📊 Form Guide

Melbourne City

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Melbourne City, who won their previous game, will hope for a similar result following the 2-3 A-League triumph against Sydney FC.

In that game, Melbourne City had 47% possession and 22 attempts on goal with 10 of them on target. For Melbourne City, goals were scored by Medin Memeti (5'), Max Caputo (35') and Alessandro Lopane (61'). Sydney FC got 17 shots at goal with 9 on target. Jordan Courtney-Perkins (28') and Douglas Costa (39') scored for Sydney FC.

Aurelio Vidmar's Melbourne City have seen rewards for their attempts on goal a sum total of 9 times in their prior half-dozen outings. The corresponding number of goals that have been scored against them in those same games is 5.

Going into this one, Melbourne City are winless against Central Coast Mariners in their previous 5 league games.

Central Coast Mariners

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Central Coast Mariners head into the meeting after a 3-1 A-League win versus Perth Glory in their last fixture.

In that match, Central Coast Mariners had 41% possession and 11 attempts at goal with 3 of them on target. For Central Coast Mariners, the goals were scored by Alou Kuol (5'), Mikael Doka (21') and Christian Theoharous (58'). For their opponents, Perth Glory had 23 shots at goal with 6 on target. Nicholas Pennington (10') was the scorer for Perth Glory.

In as many as 5 of the previous 6 games featuring Central Coast Mariners, a minimum of three goals have been hit. The average number of goals per game during that spell is 3.5, with the average number of goals for Central Coast Mariners working out to 1. While that may be of interest, time will tell whether that trend will persist in this next game.

Looking at the pre-match facts, Central Coast Mariners:

• haven't won against Melbourne City in games played away from home for the previous 13 matches in the league. An unbelievably poor away record.
• haven’t won away from home in the past 5 league games.

🤜🤛 Head to head

An examination of their past head-to-head clashes going back to 15/04/2023 shows us that Melbourne City have won 0 of these games and Central Coast Mariners 3, with the tally of drawn games standing at 3.

There were also plenty of goals scored in those games, 23 in all at an average of 3.83 goals per match.

The previous league clash between these sides was A-League match day 11 on 31/12/2024 when it finished Central Coast Mariners 1-1 Melbourne City.

On that day, Central Coast Mariners had 35% possession and 6 attempts at goal with 2 of them on target. Their only player on the scoresheet was Nathan Paull (68').

At the other end, Melbourne City had 11 shots at goal with 3 on target. Samuel Souprayen (33') was the scorer.

The match was refereed by Tim Danaskos.

📋 Team News: Melbourne City

James Nieuwenhuizen (Knee injury), James Jeggo (Sore muscles), Mathew Leckie (Calf injury), Jayden Necovski (Cruciate ligament tear) and Andrew Nabbout (Cruciate ligament tear) will not be able to play for Melbourne City gaffer Aurelio Vidmar.

ℹ️ Team News: Central Coast Mariners

Central Coast Mariners manager Mark Jackson has to currently contend with reduced team options. Ryan Edmondson (unknown injury) and Brad Tapp (Cruciate ligament injury) are not able to play.

⚡ Prediction

It looks to us that Melbourne City have it within them to have the majority of the possession and should be able to turn a few of their chances into goals.

At the other end, Central Coast Mariners will be up against it to make a breakthrough but we do think it’s quite likely that they will be hitting back at some stage here, too.

Our tip is for a pretty comfortable 3-1 win for Melbourne City at the end of the match.

Lucas Pereira, 05:03 05/04/2025