Man United vs Brentford prediction, odds, expert football betting tips and best bets for Premier League match – Sporting News
With just 10 matches remaining in the Premier League season, Manchester United continue their desperate chase for a top-§four spot as they visit Brentford in the late kickoff timeslot on Saturday.
The Red Devils sit sixth in the standings, six points back of fifth-placed Tottenham and nine behind fourth-placed Aston Villa. Man United will have to be nearly perfect the rest of the way to catch those two clubs, but Villa and Spurs do appear vulnerable if the Red Devils can make a late-season run.
Defeats to Fulham and Man City bracketing the start of March hurt the cause, and matchups with Chelsea and Liverpool loom on the early-April horizon, making a three-point haul from this match an absolute must.
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Brentford sit 15th in the table, five points clear of the relegation zone now that Nottingham Forest have been docked points for financial irregularities. It feels dicey for the Bees as they have hit a recent slide, but don’t appear to be one of those in true danger of the drop unless they fall further flat across the coming month.
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At this stage of the season, while the Red Devils have plenty of flaws, Erik ten Hag’s side are better in both talent and form. Manchester United have performed well on the road this year, collecting 22 points away from Old Trafford, sixth-most in the league.
United were lucky to beat Brentford at home back in early October, with a dramatic pair of stoppage-time goals from Scott McTominay turning around a deficit at the death, but were deserving winners on the whole based on attacking third production.
Come late March, the Bees have gone six straight without a win, suffering defeat in five of those games. They were battered on almost every occasion, with losses to Liverpool, Man City, Arsenal, and even West Ham and Burnley all sporting significant expected goal differentials. It might not be pretty but United should come away with the three points here.
While the biggest story this season for Man United has been the emergence of Kobbie Mainoo, there have been some other key contributing figures as well.
Rasmus Hojlund and Alejandro Garnacho have both finally found their feet in Premier League play, able to trouble opposing defences as long as they’re fit to take the field. Even the often-criticised Bruno Fernandes has been better in the second half of the season, turning around his first-half struggles into 28 chances created since the start of 2024, one off the most in the Premier League by title challenger Martin Odegaard.
The problem for Fernandes and United have been the quality of those chances — Fernandes has logged just 0.05 xA per chance created, which is half Odegaard’s mark and a quarter of others with lower volume. But against Brentford, they’ll have an opportunity for profit — the Bees have been truly daft at the back, leading to their recent slide. They coughed up an outlandish 2.7 xG to attack-averse Burnley, while being deservingly punished for four goals by West Ham and Liverpool amidst their recent six-game winless run.
The Manchester United youngster took a while to become a consistent option on the wing, but he has developed to the point where he’s a major part of the Red Devils attack. While Garnacho still needs to work on finishing chances, he is beginning to generate the type of volume in front of net that makes for a reliable goal scorer.
Garnacho has not scored in league play since his brace against West Ham in early February, but it’s not for a lack of trying, having ripped 20 shots over the last five matches. That run includes a goose egg against Manchester City, but he made up for it elsewhere, firing off eight shots against Luton and six against Aston Villa. In the bonkers 4-3 FA Cup win over Liverpool before the international break, he continued to try for goal, hitting six efforts, although five were blocked.
Still, against a defensively porous team like Brentford, expecting Garnacho to put more than one effort on target seems reasonable at such exceptionally profitable odds.
U.S. rights-holders NBC Sports have decided to stream this primetime Saturday match exclusively on Peacock.
In Canada, the match will be available to stream exclusively on Fubo Canada, where every match across the entirety of the 2023/24 Premier League season can be accessed.
Sky Sports has the rights to this Premier League match in the UK, televising and streaming it across its various platforms.
Kyle Bonn is a soccer content producer for The Sporting News.
