A largely quiet weekend in the Premier League concludes with the Monday Night Football which takes us to the King Power Stadium for the clash between struggling Leicester City and a buoyant Newcastle United side.
Both teams need the points for different reasons here. Leicester are getting closer to having their relegation back to the Championship confirmed whereas Newcastle have seen top five rivals drop points this weekend and will be wanting to take advantage.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live and in full on the Monday Night Football show which will be broadcast on the Sky Sports Main Event and Sky Sports Premier League channels. The programme begins at 6.30pm ahead of the 8pm kick off.
Leicester City
This has been a really strange campaign for Leicester City. It didn’t actually begin too badly while Steve Cooper was in charge but he was never going to be the accepted cup of tea after his links to Nottingham Forest so he was dismissed around a third of the way into the season and since then this has seemingly been a slow, arduous, one-way trip back to the Championship, one which is finally going to be confirmed in the coming weeks unless we see the sort of turnaround which probably isn’t feasible from here on in.
If they are to turn things around then they have to start by winning home matches and this one has become pretty much a must-win game given that Wolves have already won this weekend, leaving the Foxes 15 points from safety with just eight games remaining. The big problem that they have is they have now lost 14 of their last 15 matches, a run which began in the reverse fixture between these two sides, and alarmingly in those 14 losses they have scored just two goals.
Newcastle United
If things are on a downer at Leicester City, the opposite is the case with Newcastle United. They are enjoying their best season in quite some time having secured silverware when winning the Carabao Cup and now they are nicely placed to push on and add Champions League football next term to their achievements in this campaign. They begin the night two points from fifth spot and so a win here will move them into what is expected to be a Champions League place and have them in control of their own destiny.
If you were concerned that Newcastle would struggle to see out the campaign after the emotional highs of that win at Wembley, they were eased when they got the better of Brentford last week and now all eyes must be on achieving a top five finish. They will know that there are plenty of teams in that race and that goal difference could be a key factor and this may well represent the chance to give theirs a healthy boost over the course of this 90 minutes.
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Team News
One positive in this run of dark results for Ruud van Nistelrooy is that he has reported no fresh injury concerns going into this match so Abdul Fatawu is the only long-term absentee. Harry Winks was dropped for not complying last time out and it will be interesting to see if the England midfielder is recalled.
Newcastle United hope to be able to welcome Anthony Gordon back from suspension for this match but he hasn’t trained fully after picking up an injury with Luton. Alexander Isak and Kieran Trippier picked up knocks against Brentford and are being monitored.
Betting
I feel like this is a match to get really stuck into and the obvious starting point is for Newcastle United to win the game and win it well. They won the reverse meeting 4-0 so we know they can take the Foxes to the cleaners and that was the beginning of this 14 losses from 15. To add to the confidence of a Newcastle win, Leicester have only scored twice in that run and have conceded three or more on six occasions which would allow us a 3-1 Newcastle win to cover the -1.25 Asian line. I don’t see Leicester scoring but it gives us some wiggle room should they. This is all about Newcastle for me though and it is a prime spot for them not just to win but to bump up the goal difference as well and I expect them to take full advantage of that opportunity.
That brings me on to a couple of ladders for the night too, the first of which is Newcastle goals. Ordinarily when a side like Leicester are in this position they might look to keep things tight but it is clear that they can’t defend and they have to go for wins now else they are just going down without a fight. That leaves open the possibility of them being exposed and this Newcastle United side know how to put relegated teams to the sword, especially on their travels. Last season away from home against the bottom three they scored eight at Sheffield United, four at Burnley and none at Luton, although they picked the worst time to play the Hatters as it was a week after the Tom Lockyer cardiac arrest. At home against those three they scored twice against Burnley, three days before a Champions League match, four times against Luton and five times against Sheffield United. This season they have been to Southampton and scored three and Ipswich and scored four and while they only beat Southampton 1-0 at home it was the opening day of the season and Leicester shipped four in the reverse meeting. Add to that, a goal shy Everton scored four against Leicester recently, Brentford went here and scored four six weeks ago and last time out here a poor Manchester United side found the net three times. Newcastle are ruthless against poor teams so laddering them to score three, four and five feels like it will yield a reward.
Finally I can’t let this match go without backing Jacob Murphy to have a fun night. He bagged a brace in the reverse meeting and had four shots, two of which he had on target and I’m going to back him to replicate that here. I’m not surprised that Murphy did all that in the first game because this Leicester left side has looked an issue all season long and even though they have gone to three at the back it has made little to no difference. Murphy is enjoying a decent campaign and hits the target with 34% of his shots. Against a left side who gets no help from the forward players and for whom the right-back for Newcastle takes a defender away when attacking, taking the prices on Murphy to score, to have a shot on target and to have two shots on target like in the reverse meeting feels like it could pay off nicely.
Tips
Back Newcastle United (-1.25AH) to beat Leicester City for a 6/10 stake at 2.03 with William Hill
Back them here:
Back Newcastle United – Over 2.5 goals for a 3/10 stake at 2.88 with Betfair
Back Newcastle United – Over 3.5 goals for a 2/10 stake at 6.00 with Betfair
Back Newcastle United – Over 4.5 goals for a 1/10 stake at 15.00 with Paddy Power
Back J.Murphy to score anytime for a 2/10 stake at 4.33 with Boylesports
Back him here:
Back J.Murphy – Over 0.5 shots on target for a 3/10 stake at 2.05 with Coral
Back J.Murphy – Over 1.5 shots on target for a 1/10 stake at 6.50 with Bet365
