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Man City v Portsmouth: Bet on Harry's boys to keep their run going

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James in goal and Defoe upfront, Richard Walker believes the Southerners will have the upper hand in Sunday's live Sky fixture

Contractual obligation matches I call them. Team going nowhere plays host to another team going nowhere as Sky fulfil their duty to show all clubs a certain number of times during a season.

Unless you're a fan of one of the combatants who meet at Eastlands at four o'clock for 'Super Sunday', I doubt you'll be planning your weekend's activities around watching this one.

But the great thing about betting with Betfair is - even when a Sunday Sky match likely to be as dull as this one appears on your football radar for the weekend - the phalanx of cash-making opportunities that surround any football fixture.

True, there's the Europe issue still to be resolved, but even those muddyish waters won't truly clear until the destiny of the FA Cup Final has been decided, since Pompey can guarantee their UEFA Cup place via that route.

Should Portsmouth beat Cardiff, the sixth-placed Premier League side - and not the Cup runners-up - would take the remaining UEFA Cup spot. Add to this the fact that City need to finish higher than Villa and Blackburn to be England's Intertoto Cup representative and, all of a sudden (I've talked myself round here!), there's a game on. Good.

Right then, to the odds! The hosts are [2.46] to prevail while the draw and Pompey are both around the [3.35] mark. At those odds I'm tempted to lay Sven Goran Eriksson's men. Pompey have already shown that their Cup run isn't having the slightest impact on their quest for Europe via the league and I'm taking them to stand firm.

And while I was wrong about the result of their home match against Newcastle last weekend, I suggested siding with a Pompey clean sheet. I believe, at [3.65], they should be respected to do so again, shutting out City's spluttering forward line which has managed a fairly rubbish two goals in its last four home games. The Blues are [2.94] to prevent Kanu and co. finding the net, but something tells me they're going to yield at least once to Jermain Defoe and co.

Although he hasn't got a goal to his name in Pompey blue, the pace of Milan Baros (he's expected to start up front with Defoe) will pose a threat to a City rear-guard still shorn of Micah Richards (knee) and with Nedum Onuoha out for the rest of the campaign. Defoe remains, in my book, the sensible To Score (at any time) option, backable at about [2.1].

Everything points to a low-scoring affair here and I'm really struggling to conjure up the image of an a six-goal thriller at the City of Manchester Stadium, let alone even three or four going in. So take the Unders in either the Under/Over 2.5 goals market or perhaps the 1.5 goals market. Under 2.5 goals is [1.68] while the Under 1.5 goals is tempting at about the [3.0] mark.

The odds of [9.2] are available for a Portsmouth 1-0 victory - and that's where my pennies will be heading in the Correct Score market. My view is reinforced by the likely return from injury of Harry Redknapp's midfield lynchpins, John Utaka and Lassana Diarra. Prolific Pompey may not be, but they're a brute of a side to master physically and they almost sense, I reckon, that's one enough given their rock-solid defending and the division's in-form keeper.

Alongside my opinion about a low-scoring away win, the Half Time/Full Time market is offering Draw/Portsmouth at [8.4] and Portsmouth/Portsmouth at [6.2] - either of which are good supplemental options if the exact scoreline isn't to your liking.

However this could all be proved wrong and we might have a Benjani-inspired thriller on our hands...so when goals seven and eight go in on Sunday, don't say I didn't warn you!