FC Copenhagen v Man City: Phil Foden can score to help land 40/1 top goalscorer pick

• Man City back in CL action in ominous mood

• Foden worth a punt for CL top scorer at 40/141.00

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FC Copenhagen v Manchester City
Tuesday February 13, 20:00
Live on TNT Sports 1

Undercooked Copengagen difficult to assess

FC Copenhagen qualified as Group A runners-up, a tremendous achievement considering they surged past Manchester United and Galatasaray to secure an unlikely qualification. It's been a whacky ride for them to get here, beating Manchester United 4-3 along the way and holding Bayern Munich to a 0-0 draw. Are they any good, though? I'm torn.

No team made more clearances in the group stages of the Champions League - a stat which suggests they were on the backfoot a lot. Yet, their overall defensive metrics are positive, restricting Bayern to a combined expected goals total of 1.57 across their two games. They obviously have the tools to restrict an elite attack.

However, the Danish champions haven't played a competitive game since beating Galatasaray in their final group game in December due to the Danish Superliga's winter break. Hardly the perfect preparation ahead of facing a football juggernaut.

Man City won all six games in Group G for the first time in the Champions League and arrive purring along to Pep Guardiola's tune. The 2-0 win over Everton on Saturday made it 10 wins on the spin across all competitions. City have scored 29 goals in that winning run, conceding only five.

The holders are 1/51.20 with the Sportsbook to win in the Danish capital and head the antepost outright market at 11/53.20 as they look to march towards an unprecedented double treble.

Foden's 40/1 top goalscorer chances too big to ignore

In what is a difficult match to find a confident betting angle in, I'm going to go a little rogue and delve into the Champions League top goalscorer market to provide us with a value bet to follow over the long-term.

I do like playing in these types of markets that have become a little unloved for two or so months whilst traders' minds are elsewhere. Things can change so quickly in football that there are opportunities to grab an inflated price on a certain team or player that have thrived over that period whilst the traders aren't concentrating on the market in question.

With that in mind, I've taken a bit of the 40/141.00 each-way on the Betfair Sportsbook for Phil Foden in the Champions League top goalscorer market.

The England star, already with three goals to his name in this competition, has had a majestic couple of months, thriving as Guardiola's side have gone on their winning run.

Foden has scored seven goals in his last 11 starts.

After only playing 89 minutes across all of City's Champions League knockout games last season, Foden has become a mainstay for Guardiola this season, starting 25 of the 29 last games across the Premier League and Champions League. He's arguably been City's player of the season. I think Guardiola has found a way to play Rodri, Bernardo Silva, Julian Alvarez, Kevin De Bruyne, Erling Haaland and Phil Foden in his best XI, like he did in the win at Brentford, where City were incredible in forward areas.

That bodes well for his chances of adding some significant beef to his goalscorer numbers in this competition. If City make the final, for which they are 5/61.84 with Betfair to do so, Foden will have seven fixtures to try and score in, including two fixtures against this FC Copenhagen side who City could dish out two hammerings to.

Of course, there is the overwhelming figure of Erling Haaland at the top of the betting with 11/102.11 available with the Betfair Sportsbook on him topping the European charts once more. He sits on five goals so far, joint with Antoine Griezmann, Alvaro Morata and Rasmus Hojlund.

Outscoring teammate Haaland is a tall order but we are dealing with a player who has just missed two months due to injury - and it's not the first niggling issue he's sustained in his career. Another injury to Haaland would blow this market wide open.

The win part of the bet isn't where the fun lies though - the 40/141.00 rates as a value play in this market because of the each-way terms of 1/4 the odds for the first four, meaning we'll be getting 10/111.00 for our money if Foden can finish among the top four finishers.

It's worth pointing out that dead-heat rules would apply like in the same way they do in Golf outright markets when lots of players are tied for the places.

Having collated the top goalscorer data from the last 10 seasons in the Champions League, the average number of goals you need to score to finish in the place money is 8.7 goals, meaning Foden will need to hit a ratio of scoring five or six goals to get us into payout territory.

A player of his quality, playing for arguably the greatest club team in the history of the sport is very capable of hitting that number.

He can be backed at 12/53.40 to score in Copenhagen to get that 40/141.00 shot moving in the right direction.

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