Auckland FC vs. Melbourne City FC Prediction on January 18, 2025

Match info

Auckland FC had quite a strong start to their inaugural Australian men’s football Isuzu UTE A-League season. Still, they’ve recently seen a significant decline in their play as they prepare to host Melbourne City FC, the new league leaders, this weekend in Round 15. Despite that, Auckland are the favorites to win the match by the odds of Australian bookmakers, mainly due to Melbourne City’s injury problems. Date and time of kickoff: Saturday, January 18, 2025, at 5 p.m. local time. The venue of the match is the Go Media Stadium in Auckland, North Island, New Zealand.

Meeting statistics

The current form of Auckland FC

Auckland assembled a strong team in their inaugural season as a club (they got a license to play the A-League right after they were established), and they’ve dominated the league for the majority of the season. But going into this game, the New Zealanders had only won once in their last five games after losing 0-1 to the struggling Perth Glory in Western Australia last weekend. They fell to third place in the standings.

The next match will be a big mental challenge for Steve Corica’s “Black Knights“ because they’ve never been in this position this season. They are also without their inspirational captain, Hiroki Sakai, due to concussion protocols. The 74-cap Japan international was hit by a ball to the head during the match against Perth. Sakai had to be replaced right away in the 46th minute of play.

So, Auckland are facing their first adversity in the 2024–25 campaign. They indeed had a very busy schedule, but it involved a lot of home games. If we look at the game against the Perth Glory, they ruined their opportunities more than they played poorly. One stat is eye-catching with Auckland this season. It’s clear that they’ve been so good defensively and difficult to break down, but they scored 16, the lowest of the top 7 teams. If they concede the first goal, it becomes difficult to them. When they do trail, which is rare, they have to open up, and it leaves them more exposed defensively. The team of the quality of Melbourne City’s is damn well capable of exploiting that.

The current form of the Melbourne City FC

After the Victorians defeated the Brisbane Roar by a goal to zero last week to extend their winning streak to three games, they’ve risen to the top of the league.

Aurelio Vidmar has been dealing with an enormous list of injured players. He had to put in youngsters who have been delivering a lot week after week. Melbourne City are a team that’s very balanced, very dangerous in attack, compact in defense, and very well organized, so hats off to the coach, who’s doing a fantastic job with them. When those more experienced and skilled players come back after injuries (Mathew Leckie, Jimmy Jeggo, Yonatan Cohen, and Andreas Kuen) MCFC are to become an even bigger force to be reckoned with. However, they didn’t play against such strong rivals as Auckland when injuries started to cause them concerns, and perhaps this is why they are underdogs in the upcoming game, with odds of 3.35 on Meridianbet. Auckland are 2.04.

Head-to-head

These two have faced one time only, which was last December in the A-League. The end result was a draw: 2-2.

Match analytics

Considering the two teams’ recent performance, but also the fact that Melbourne haven’t played against any of the teams from the very top of the league since injuries began to pile up, we think that Auckland will likely prevail, but only after a big fight.

Tip: Halftime/Fulltime – X/1, with odds of 4.91 on Rolletto.