Leicester City Previews: ‘Nothing but the Huth’ – Will it be Pardew or Puel dancing on the touchline at the final whistle?

West Brom vs Leicester

10/03/18

Kick-off: 3pm

Preview:

Crikey, talk about Fergie time and then some! I happened to be at Leicester vs Bournemouth last week thanks to a friend of mine and I tell you what, how lucky were we to get a point from that game?!

We were dreadful, didn’t look like scoring, but up stepped Riyad Mahrez in the 97th minute to curl in a peach of a free kick to salvage a draw. Funnily enough, my friend who I was sitting next to at the game was adamant the free kick would go in; he was the only person who somehow stayed positive in that situation.

Claude Puel has come under some serious scrutiny from Leicester fans, but what we have to remember is we haven’t dropped out the top half of the league, so things are still fine and dandy in my eyes.

We move on now to West Brom – bottom of the league with every game being a cup final for Alan Pardew and his team. I can’t wait for us to be the team that succumbs to the Pardew touchline dance…

Stats:

The Baggies are bottom for a reason. They’re the worst team in the league, having won only three games all season. Two of those three games came right at the start of the season, but since then it’s been downhill spiral for the West Midlands club. They’ve won one in 26 games, losing their last five games, conceding 12 goals.

Leicester have only won two of their last 12 league games, something that Leicester fans are not in the slightest bit happy with, However, a positive slant on that is that we’re still in the top eight which is quite an achievement thus far.

Both teams under-perform at home and away according to the stats. West Brom average under a point per game at home, whereas Leicester average bang on a point per game away from the King Power Stadium. Both of these sides also concede over the league average of goals home and away, which is something both managers will be unhappy with.

Something that stood out to me was the percentage of full time results for Leicester away from home. 21.4% of their games this season have ended in a 2-1 defeat. We score, but we also concede – relevant to this game in my opinion.

With this being one of those sorts of games that’s going to be decided by the odd goal according to the stats, 2-1 could be a good score line to go with.

Prediction:

Leicester are the team that always seem to be on the wrong end of unwanted stats. For example, if Chris Brunt hadn’t scored in 60 games previously, it means that he’ll definitely score this weekend. That’s one exaggerated example, but Leicester fans will understand what I mean!

West Brom are fighting for their lives and need to start picking up points very quickly in order to avoid the dreaded drop. It comes at a time where Leicester aren’t exactly in a rich vein of form themselves and arguably have questions to answer in light of their recent performances.

I think this game will be close; I doubt there’ll be much in it from a score line point of view. It’s definitely a game, *cue cliché statement*, that could go either way.

Usually with games like this, I would sit on the fence when it comes to a score prediction, however I have a horrible gut feeling that Mr. Pardew will find a way to win and the travelling Foxes faithful may be waiting another week for a victory.

Score Prediction:

West Brom 2-1 Leicester City