Everton vs Man City - preview and possible line-ups

Everton take on last year's champions, Manchester City at Goodison Park this Saturday. Manchester beat Watford 8-0 in a record-breaking win last week, whereas Everton have had a rather mixed start to the league.

TEAM NEWS:

Everton: Everton are expected to be without Andre Gomes due to a rib injury and new signing Jean-Philippe Gbamin is still sidelined for another month or so. Silva could make some changes from last weekend's defeat to the Blades with Alex Iwobi and Calvert-Lewin among those pushing for inclusion. Michael Keane, Seamus Coleman and Gylfi Sigurdsson should all return to the starting XI after being left out in midweek.

Manchester City: Benjamin Mendy is now back fit and could be in contention to start the league game, although Guardiola may be wary of giving him too much game time given his injury tendencies. If Sterling comes back inot the team, Mahrez appears the most likely candidate to make way for him, as well as Bernardo. Fernandinho is expected to line-up against Otamendi in defence, due to Laporte and Stones' absence. Kevin De Bruyne and Ederson will also come back into the team.

MANAGER'S THOUGHTS: 

Marco Silva: On Man City: “It will be a big challenge for us but we want this type of challenge.” He says that they are a good team and so Everton need to step up and try and get a win on Saturday. "They are one of the best teams in Europe and it's really hard to be solid against them".

Injury news:  He says there is no change on the injury front with Andre Gomes hoping to step up his recovery next week, but Silva is pleased with Djibril Sidibe who is giving Seamus Coleman “a good fight” for the right-back spot but he’ll demand more from him. 

When speaking about being 14th place, he said he is "not happy with the league position, but it's too early to panic". He comments that his team need to "be clinical, ruthless in both boxes because if you do that, for sure the results will improve again.”

Pep Guardiola: On his opponents: "Goodison Park is always a tough game for us. The approach is the same - to go there, try and make a good performance and win the game and we have chance to be top of the league. A long time ago we lost at Goodison. I don’t go there thinking about what happened then. Every game is completely different."

There is no real injury news, except that of the absences of John Stones and Laporte and Guardiola goes into this game extremely confident and motivated after his teams 8-0 win against Watford last week.

Did you know?

Silva himself has lost all five of his Premier League meetings with Guardiola, having not tasted defeat at the hand of any other manager more than twice in the competition.

Everton possible starting lineup:
Pickford; Coleman, Keane, Mina, Digne; Schneiderlin, Delph; Richarlison, Sigurdsson, Iwobi; Calvert-Lewin

Man City possible starting lineup:
Ederson; Walker, Otamendi, Fernandinho, Zinchenko; De Bruyne, Rodri, D Silva; Bernardo, Aguero, Sterling