Grey Skies for the Sky blues
Manchester City will be slightly frustrated with how this season is currently going, by their own high standards. Sitting in third, six points from leaders Arsenal and coming off the back of back to back defeats for the second time this season, after a Champions League reverse in midweek followed an away defeat at Newcastle. If you need a confidence boosting win however, look no further than Leeds United as your next opponents. The Peacocks are handing wins out to opposing teams like it's Christmas, at the moment and are nosediving quickly. They now sit in the relegation zone with only one win in six games, losing the other five. To add more concern for the Yorkshire side, they have only won once away from home all season and only been victorious on three of their last ten trips to Man City. Farke's team will need to be channeling their inner Stuart Dallas for this one it seems if there is any chance of a win. The Northern Irish man was the last player to score a winning goal for The Whites in this fixture, as he found the net twice when Leeds stunned The Citizens with a 2-1 win back in 2021.
D-day finally for Daniel?
It seems it's a weekly discussion now after every game whether or not Daniel Farke should be sacked as Leeds United manager. After Sunday's defeat at Elland Road, at the hands of Aston Villa, many fans have now grown tired of the German and his ability to keep their beloved club in the top flight. United have slipped into the relegation zone and it is hard to see at this current moment with the fixtures they have coming up, how they will climb above that red line any time soon. City away is about as hard as you can get and although Farke will take heart in the fact that Leverkusen beat them at The Etihad in the week, it is a different task entirely for his confidence zapped team to go and do the same on Saturday. Much has been made of Farke's poor record in the Premier League but incredibly, of his nine wins in the top division to date, one was against Pep Guardiola's sky blue side in a "special" 3-2 win while in charge of Norwich in 2019. He will be hopeful of a similar result this weekend, one that should he get it, would certainly save his job, for the time being anyway.
The Haaland headache
Everyone seems to enjoy Erling Haaland - that is everyone apart from the defenders that have to come up against him week in, week out. It is no secret of course that Haaland is a Leeds fan having been born in the city that the club inhabits, but that doesn't mean that he takes it easy on his boyhood side, when playing against them. The Scandinavian striker has two goals in two games against Leeds, having scored both of those goals in the same game in a 3-1 win at Elland Road in late 2022. Haaland has fourteen goals this season, in the league, and the next players down on the City scoring stats have only one goal each (eight players). So it's very much a scenario of if you keep Haaland quiet at the moment, you may have a chance of getting something from the ten time league winners this season. However that is a big if, especially given Leeds current form.