Manchester City vs RB Leipzig

Manchester City will be looking to cement their place at the top of the Champions League Group G when they encounter RB Leipzig at the Etihad Stadium.

Seeking to win their Champions League group for a seventh consecutive season, having already qualified for the knockout stages with two games to spare, Manchester City come into proceedings keen to extend a formidable 28-game unbeaten run in European home matches (W26, D2). Pep Guardiola’s side wasted a unique opportunity to make history in English football and assemble the longest-ever winning home streak last weekend as Liverpool pegged them back in a 1-1 draw, knocking them down from a 26-match winning run at the Etihad. After winning both previous Champions League home games against Leipzig via a combined score of 13-3, Man City ought to take the field confident of bouncing back from the weekend’s disappointment.

Speaking of disappointments, Leipzig slumped to a 2-1 defeat at Wolfsburg over the weekend, practically throwing in the towel in the Bundesliga title race already in November. That result halted their two-game winning run in all competitions and marked their fifth successive outing without a clean sheet. Despite desperately seeing a way out of a troubled five-game form spell (W2, L3), ‘Die Roten Bullen’ can hardly hope for an upset here, having lost three of their last four away matches in all competitions (W1), two of which without scoring. What’s more, Marco Rose’s men have lost their last three European visits to England by at least a three-goal margin, highlighting the size of the task at hand.