Man City title hopes dealt hammer blow by managerless Chelsea

Good evening and welcome to live coverage of the Premier League match between Manchester City and Chelsea, the teams that started the day in third and sixth. City, unbeaten in seven though their six-match winning steak in the Premier League was abruptly ended when they hit the wall, and the rock of Sunderland’s defence at home, on New Year’ Day, can narrow Arsenal’s lead to four points with victory today and given they have beaten Chelsea six times and drawn once on their last seven visits in league and cup to the Etihad, they would be pretty confident of doing so even if Chelsea were not rocking up with a novice caretaker manager.

Calum McFarlane, who stepped up when Enzo Maresca found a couple of bootprints across the seat of his pants five days ago, joins a lengthy list of Chelsea interims over the past 15 years, following Roberto Di Matteo, Rafa Benítez, Steve Holland, Guus Hiddink in a second stint, Bruno Saltor and Frank Lampard in taking temporary control. Of those six only Lampard lost his first game in charge (again in a second stint), going down 2-0 to Real Madrid and then by the same score against Brentford at Stamford Bridge if you think judging him by defeat against the champions of Europe is too harsh.

The Under-21 head coach, who has worked at Southampton and Man City after a few years working at Kinetic Academy, is without long-term absentees Levi Colwill, Roméo Lavia, Mykhailo Mudryk and Jorrel Hato while Moises Caicedo is suspended. Chelsea, looking to improve a run of one win, four draws and two defeats in Maresca’s last seven games, may also be lacking Marc Cucurella who has a thigh strain.

City have two players away at the Africa Cup of Nations, Rayan Aït-Nouri and Omar Marmoush, and three recovering from injury in Oscar Bobb, John Stones and Mateo Kovacic. Savinho and Nico González were hurt during the draw with Sunderland but have not been definitively ruled out.