.
Both defences will be shuffled, probably not for the better, and both teams have a philosophy to attack.
Chelsea’s two games in this competition so far (v Nottingham Forest and Everton, both at the Bridge) have seen both teams to score, while it’s two out of three as far as Bournemouth are concerned.
You can back the bet at odds-against which seems fair enough
Prediction: Chelsea 3-1 Bournemouth (Sky Bet odds: 9/1)
Recommended bets
2pts Marlon Pack to be carded at any time v Man Utd at 9/2
2pts both teams to score in Chelsea v Bournemouth at 11/10
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Posted at 1835 GMT on 19/12/17.
