Leicester City v West Brom: Premier League – live!

There are those managers who use their pre-match pressers to get into the mind of the opposition. There are those who use the platform as an excuse to mouth off, to lay traps, or simply to sell the game. And there are managers like Tony Pulis who, well … don’t. The best he managed in the buildup to this match was this: “On Monday night I’m looking forward to going over there to play in what we know will be a competitive game.”
Thanks Tony.
Still, he must have something as West Brom are firmly mid-table despite not having won a match in their past five league games. They’ve been very Pulissy. This season they’ve scored six goals in seven games which keeps them bang on their just-shy-of-a-goal-a-game trend: in their last 317 Premier fixtures, they’ve scored 316 goals. This may not be a goal-fest.
It’s unlikely to be a possession-fest either, these two sides have the lowest stats for possession in the Premier League this season. What we’re about to feast upon may simply be two sides furiously passing the ball to each other, then getting it straight back again.
Leicester have only won once in the Premier League this season (a 2-0 win at home to Brighton midway through August) in amongst a run of tough fixtures that has included Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool. They’ve picked up a couple of points with draws to Huddersfield and Bournemouth but know that matches against teams like West Brom offer them a chance to get out of the bottom three and go on something of a run. Their next league matches are against Swansea, Everton and Stoke and they could do with going into them in something approaching form.
“The school report will say we could do better, I don’t hide behind that,” said the manager Craig Shakespeare. “I see our quality and commitment every day in training. The hardest thing is sometimes translating that into the game, but the work ethic I will never doubt.”
Shakespeare made over 100 appearances for West Brom as a player and spent nearly 10 years there as a coach, however Leicester haven’t beaten WBA at home for 23 years. “Maybe I won’t tell the lads,” honked Shakespeare over the weekend. “Sometimes you have these little quirks against teams. Centre forwards have these quirks where they always score against a certain team. Who knows what it’s about?”
Jamie Vardy, Wilfred Ndidi and Ben Chilwell are all available but Robert Huth and Matty James remain out. Nacer Chadli, James Morrison and Hal Robson-Kanu are all doubts for West Brom.

SOURCE : GUARDIAN SPORTS
posted by CAMPUS94