MY ACCOUNT
– Everton have been defensively solid all season
– Leicester have shown great improvement in recent weeks
– Recommended bet: Back the draw
A glance at the Premier League table shows Everton comfortable in mid-table while Leicester languish down in the relegation places, but it is an illustration of how tight things are at the bottom end of the division that a two-goal win for Leicester this weekend would see them rise above the Toffees.
Managing to grab that sort of result from Goodison Park is a big ask, but Foxes manager Brendan Rodgers will be quietly confident after overseeing a marked improvement in his team in recent weeks.
However, Frank Lampard has plenty of reasons to be cheerful in the home dugout, too, with Everton bouncing back from three defeats to Champions League-chasing opponents to again show their more resilient side.
Team news
After a long spell of injury problems in his squad, Rodgers now has very few absences to contend with.
Full-backs Ricardo Pereira and Ryan Bertrand remain long-term absentees and Jonny Evans is likely to miss his fifth successive game with a calf injury, but the veteran centre-back will take a late fitness test.
Everton’s injury problems are also clearing up but neither winger Andros Townsend nor defender Ben Godfrey are expected back until after Christmas.
Fellow centre-back Yerry Mina is close to returning from a broken leg but this weekend’s match is likely to come too soon for him.
The stats
Everton’s mid-October consecutive defeats to top-five trio Manchester United, Tottenham and Newcastle represent their only losses in their last 11 Premier League outings.
The Toffees bounced back from that run with an impressive 3-0 defeat of Crystal Palace and followed up with their fifth stalemate of the season in a 0-0 draw at Fulham last weekend — only two teams have drawn more Premier League games than Lampard’s men.
They remain a little short on firepower — although the return to fitness of Dominic Calvert-Lewin will undoubtedly help — but Everton have maintained their solidity throughout, keeping clean sheets in four of their last five games against teams outside the current top five.
Leicester’s recent upturn in form has coincided with the treatment room emptying out and players resuming focus after an unsettling summer, and it is fair to conclude they are in a false position in 18th place.
A battling 1-0 defeat to Manchester City last weekend — in which the Citizens were largely contained in open play but scored from an exquisite Kevin De Bruyne free-kick — is one of just two defeats in Leicester’s last six league outings.
Victories over fellow strugglers Nottingham Forest (4-0), Leeds (2-0) and Wolves (4-0) may not be particularly prize scalps, but they show marked progress from early in the season, when Rodgers’ men took just one point from their opening seven games.
Prediction
Both sets of players will go into this game expecting to get something from it — and with some justification.
Everton have arguably still yet to get the balance right between attack and defence, with their solid performances coming at the expense of attacking intent.
In part that is down to the absence of Calvert-Lewin but there is also a notable degree of caution in Lampard’s team selection, with avoiding defeat still the priority.
Rodgers’ Leicester could hardly have been more different, certainly in the early stages of the season.
Scoring goals has never been a problem but the Foxes were conceding a frightening number in their first few matches, shipping an average of more than three goals per game in their first seven outings.
The integration of centre-back Wout Faes seems to have made a significant impact, however.
The Belgian suffered a torrid debut in a 6-2 defeat to Tottenham but as he and Leicester have started to gel, the goals against have dried up dramatically.
Just three conceded in six games since suggest it could be a very useful partnership between player and club.
With Everton again set to prioritise solidity and an away point not the worst result for Leicester, the draw appeals — available at 9/4 with LiveScore Bet.
