Melbourne City welcome Perth Glory to the AAMI Park in the Australian A-League on Sunday morning as the hosts aim to put back-to-back wins together.
Last season's defeated finalists have won two of their three league outings in 2020-21, while the visitors have collected just three points so far.
Match preview
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City were defeated in extra time by Sydney FC in the 2019-20 Grand Final, which ended their hopes of being crowned the A-League champions for the first time in their history.
The club had a large overhaul over the summer, bringing in 13 new arrivals and showing 10 former players the exit door as they prepared for another title tilt.
An opening day victory over Brisbane Roar appeared to justify the raft of changes, but a 2-0 defeat to Adelaide United followed and began to raise some doubts over the revolution within the City squad.
Saturday's impressive 2-1 win over Western United got them back on track, though, and another three points over the weekend would be a real signal of intent this season.
Perth are currently 10th in the A-League standings after winning just one of their opening three league games.
Richard Garcia's men have been the top flight's entertainers, though. Already this season the Perth Oval outfit have been involved in a 5-4 and a 5-3 scoreline.
Those entertaining performances mean the Glory are the division's highest scorers but have also conceded more goals than any of their domestic rivals.
If Garcia can find the right balance between defence and attack, then his side will climb up the table in no time, but until that happens they will continue to struggle near the bottom of the table.
Melbourne City Australian A-League form: WLW
Perth Glory Australian A-League form: WLL
Team News
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Club-captain Scott Jamieson has served his one-match suspension after picking up a red card against Adelaide and should return to the starting lineup at the expense of Scott Galloway.
Winger Andrew Nabbout is the only absentee for City after the 32-year-old suffered a hamstring injury earlier in the month.
Perth Glory pair Christopher Oikonomidis and Osama Malik are long-term absentees for Garcia and are still some weeks away from making their return to the first team.
Thirty-eight-year-old winger Diego Castro is yet to feature this season after picking up a knock but may be fit enough to return to action over the weekend.
Melbourne City possible starting lineup:
Glover; Jamieson, Good, Griffiths, Garuccio; Tilio, O'Neill, Berenguer; Noone, Maclaren, Metcalfe
Perth Glory possible starting lineup:
Reddy; Ingham, Lachman, Aspropotamitis, Walsh; Hughes, Kilkenny, Stynes, D'Agostino; Fornaroli, Keogh
We say: Melbourne City 3-2 Perth Glory
There are usually a lot of goals in games involving Perth Glory, and we expect this to be no different. City should have too much quality for them, though, and we expect the home side to secure the three points.
Top betting tip
Data Analysis
Our analysis of all available data, including recent performances and player stats up until an hour before kickoff, suggested the most likely outcome of this match was a Melbourne City win with a probability of 50.1%. A win for Perth Glory had a probability of 26.73% and a draw had a probability of 23.2%.
The most likely scoreline for a Melbourne City win was 2-1 with a probability of 9.58%. The next most likely scorelines for that outcome were 1-0 (8.54%) and 2-0 (7.65%). The likeliest Perth Glory win was 1-2 (6.69%), while for a drawn scoreline it was 1-1 (10.68%). The actual scoreline of 1-3 was predicted with a 2.8% likelihood.
