Match talking points will appear here before kick-off.

• 1
  City have pulled off a genuinely weird piece of history: they won their first seven league games, then lost the next three. According to Sky Sports, no top-flight team had done that in 122 years. Mention it and a City fan will tell you it's a blip. Their face will tell you they're not entirely sure.
• 2
  The latest defeat was a 3-1 loss at Nottingham Forest last Saturday. Former City academy striker Liam Delap scored twice against his old club, which is football's favourite way of being cruel. City now spend the international break six points behind leaders Arsenal.
• 3
  Enzo Maresca is the man in charge now. He was blunt after Forest, saying the first half 'was not good enough' and calling the second and third goals 'copy and paste'. When a manager starts describing goals like a computer error, the defending was probably bad.
• 4
  There's an injury worry too. Marc Guehi and Josko Gvardiol, two first-choice centre-backs, both went off at half-time at Forest with knocks. Ask a City fan whether the pair will be fit after the break and you'll sound like you've been reading the medical updates.
• 5
  Then there's the elephant in the room. At the end of September an independent commission found City guilty of 114 of the famous 115 Premier League charges over their finances. The club is appealing and nobody knows the punishment yet. Raise it carefully, or better still, let them raise it.

• 1
  Bournemouth are the form team nobody's talking about: last weekend's 2-1 win at Ipswich made it eight wins in a row in all competitions. Even better, it's four straight league wins – something they hadn't managed in a single season since December 2023.
• 2
  It's a proper turnaround story. Marco Rose's side didn't win any of their first six Premier League games (three draws, three defeats), and now they're up to seventh on 15 points, just three behind the top four. Drop 'they were winless after six games, you know' and watch people do the maths.
• 3
  Striker Evanilson is red hot. He scored inside five minutes at Ipswich after nicking the ball off the goalkeeper and rolling it into an empty net, and that's now five Premier League games in a row with a goal – the first Bournemouth player ever to do that.
• 4
  The bigger clubs are circling. Arsenal are reportedly keen on young forward Eli Junior Kroupi, although the word is Bournemouth have no intention of letting him go before the summer. It's the price of being good at spotting talent – everyone else eventually notices.
• 5
  There's an England angle too: defender James Hill was called up to the senior squad this week as cover after Ezri Konsa dropped out of training. Not bad for a club whose matchday squad still costs a fraction of the Premier League's big spenders.