[Match Preview] Premier League Title Match: Leicester City vs Manchester City

🦊🔵 Leicester City welcomes Manchester City to King Power Stadium as the title of the fourth matchday of the Premier League. Here’s my preview and I hope it can help you to be well-informed about this match! 😍

Recent performances

After losing 0-1 to Tottenham on the opening day of this season, Manchester City dominated Norwich City and Arsenal with the same score of 5-0 in the next twos, and they will be looking to go on their devastating performance tonight.

Facing Leicester City will be a quite testing fixture for Pep Guardiola and his team as The Foxes have as many points on the table as Manchester City. However, their performances are not convincing. After a narrow 1-0 win against Wolverhampton Wanderers, the Foxes gained a heavy 1-4 defeat from West Ham. They then again have a narrow 2-1 win against Norwich. Brendan Rodgers needs to help the team regain their form tonight.

Head-to-Head

Manchester City has been the upper side in this clash with seven wins in the last ten matches. In the overall head-to-head record, they met each other 123 times in all competitions, with 62 wins for Manchester City, 32 wins for Leicester City, and the rest draws. Their latest clash comes from the start of the 2021/2022 season in the FA Community Shield, where Leicester City beat Manchester City 1-0 with a successful penalty from Kelechi Iheanacho.

Injuries & Suspensions

Leicester’s squad is now full of injured and doubtful players. Center-back Wesley Fofana will be out until 2022 after suffering a horrible injury in the pre-season friendly match against Villarreal. Apart from Fofana, Nampalys Mendy and James Justin are also suffering long-term injuries. Ricardo Pereira, Jonny Evans, and Jannik Vestergaard also have few doubts; however, their chance to feature in this match is decent. Ayoze Perez, who received a red card against West Ham, will continue his suspension until the end of this month.

Manchester City’s situation is not much better than Leicester City. The Blues will possibly be without their two best goalkeepers: Zack Steffens as he is isolated because of CoVid-19’s positivity, and Ederson due to the five-day punishment from FIFA as he refused to join Brazil’s squad for World Cup Qualifiers. Apart from Ederson, Gabriel Jesus will miss out for the same reason. Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden are on the recovery progress from injuries and it’s uncertain that they play this match.

UPDATE: The five-day ban has been removed, Ederson and Gabriel Jesus won’t miss out on this game!

Possible line-ups

Leicester City

Goalkeepers: Kasper Schmeichel
Defenders: Ricardo Pereira – Jonny Evans – Çağlar Söyüncü – Luke Thomas

Midfielders: Youri Tielemans – Wilfried Ndidi – James Maddison

Forwards: Marc Albrighton – Jamie Vardy – Harvey Barnes

Manchester City

Goalkeepers: Ederson

Defenders: Kyle Walker – John Stones – Ruben Dias – João Cancelo

Midfielder: Bernardo Silva – Rodri – İlkay Gündoğan

Forwards: Jack Grealish – Ferran Torres – Raheem Sterling

Prediction

Manchester City is in top form with two dominations consciously; however, their opponents were struggling teams like Norwich City and Arsenal. Leicester City will be a tough opponent, and with key players coming back, Brendan Rodgers and his team can make surprises tonight. A low-scoring draw is fair for me.