Leicester’s defence has proved the obvious Achilles’ heel in their battle against the drop, having failed to keep a clean sheet in their last 20 Premier League outings.
Leicester City
With the race for Premier League survival set for a photo finish, Leicester City find themselves chasing the pack after a three-game winless streak ensured they’ll head into another game week in the relegation zone. Their defence has proved the obvious Achilles’ heel in their battle against the drop, having failed to keep a clean sheet in their last 20 Premier League outings. That’s proven massively frustrating for their frontline, who have mostly done their bit by finding the net in ten of those 17 winless games, and they’ll have felt aggrieved again in their last outing at Fulham, where Leicester lost 5-3. That spells trouble for boss Dean Smith, who won’t be happy to be preparing to face Liverpool, considering he’s lost four of his five Premier League H2Hs in his managerial career.
Liverpool
The prospect of his misery extending is made even more frightening by the fact Liverpool have produced six straight wins, though each of the last five came by narrow one-goal margins, as was the case in the reverse fixture when they ran out 2-1 winners. Jürgen Klopp’s side have subsequently cemented themselves in fifth-place, while also laying the foundations for a potential late assault on the top-four. The need for such form would normally be redundant at this point of the season, but the Reds’ poor away form this campaign has cost them dearly. They’ve secured more than double the amount of points at home (43) compared to their away haul (19), and that discrepancy would’ve been worse had it not been for winning their last two fixtures on the road.
Leicester’s survival hopes may well rest on the shoulders of club hero Jamie Vardy, who’ll look to add to his ten goals scored in his last 13 games against Liverpool. For the opposition, Mohamed Salah is on the brink of another historical landmark, being a single strike away from becoming the first Liverpool player since Roger Hunt in the early 1960’s to score 20 league goals in three successive seasons. Liverpool last lost a Premier League match when leading at half-time in December 2016, going 123 such matches unbeaten since.