Dream Team bosses should revert to familiar Manchester City favourites amid busy schedule

DREAM TEAM managers don’t need much encouragement to back Manchester City to the hilt.

Pep Guardiola’s side have generally provided tidal waves of points as a collective since the decorated tactician settled on English shores and their monumental treble last season only underlined their pedigree.

Truth be told, there is rarely a bad time to jam-pack your XI with Etihad residents but we’re on the brink of what should be a particularly fruitful spell due to a scheduling quirk (or two).

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Firstly, Man City are among the 14 top flight clubs in FA Cup action prior to their regular Premier League commitments in Gameweek 21.

They travel to Tottenham on Friday night (admittedly something of a bogey fixture in recent years) before what is expected to be a comfortable home game against Burnley in midweek.

They will then visit Brentford in Gameweek 22 – nothing audacious so far.

But here’s where things really pick up.

In Gameweek 23, City will host Everton on the Saturday before flying to Copenhagen for their Champions League round of 16 first leg.

At the time of writing, City are the only team scheduled to play twice in Gameweek 23 and it’s likely to remain that way.

That alone should pique your interest but wait, there’s more.

City also have two fixtures to fulfil in Gameweek 24 when they’re scheduled to face Chelsea and Brentford in back-to-back home games – the latter being a rearranged fixture initially disrupted by the Club World Cup.

The Bees and Arsenal (due to face Porto) are the only other clubs set to play twice in Gameweek 24.

To clarify, City are currently scheduled to play SEVEN fixtures between Gameweeks 21 and 24.

To put that into perspective, the majority of Premier League clubs will only fulfil five fixtures in the same time frame, with some teams down to four.

FA Cup fourth round replays would change the outlook somewhat but that works both ways – if City draw at Spurs this Friday they’ll end up playing eight games across the next four Gameweeks!

And the congestion doesn’t stop there.

If Guardiola’s men get past Spurs and book themselves in the FA Cup fifth round, they’ll double up in Gameweek 25 (and Gameweek 26, when Copenhagen visit the Etihad).

City’s rearranged away day to the Bees falling so close to the start of their Champions League knockout campaign has given them a hectic schedule and while that may cause fatigue, from a Dream Team perspective it’s a gift-wrapped present of sizeable proportions.

You can expect many of the top teams to feature five, six, seven or even eight City players at various points across the next few weeks if budget allows.

Kevin De Bruyne (£6.4m) is already by far and away the most-popular recruit ahead of Gameweek 21, with Julian Alvarez (£4.3m) also among the top five.

One potential game-change is the possible return of Erling Haaland (£7.9m) with the prolific poacher having been pictured in team training this week.

Phil Foden (£5.3m) is actually the best performer among his team-mates at this stage having racked up 198 points via ten goals and nine assists.

And that’s before we analyse the respective merits of Bernardo Silva (£4.1m), Rodri (£3.5m), Jeremy Doku (£4.1m) and Kyle Walker (£3.1m), all of whom have 100+ points to their name.

Defeat at Spurs on Friday would temper expectations somewhat but even so, the double headers in Gameweeks 23 and 24 promise very healthy returns.

Make sure you have suitable City representation at the opportune moments.

Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk