Manchester City 's delayed clash with Brentford on Tuesday night will not be shown live on TV due to the Premier League 's blackout rules.
The champions will finally draw level on games with their rivals having had a game in hand since December. City were originally due to play Brentford at the Etihad on December 23, but that had to be postponed due to their involvement in the Club World Cup - which they won for the first time in their history.
The decision to postpone the clash was announced back in July and, as a result, it was never considered as a possible pick for TV when the various broadcasters made their selections for December's fixtures. Therefore, despite being rescheduled, the game is still not available for fans.
The amount of games unavailable to Sky Sports and BT Sport subscribers remains a divisive topic, especially when the various subscriptions come at a hefty cost. The UK is also the only country to have a blackout rule with major European leagues such as France, Spain, Germany and Italy allow allowing games to be shown.
City will be aiming to close to within a point of Liverpool following their draw against Chelsea at the weekend. Pep Guardiola's side lost ground on their title rivals as they were surprisingly held by the Blues and will want to avoid a repeat against another London outfit.
Just weeks ago the champions came from behind to secure a 3-1 win at Brentford as Phil Foden scored a hat-trick in the capital. Last season though the Bees did secure a shock victory in Manchester with Ivan Toney netting a late winner to stun the Etihad.
Brentford may take confidence from the amount of times City have conceded in recent weeks with Guardiola's side only keeping one clean sheet in their last five league games, however the Catalan insists their focus is on winning games.
He said: “We love to have clean sheets. All the teams want it, and we are not an exception. We want to concede few [but] at the end we want to win games. Sometimes you have periods where you defend well and concede goals, sometimes you don’t concede.
"Never since I arrived [at City] was I focused on clean sheets, clean sheets, clean sheets. The players know it but I don’t go to them and say ‘Today clean sheets, clean sheets, clean sheets.’ If you say ‘clean sheets, clean sheets’ they forget to play and forget defending and forget what they have to do.
“What we have to do is play better and better and better and concede few and attack better and create more chances."
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