Palmer handed debut as City make four changes | OneFootball

Cole Palmer will make his first team debut as Pep Guardiola makes four changes from the side beaten by Leicester.

Ferran Torres and Zack Steffen get their second start and Aymeric Laporte also comes in after missing the first three matches.

There’s good news on the subs’ bench, too, with Bernardo back after injury.

Teams

City: Steffen, Walker, Mendy, Laporte, Fernandinho (c), Rodri, De Bruyne, Palmer, Mahrez, Torres, Sterling

Subs: Ederson, Ake, Bernardo, Foden, Delap, Doyle, Harwood-Bellis

Burnley XI: Peacock-Farrell, Lowton, Taylor, Tarkowski, Pieters, Brownhill, Westwood, Long, McNeil, Vydra, Barnes

Possible tactics & formation

Fernandinho seems likely to drop into the back four alongside Aymeric Laporte with no other recognised central defender in the starting XI.

That would mean Rodrigo playing as the holding midfielder with Palmer and Kevin De Bruyne completing the trio.

Torres and Mahrez will flank Raheem Sterling.

City will still be hurting

Make no mistake, City will want to get the 5-2 home defeat out of the system as quickly as possible.

That is one of the reason's for the strong starting XI.

In many ways, Sunday’s loss was a bit of a freak result – and that’s not taking anything away from Leicester.

That game arguably swing on a (correctly) disallowed Rodri goal and the Foxes equaliser a minute or so later.

At 2-0, City almost certainly go on to win the game, but it didn’t pan out that way and three penalties were awarded to the visitors.

It’s not often away sides get one spot-kick, let alone three, so hopefully, it won’t happen again for a long time.

The players have had three days for that loss to sink in and this group are not used to getting well beaten at the Etihad – it will be fascinating to see how they react for this game.

Injury woe for both sides

Both Sean Dyche and Pep Guardiola are down to the bare bones of their squads.

The Clarets have seven first teamers absent including Ben Mee, Jay Rodriguez and Robbie Brady.

City, of course, have Sergio Aguero, John Stones, Gabriel Jesus and Ilkay Gundogan absent – among others.

With that in mind, we could see two sides mixing a number of youngsters with experience with bot managers keen not to see their lists grow any worse.

Stats and facts

Burnley and City have only met in the League Cup once before, with City winning 6-0 across two legs in the first round in 1999-2000 (5-0 and 1-0).

City have lost just one of their last 24 matches against Burnley in all competitions (W17 D6), winning each of the last five by an aggregate score of 20-1.

Burnley are looking to reach the quarter-finals of the League Cup for the first time since 2008-09, when they eliminated Chelsea on penalties at this stage.

City have progressed from 28 of their last 30 League Cup ties, although their two eliminations in that time have been at the fourth round stage - in 2014-15 v Newcastle and 2016-17 v Man Utd.

Phil Foden has assisted in each of his last three League Cup starts - since the start of last season, no player has created more chances in open play in the competition than Foden (14), with the 20-year-old creating five in City's 2-1 win over Bournemouth in the third round.

You can watch a full-match replay of every City men and women’s first team game within 24-hours of the final whistle on CITY+.

Find out more and subscribe, here.