The Premier League weekend once again concludes with the Monday Night Football on an evening where Leicester City can really consolidate their place in the top four when they entertain Crystal Palace at the King Power Stadium.
A win for Leicester will move them seven points clear of fifth placed West Ham United with matches beginning to run out in the campaign. Crystal Palace haven’t quite reached 40 points but they are perfectly safe with their total of 38.
Where to watch
The match will be shown in full during the Monday Night Football programme on Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Premier League. The show begins at 7pm with the match itself kicking off at 8pm.
Leicester City
It looked as though Leicester City were just having a bit of a wobble a couple of weeks ago when they lost successive matches, although defeats at home to Manchester City and away to West Ham weren’t exactly criminal, but those doubts of failing to finish the season strongly which hampered them last season were just beginning to resurface. They got themselves back on the straight and narrow though with a win in the FA Cup semi-final before easing past West Brom on Thursday night.
We saw the Foxes at their best against West Brom and it was important that Jamie Vardy ended a lengthy drought as they seek a place in the Champions League next season. He tends to score in bursts when his dander is up so that might well serve them well here. Successive clean sheets will have gone down well as they have been a bit of a rare commodity for Brendan Rodgers’ men since the turn of the year.
Crystal Palace
This has been one of the more inconsistent seasons for Crystal Palace but the end result is the same. They are safe for another term of Premier League football long before the end of the campaign and in their present guise they can only ever be rewarded for that. They got into this position last season and absolutely sunk for the last few matches. I don’t know whether they are motivated to avoid a repeat of that or whether the air will come out of the balloon once again.
Palace go into the match with just one win from their last six matches but if you were a fan of theirs you might well be quick to point out that they have only lost two of their last seven, and they were against ‘big six’ sides Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. The only problem with those defeats were that they were 4-1 in both and there is a bit of a trend of Palace leaking a lot of goals against the better sides in the division, which could be a concern here.
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Team News
Ricardo Pereira is expected to feature in this game having sat out the Thursday night win to keep his workload sensible having been out for a while. Wesley Fofana is currently fasting for Ramadan and may not be used for the full 90 minutes as a result. Harvey Barnes and James Justin are both injured still.
Crystal Palace defender Gary Cahill is hoping to be available despite a minor injury but Roy Hodgson will definitely be able to call upon the services of James Tomkins, Mamadou Sakho and Jeffrey Schlupp.
Betting
While I accept Leicester City haven’t been as convincing on their own patch as you would like them to have been this season, I do expect them to win here against a Crystal Palace side who are inconsistent at the best of times let alone when they have already achieved their aim for the campaign. They arrive at the King Power having won just two of their last nine, one of which was against West Brom where they were second best for long periods and the other was against Brighton which was an full on burglary so their form isn’t convincing.
Leicester haven’t been brilliant themselves over say the last two months but it has generally taken a good side to beat them and Crystal Palace aren’t that. The Palace record against the better sides in the division is not great. Chelsea twice scored four against them, while City and Tottenham have both done likewise and Liverpool smashed them for seven. The reverse fixture between these two was a 1-1 draw but if you think back it was over the Christmas period and Brendan Rodgers made wholesale changes for that game. This match is on the boots of the Leicester players for me and I expect a pretty comfortable win.
Tips
PUSH – Back Leicester City (-1AH) to beat Crystal Palace for a 3/10 stake at 1.71 with BetVictor
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