Palace v Leicester Preview! By Simon Mack

Crystal Palace vs Leicester

Sunday 3^rd November 2020 14:00

Selhurst Park

Leicester City travel south on the back of their Carabao Cup last 16 victory at Burton to face Crystal Palace in the Premier League.

The eagles have had a very good start to their 19/20 campaign so far and lie 6^th in the table. The last 4 games for palace have seen city’s host beat Norwich and West Ham with the only defeat coming at the hands of last year’s Premier League champions Manchester City. Last time out at the Emirates Stadium a creditable 2-2 draw was the result against Arsenal despite the eagles conceding 2 goals in the first 10 minutes, and that Granit Xhaka incident has been a huge talking point with the pundits ever since.

Palace’s lofty league perch is one built on allowing their opponent to set the tone, and with an average of one goal scored per league match and a goal difference of -2 so far this term manager Roy Hodgson will be hoping his attacking options of Benteke and Saha find their shooting boots sooner than later. Ghanaian Jordan Ayew has 4 goals from his 9 appearances this season to date and is most likely to lead the line, and it was the eagles that were the visitors to King Power Stadium for Claude Puel’s last game in charge of the foxes back in February.

Andros Towsend is an injury doubt for the hosts as he tries to recover from a muscle injury whilst Mamadou Sakho and Connor Wickham remain long term absentees also. Goalkeeper Vicente Guaita has missed the last 2 games with a groin problem and is 50-50 for a return on Sunday.

The foxes the road trip continues to London on the back of a 3-1 Carabao victory at Burton. City manager Brendan Rodgers made 9 changes to the team that hammered Southampton in the league the Friday before (1 for each goal scored!!) and you’d think Sunday’s line up will look far more akin to the one that thrashed the saints.

Stand out performances from Tuesday night’s cup victory came in the guise of Youri Tielemans who was regal in his orchestration of midfield proceedings once again. Hamza Choudhury was ever passionate and committed in his efforts and Demari Gray’s creative input would not have been missed by the foxes gaffer either.

If Leicester win this one it will result in the best start to a top flight season in the history of the club, and whilst the eagles eye a 5^th straight win against their visitors the incisive machine that is the foxes attacking personnel will be equally hunting in packs to aid striker Jamie Vardy to increase his tally under Rodgers stewardship beyond the incredible 18 he has scored in 20 games since the Northern Irishman took the helm.

City have no injury issues to report, and with so many of the foxes squad showing fine form once again it will be Rodgers tactical preferences that will decide the 11 who take to the Selhurst Park turf.

Crystal Palace possible line up:

Guaita, Ward, Tomkins, Cahill, Van Aanholt, Townsend, Kouyate, Milivojevic, McArthur, Zaha, Ayew

Leicester possible line up:

Schmeichel, Ricardo, Evans, Soyuncu, Chilwell, Ndidi, Perez, Tielemans, Maddison, Barnes, Vardy