Tottenham vs Man City Prediction, Odds and Betting Tips: Focus on Free Kicks in Wednesday's Clash

Having won this competition 4 years in a row between 2018 and 2021, Man City travel to Spurs looking to continue on the road to regaining a trophy that has eluded them in each of the past 3 seasons.

Whilst this is a tricky tie on paper, Tottenham have had a difficult start to the season and with some murmurs of unrest amongst their fans, it feels imperative that Ange Postecoglou delivers on promises to compete for trophies sooner rather than later. All of this in the melting pot in a fixture that has delivered 21 goals across the last 6 meetings means that this promises to be an entertaining watch.

Man City games can be minefields for prop bets as their dominance of the ball tends to lead to opposition sides sitting deep and therefore a lack of many throw ins, free kicks, tackles or shots. However, this Tottenham side under Postecoglou are nothing if not stubbornly married to their tactical principles and will play their game regardless of the opponent. This means that despite City’s seasonal data being less than encouraging, we can use the head-to-head data to give us a better indicator of what to expect between these 2 sides and it certainly points to free kicks.

Pep and Ange locked horns on 3 occasions last season across league and cup and those games saw free kick totals of 29, 34 and 32. The splits in those games with Spurs listed first were 13-16, 22-12 and 16-16 and so our base line bet won comfortably in all 3 matches with the longshot landing in 1. Where Spurs are concerned, this was perhaps not a surprise as they were the leagues most fouled side last season and their games averaged 24.6 fouls. However, for Man City, they committed the least fouls at just 7.6 per game and their games were averaging only 18.4.

This season is a similar story with Spurs the second most fouled team in the Premier League and City committing the 2nd least fouls. Once again, Spurs data is excellent for free kicks with them averaging 15.62 and conceding 13.46 per game across all competitions whereas for City those figures are just 10.43 and 8.0. Everything about City’s data this season would suggest that unders would be the play on free kicks here but that head-to-head data just looks incredibly enticing.

The final factor to consider when betting on free kicks is that offsides can also contribute to the totals and again, that’s something that the head-to-head data looks promising for. The aforementioned clashes between these sides last season produced 14 offsides with each team contributing at least 2 in every game. This means that if we see similar numbers, we only need both sides to make single figures in terms of fouls to land our base line and foul counts of 13 for Spurs and 11 for City would be enough for our longshot to land too.

There’s no doubting that head-to-head data can be misleading when researching prop bets but when you have 2 teams that play in such specific styles and the 3 previous games suggest that those styles bring about a drastic change in regular season numbers, it gives us a lovely edge over the bookmakers. With plenty at stake for both sides in a knockout cup game and with some fringe players likely given minutes and desperate to impress, everything points towards plenty of free kicks.

Tottenham vs Man City Lineups

The starting lineups for Tottenham vs Man City will be displayed in the graphic below once the team news has been announced.